Husserl and Other Philosophers, Misc

In this article the author aims to reveal the common grounds between Islamic philosophy and phenomenology. The focus of the paper is on comparing Mirib Sadra's views with those of Edmond Husserl and revealing their commonalities. The writer believes that the issues which can provide the yiiBMl for having this dialogue consist of the following:1. The rational soul in Islamic Philosophy and the intentionality of the mind in western phenomenology;2. Transition from the first disposition to the second in Islamic philosophy (...) and Epoche and transcendental reduction in western phenomenology;3. Man's pre-eternal promise and its renewal with the help of prophets in Islamic philosophy and "bracketing" the existence of things in western phenomenology;4. The simple and composite types of knowledge in Islamic philosophy and the suspension and ceasing of judgment in western phenomenology.5. The Sophia Prennis in Islamic philosophy and the revival of philosophy in western phenomenology. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to assess Husserl’s debt to Lotze’s philosophy during the Halle period (1886-1901). I shall first track the sources of Husserl’s knowledge of Lotze’s philosophy during his studies with Brentano in Vienna and then with Stumpf in Halle. I shall then briefly comment on Husserl’s references to Lotze in his early work and research manuscripts for the second volume of his Philosophy of Arithmetic. In the third section, I examine Lotze’s influence on Husserl’s antipsychologistic turn (...) in the mid-1890s. The fourth section is a commentary on Husserl’s manuscript entitled “Microcosmus,” to which he explicitly refers in his Prolegomena, and which he planned to publish as an annex of his Logical Investigations. This work contains a detailed analysis of the third book of Lotze’s 1874 Logic. The last section examines Husserl’s arguments against logical psychologism in his Prolegomena, which I discuss through the lens of Stumpf’s critique of psychologism in his paper “Psychology and theory of knowledge”. I argue that Stumpf’s early works on this topic make it possible to establish a connection between Lotze’s interpretation of Plato’s theory of Ideas and Husserl’s antipsychologism. My hypothesis is that Stumpf’s analyses represent the background of Husserl's critique of logical psychologism in his Logical Investigations. I shall conclude this study by showing that Husserl’s position with respect to Lotze’s philosophy remains basically unchanged after the publication of his Logical Investigations, and that Husserl’s main criticism of Lotze pertains, in the final analysis, to the absence of a theory of intentionality in Lotze’s philosophy. (shrink)

Corijn van Mazijk’s book is a critical exploration of the relations between Immanuel Kant’s, Edmund Husserl’s, and John McDowell’s transcendental philosophies. His primary aim is not to conduct a historical study, but “to show that history provides us with viable alternatives to McDowell’s theory of our perceptual access to reality.” The book covers a variety of McDowellian themes: the Myth of the Given, the space of reasons vs. the space of nature, conceptualism, disjunctivism, naturalism, and realism—uncovering the roots of McDowell’s (...) views and providing Kantian and Husserlian correctives where needed. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions, especially in professional academic philosophy, all-too-often are, or anyhow quickly devolve into, nothing but essentially humanly irrelevant, esoteric, logic-chopping, t...

Husserl, as is well known, bases his study of appearing on subjective functions. He also makes appearing prior to being insofar phenomenology grants being to entities only to the point that they can appear. Both positions result in the paradox that he presents in the Crisis, where he asks: “How can human subjectivity, which is a part of the world, constitute the whole world, i.e., constitute it as its intentional product…? The subjective part of the world swallows up, so to (...) speak, the whole world including itself. What an absurdity!”. The paradox arises from Husserl’s taking being as presence and asserting that presence is established through constitution and, as such, is the work of subjectivity. In this article, I explore an alternative based on Aristotle's concept of functioning. This is a functioning that is prior to both subjects and objects, a functioning that is responsible for both being and appearing. The introduction of this concept, I argue, does not change Husserl’s description of the functioning of constitution. It does, however, add an ontological basis that prevents phenomenology from falling into this paradox.Husserl, como es bien sabido, basa su estudio del aparecer en funciones sujetivas. También presenta el aparecer como anterior al ser en tanto en cuanto la fenomenología le concede ser a las entidades sólo hasta el punto de que puedan aparecer. Ambas posiciones dan como resultado la paradoja que presenta en La crisis, donde pregunta: "¿Cómo puede la subjetividad humana, que es parte del mundo, constituir el mundo entero, es decir, constituirlo como su producto intencional...? La parte subjetiva del mundo se traga, por así decirlo, todo el mundo, incluido él mismo. ¡Qué absurdo!". La paradoja surge del hecho de que Husserl toma el ser como presencia y de que afirma que la presencia se establece a través de la constitución y que, como tal, es el trabajo de la subjetividad. En este artículo, exploro una alternativa basada en el concepto de funcionamiento de Aristóteles. Este es un funcionamiento que es anterior a ambos sujetos y objetos, un funcionamiento que es responsable de ser y aparecer. La introducción de este concepto, sostengo, no cambia la des-cripción de Husserl del funcionamiento de la constitución. Sin embargo, agrega una base ontológica que evita que la fenomenología caiga en esta paradoja. (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that there are at least two essential traits that commonly define being an I: self-identity and self-consciousness. I argue that they bear quite an odd relation to each other in the sense that self-consciousness seems to jeopardize self-identity. My main concern is to elucidate this issue within the range of the transcendental philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Edmund Husserl. In the first section, I shall briefly consider Kant’s own rendition of the problem of the Ego-splitting. (...) My reading of the Kantian texts reveals that Kant himself was aware of this phenomenon but eventually deems it an unexplainable fact. The second part of the paper tackles the same problematic from the standpoint of Husserlian phenomenology. What Husserl’s extensive analyses on this topic bring to light is that the phenomenon of the Ego-splitting constitutes the bedrock not only of his thought but also of every philosophy that works within the framework of transcendental thinking. (shrink)

This essay analyzes possible affinities and differences between William Ernest Hocking and Edmund Husserl in relation to the topic of solipsism and with particular emphasis on how it is that we encounter other minds in experience. Before comparing Hocking’s and Husserl’s ideas around such topics, the essay provides a brief reconstruction of William James’s and Josiah Royce’s engagement with them as a way of explaining why Hocking had a fascination for the question of how and under what methodological conditions other (...) selves are experienced. The aim is to highlight in what ways Hocking can be considered a phenomenological thinker. This overall approach should also facilitate a deeper understanding of where the limits of Husserl’s Ideas II and Fifth Meditation are and why Hocking’s views are relevant to the phenomenological investigation of the experience of minds other than our own. (shrink)

The main topic of this paper is the mind-body problem. The author analyzes it in the context of Hus- serlian phenomenology. The key texts for the analysis and interpretation are Descartes’ magnum opus “Meditations on the First Philosophy” and Husserl’ last work “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”. The author claims that already in Descartes’ text instead of one mind-body problem, one can find two: the ontological mind-body problem (mind-brain relation) and conceptual one (“mind” and “body” as concepts). (...) In Descartes’ “Meditations”, the ontological level is explicit, while the conceptual level is implicit. In Husserl’s “Crisis”, on the other hand, the situation is different: the conceptual level of the problem (as the opposition between transcendental phenom- enology and natural sciences) is explicit, while the ontological level is implicit. Nevertheless, it seems that Husserl has answers to both the “traditional” as well as the “conceptual” mind-body problems. (shrink)

The main topic of this paper is the mind-body problem. The author analyzes it in the context of Hus- serlian phenomenology. The key texts for the analysis and interpretation are Descartes’ magnum opus “Meditations on the First Philosophy” and Husserl’ last work “The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”. The author claims that already in Descartes’ text instead of one mind-body problem, one can find two: the ontological mind-body problem (mind-brain relation) and conceptual one (“mind” and “body” as concepts). (...) In Descartes’ “Meditations”, the ontological level is explicit, while the conceptual level is implicit. In Husserl’s “Crisis”, on the other hand, the situation is different: the conceptual level of the problem (as the opposition between transcendental phenomenology and natural sciences) is explicit, while the ontological level is implicit. Nevertheless, it seems that Husserl has answers to both the “traditional” as well as the “conceptual” mind-body problems. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to clarify the heart of Dewey’s philosophy: his method (denotative method (DM) / pattern of inquiry (PI)). Despite the traditional understanding of Dewey as anti-foundationalist, I want to show that Dewey did have metaphysical foundations for his method: the principle of continuity or theory of emergentism. I also argue that Dewey’s metaphysical position is better named as ‘cultural emergentism’, rather than his own term ‘cultural naturalism’. What Dewey called ‘common sense’ in his Logic, Husserl termed (...) as the ‘life-world’ in his Crisis. I compare two perspectives of dealing with the phenomenon and conclude that for Dewey, the difference between natural sciences and the common sense inquiry is that of subject-matter but not of method. Thus, the goal is to find the unified method to be applied in both domains. Whereas Husserl was more pessimistic: for him, the difference was not only in subject-matter, but in the very methods. Following that discussion, I also attempt to reformulate the hard problem of consciousness in Deweyan terms. In the end, I compare Dewey’s DM / PI with Popper’s understandings of scientific method and conclude that there is no significant difference between the two and that Dewey’s method could also be looked at as hypothetic-deductive method, with the only difference in emphases. (shrink)

The paper aims at bringing out a valid comparison between the notion of intentionality portrayed in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and that of Vijňānavāda in general. One of the crucial objectives of the Husserlian phenomenology is to understand the nature of consciousness. To Husserl, Consciousness is always intentional, that is, intended or directed towards something. It constitutes the world in the sense of bestowing meaning and being to the world. The object intended by consciousness may or may not be (...) there, but it certainly has a sense. Husserl makes a distinction between empirical and transcendental consciousness. To him, the empirical ego is momentary whilst the transcendental ego survives all reduction and presides over all epistemic acts. To explore whether the Vijňānavadins propose a similar notion of Consciousness and its intentionality would be the primary objective of the paper. On the other hand, to Vijňānavāda, the apparent external world is projected by the Absolute Consciousness, the Ālaya, not by the individual consciousness or Vijňāna. Vijňānavāda distinguishes between individual consciousness and absolute consciousness. All intentional acts are performed by the individual consciousness having the Ālaya Vijňāna as its background. The Ālaya manifests itself as subject and object as well as seven pravritti Vijňānas. They are intended and constituted by the Ālaya. It, therefore, follows that Ālaya is always intentionally correlated with the pravritti Vijňānas. Vijňānavāda appears to be a kind of constitutive phenomenology rather than idealism. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to see the similarity between the Shankara’s notion of Ätman and Husserl’s Transcendental Ego. Both thinkers, Husserl and Shankara trace true knowledge to the transcendental self. The former describes the self as the embodiment of absolute knowledge that transcends the limitations of the body, the senses and the intellect. In the state of bondage and ignorance, this Transcendental Ego is oblivious of its ontological and cognitive priority or transcendence and seeks knowledge in the natural world (...) of relative truths. It forgets that this world is merely an appearance rooted in the Ᾱtman which is identical with Brahman. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis essay explores the philosophical insights of Zhu Xi, Wang YangMing, Kant, and Husserl and therefore proposes a new epistemic constructivism. It demonstrates that a knowing mind is a co...

The present essay offers a first, systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s understanding of Socrates’ philosophical position in the Ideengeschichte with a special focus on the Socratic method. Our goal is twofold. On the one hand, we aim to provide a clear presentation of the way in which Husserl himself conceives of the “beginning” of Western philosophy by tackling the specifically Socratic contribution to it. On the other hand, we will clarify in what sense, and to what extent, the assessment of Husserl’s (...) Socrates helps shed some light upon the properly Husserlian conception of philosophy, notably, his twofold notion of “rationality.”. (shrink)

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)

This volume aims to provide the elements for a systematic exploration of certain fundamental notions of Peirce and Husserl in respect with foundations of science by means of drawing a parallelism between their works. Tackling a largely understudied comparison between these two contemporary philosophers, the authors highlight the significant similarities in some of their fundamental ideas. This volume consists of eleven chapters under four parts. The first part concerns methodologies and main principles of the two philosophers. An introductory chapter outlines (...) central historical and systematical themes arising out of the recent scholarship on Peirce and Husserl. The second part is on logic, its Chapters dedicated to the topics from Peirce’s Existential Graphs and the philosophy of notation to Husserl’s notions of pure logic and transcendental logic. The third part includes contributions on philosophy of mathematics. Chapters in the final part deal with the theory of cognition, consciousness and intentionality. The closing chapter provides an extended glossary of central terms of Peirce’s theory of phaneroscopy, explaining them from the viewpoint of the theory of cognition. (shrink)

Entry on the influence of Stumpf et Brentano on Husserl's early phenomenology during the Halle period.

I argue that Jan Patočka’s phenomenology can be understood as a kind of questioning philosophy that preserves the work and thought of Edmund Husserl by holding it in hindsight. Following Martin Heidegger’s lead to take up Husserl’s phenomenological questions more than Husserl’s answers, Patočka further develops Heidegger’s strategy with the addition of heresy: the philosophical process of distinguishing traditional questions from their answers in such a way as to preserve both, the original wonder sourced in questioning as well as the (...) specific answers that compose tradition. As excellent answers can tend to eclipse the powerful dynamism of original questions, heretical philosophy is revealed to be Patočka’s way to take up, modify, and enact Husserl’s motto “to the [questions] themselves!” In this way, Patočka’s further develops phenomenology while at the same time throwing a thinker back onto phenomenology’s central questions. (shrink)

In Origins of Analytical Philosophy, Michael Dummett tries to explain the divergence of the analytic school and the phenomenological school. The linguistic turn, characteristic of the former, is deemed necessary to overcome the “ontological mythology” seen in Frege and Husserl. Dummett explains this mythology as the result of the “extrusion of thoughts from the mind”, or in other words, the denial of the subjectivity of thoughts. This leads him to consider the linguistic turn as an alternative to the mythology, in (...) that language is an objective institution external to the individual mind that can embody thoughts. Dummett’s critique of ideal meaning as well as his proposal of the linguistic turn as an alternative to this ontological mythology is more or less compelling. Far less persuasive is his claim that this is precisely what constitutes the fundamental divide in contemporary philosophy. The claim implicit in his argumentation is that Continental philosophy has as its defining characteristic the dogma of a realm of ideal meaning. This claim, however, is untenable. In fact, Heidegger’s position concerning ideal meaning is actually quite close to that which Dummett defends. (shrink)

Aristotle famously asserted that the mind is identical with its object in an act of cognition. This “identity doctrine” has caused much confusion and controversy, with many seeking to avoid a literal interpretation in favor of one that suggests that “identity” refers to a formal isomorphism between the mind and its object. However, in this paper I suggest that Aristotle’s identity doctrine is not an epistemological claim about an isomorphism between a representation of an object and the object itself, but (...) is a phenomenological claim about the character of human cognition and intelligible being. Drawing on texts from Edmund Husserl and Aristotle, I offer a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle’s identity doctrine. I ultimately argue that, for Aristotle, mind and being are essentially unified, for intelligible being is partially constitutive of the mind. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the Timaeus, Plato explicitly defines time as “the moving image of eternity”. This proposition affirms actually that time reflects the eternal that embodies the rational and lawful principle – namely the logos of proportionality – in the motion and change of visible objects in the universe. In other words,time determines the principle that every mutable being must follow to participate in the rational and nomological order of existence; the absolute logos which is given by God is hence intrinsic to (...) time. This idea of time is echoed by the theories of Augustine and Husserl. Both philosophers inherited some of Plato’s metaphysical views, and each of them developed a distinctive theory of the relations between Being, time, and the absolute logos. This paper attempts to compare their theories and to defend the following claim: Augustine fo-cuses on the immutable representation of time which is regarded as the image or reflection of God’s absolute logos, and explains temporal phenome... (shrink)

In this paper, a comparison is made between the rationalistic and phenomenological approaches to understanding the Islamic philosophy of illumination. The analysis shows that the rationalistic bias in translations of the relevant texts causes a misunderstanding of Suhrawardī’s argument and a subsequent misinterpretation of his key terms. The Islamic philosophy of illumination is especially vulnerable to rationalistic mis-translations due to the intuitional-eidetic character of its epistemology. In contrast to rationalism, the new phenomenological ontologies provide an adequate framework for reading Suhrawardī. (...) A parallel is made between Suhrawardī’s treatment of the central principle, nūr mujarrad, and Husserl’s epoché and phenomenological reduction. Without this comparison, nūr mujarrad is translated as a symbolic, metaphoric term referring to an ideal entity. However, the closeness of Husserl’s and Suhrawardiīs views on consciousness, and the phenomenological nature of evidence in Part 2 of Hikmat-al Ishrāq, prove that nūr mujarrad refers to the pure subjectivity of consciousness, which is lived reality available in presentive intuition. Consequently, the term nūr mujarrad is not metaphorical, but descriptive, i.e. direct signification referring to pure awareness as the self-effulgence of consciousness-being, an ontological principle by which all selves and things in existence are present for us. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a comparison between the philosophies of Husserl and James in relation to their concepts of experience. Whereas various authors have acknowledged the affinity between James’ early psychology and Husserl’s phenomenology, the late development of James’ philosophy is often considered in opposition to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. This is because James’ radical empiricism achieves a non-dual dimension of experience that precedes the functional division into subject and object, thus contrasting with the phenomenological analysis of the dual structure (...) of intentionality. However, I argue that the later “genetic” development of phenomenology converges with some central aspects of James’ radical empiricism. This is because genetic phenomenology leads us to conceive of the flow of primal impressions as a fundamental dimension of experience that precedes the subject-object duality and is at the base of the process of co-constitution of the subject and the object in reciprocal dependence. At the same time, Husserl conceives of the impressional core of experience as structured by formal conditions that depend on the concrete constitution of an embodied subject. For this reason, I argue that Husserl’s genetic phenomenology can complement James’ radical empiricism, thus leading to the development of the doctrine of pure experience as a form of empirical and not metaphysical realism. (shrink)

I argue that Husserl’s transcendental account of the role of the lived body in sense-making is a precursor to Alva Noë’s recent work on the enactive, embodied mind, specifically his notion of “sensorimotor knowledge” as a form of embodied sense-making that avoids representationalism and intellectualism. Derrida’s deconstructive account of meaning—developed largely through a critique of Husserl—relies on the claim that meaning is structured through the complication of the “interiority” of consciousness by an “outside,” and thus might be thought to lend (...) itself to theories of mind such as Noë’s that emphasize the ways in which sense-making occurs outside the head. But while Derrida’s notion of “contamination” rightly points to an indeterminateness of meaning in an outside, extended, concrete lived world, he ultimately reduces meaning to a structure of signification. This casts indeterminateness in terms of absence, ignoring the presence of non-linguistic phenomena of embodied sense-making central to both the contemporary enactivist program and to the later Husserl, who is able to account for the indeterminateness of meaning in lived experience through his distinction between sense and more exact linguistic meaning. Husserl’s transcendental theory of meaning also allows for a substantive contribution to sense-making from the side of the perceived object—an aspect missing from Noë’s account. Thus, in contrast to Derrida and to Noë, Husserl accounts for sense-making in terms of both the lived body and the lived world. (shrink)

This paper compares Plotinus’s neoplatonic conception and account of time with Bergson’s and Husserl’s phenomenologic conceptions and accounts of it. I argue that despite fundamental differences owing to their respective approaches, their conceptions and accounts are remarkably comparable, especially in considering time to play a fundamental role in the organic unity of our physical environment—in what I characterize also as the continuously and intrinsically connected sequentiality of its events, processes, and constituents—in Plotinus’s case, of our physical environment as such; in (...) Bergson’s and Husserl’s case, as it manifests itself to us in experience and our reflective awareness of that experience. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPatočka highlights the central role of Cartesianism in our tradition of thinking. Yet, today, brain scientists often claim to have overcome Cartesian dualism. In this paper, I argue that the Cartesian conceptions of human nature and sensory perception remain presuppositions of brain science, where perception is largely equated with thinking. Equating perception and thinking means that thinking is a determined process, which leads to an erosion of critique. Critique, and the freedom of thought it entails, is essential to Descartes, Husserl (...) and Patočka. I examine the differences, as well as the relationship, between Descartes method of doubt, Husserl’s phenomenological epochē and Patočka’s universalization of the epochē. I also show how Descartes’, Husserl’s and Patočka’s way into critique present different ways to understand self, things and the world. In conclusion, I suggest that Patočka presents a promising way to critique mechanistic understandings of thinking by rethinking both subject and object. (shrink)

For such refined idealists as Schopenhauer, Husserl and Wittgenstein, the correlation between the world and the subject must be recognized. Furthermore, the three commonly emphasize the distinction between the transcendental subject and the empirical subject as well as the distinction between the subject and object’s mode of being. They all realized that the confusion of the transcendental subject and the empirical subject causes the paradox of that the subject as one part of the world is at the same time the (...) a priori condition of the whole world. In the history of western Philosophy, Schopenhauer is the first to realize that the subject is no more than the invisible body, or the body playing the subject’s role. Our body plays a role both as object and as subject. However, the fact does not mean that the body playing a role as a subject can be identified with the body playing a role as an object. As the subject, the body is the prerequisite of all the representations, but the body itself cannot simultaneously be represented by itself. If objects are always visible to me, then my body as a subject is invisible. (shrink)

The paper attempts to justify that Merab Mamardashvili was one of few Russian philosophers, who combined two philosophical traditions: the Western and the Eastern ones. Mamardashvili used Buddhist ideas and concepts for the interpretation of Descartes’ philosophy. In his study of the questions of philosophy as a way of life, of thinking as a way of becoming human, of thinking and consciousness, and of freedom, he used the Buddhist concept of the absence of the individual “I”, the principle of interdependence, (...) and the idea of detachment, and proceeded from the existence of various forms of consciousness. Talking about Descartes, Mamardashvili finds a way to talk about himself and his own philosophy. The fundamental thesis of Descartes’ philosophy – the principle of doubt – is treated as if Descartes was a Buddhist. A fruitful distinction for Mamardashvili was that between consciousness and thinking that is adopted in Buddhist philosophy. He states that thinking is simple intuition of the mind, is that which is controlled by the will and the consciousness. For him, a thought is a real existential object. This distinction enables him to distinguish between empirical “I” and transcendental consciousness, in virtue of which human being becomes man. An important role here plays the phenomenon of awareness. Thus, not only Husserl’s phenomenology, but also the view of Descartes’ philosophy and Descartes himself from a Buddhist philosophical standpoint enabled Mamardashvili to suggest a new reading of his philosophy. However, his aim was not a simple interpretation of Descartes’ philosophy, but also the exposition of his own philosophy, the core of which is the theory of consciousness.. (shrink)

How can music education be enriched by the concept of time? This article is based on the assumption that the present moment, the musical ‘now’, is of the utmost importance not only to the musical performer or listener but to the musical learner and teacher as well. It aims at a philosophical discussion and conceptual clarification of a number of issues of time that are considered to be crucial to music education through a presentation and discussion of thoughts and concepts (...) put forward by four selected philosophers: Augustine, Edmund Husserl, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Paul Ricoeur. It is suggested that reflecting upon time may significantly challenge and develop students’ ways of thinking about music connected to different actions within several fields of music education. For instance, Augustine’s analysis of time offers important perspectives on practising, remembering, and performing music. Husserl’s philosophy of time constitutes the stream of consciousness, which leads to an understanding of the comprehension of tonality. Discussions of Bakhtin’s concepts of utterance and chronotope demonstrate that the need for experiencing and understanding music arguably poses a challenge for current music education in schools with regard to its predominant ways of dealing with time. With reference to Ricoeur’s analysis of time and narrative, it is suggested that musicians’ need for multi-directedness in the musical present calls for a rich learning ecology framework. In conclusion, it is argued that reflection on musical practice in general would benefit from taking the shape of polyphonic philosophical investigations. (shrink)

IntroductionThis paper is introduced as the first in a series on a comparative study in phenomenology and Sāṅkhya. The issues intended to be investigated in this paper have been specified. IntentionalityBrentano’s attempt to characterize the Cartesian division of the world with the help of his concept of intentionality, his theory of intentionality and difficulties associated with it are discussed. Paradox and RemedyConsciousness, which alone is argued to be intentional, is argued to make the world a paradoxical pseudo-totality preventing its theorization. (...) The remedy for resolution of the paradox is presented.Husserl’s Theory of Intentionality and ‘Paradigm of Consciousness’The division of the world possible under the ‘Cartesian paradigm’ is shown to be of no help in resolving the paradox. Husserl’s theory of intentionality is shown to have distinguished itself from theories prior to it, in dividing the pseudo-totality that the world is, into genuine totalities under the ‘paradigm of consciousness’.Phenomenological and ‘Natural’ ReductionThe possibility of the being of phenomenology as a science as well as, that of the ‘natural sciences’ comprising the physical sciences as well as psychology, is traced to their being sciences of genuine totalities made possible by the division under the ‘paradigm of consciousness’ by Husserl’s theory of intentionality.SāṅkhyaSāṅkhya is argued to be a phenomenological discourse. In fact, it is argued to be a post-epoche discourse. Also, all cittavṛtti are argued to have their viṣaya, the concept which has been identified with ‘intentional object’ as the correlate of consciousness. Cittavṛtti, therefore, are argued to be intentional, and thereby equivalent to intentional mental processes. Parallels in Sāṅkhya to Husserl’s concepts of ‘matter’ and ‘quality’ of mental processes have been sought in Sāṅkhya. (shrink)

This paper examines the phenomenon of music in relation to time and time-consciousness based on the philosophies of Augustine, Brentano and Husserl. They analyzed music, or more precisely, the melody of tones and rhythm in their theories of time and time-consciousness, because the process of perceiving music uncloaks the phenomenon of time-understanding.

In this paper, I investigate the account of self-consciousness provided by Chinese Yogācārins Xuanzang (602-664CE) and Kuiji (632-682CE). I will explain how they clarify the transition from selfattaching to self-emptying through the articulation of consciousness (vijñāna). Current scholarship often interprets the Yogācāra account of consciousness either as a science of mind or as a metaphysical idealism. Both interpretations are misleading, partly because they perpetuate various stereotypes about Buddhism, partly also because they overlook the religious goal of realizing in practice the (...) wisdom of emptiness and the non-egoistic compassion. Against the status quo, I argue that through their account of self-consciousness, Xuanzang and Kuiji advocate what can be referred to as transcendental idealism that stresses the correlation between subjectivity and objectivity. Yogācārins thus neither nullify the existence of subjectivity nor formulate subjectivity as a higher entity. The transcendental idealism yields a Buddhist phenomenology that is similar to and also different from Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. In what follows I will first characterize Husserl’s phenomenology as an approach to consciousness at two levels (the descriptive level and the explicative level). Then, I elicit the Buddhist phenomenology from Yogācāra philosophy that is not only descriptive and explicative but also prescriptive. This three-level architectonic of consciousness, while reaffirming the importance of agency, further justifies the role of religious rituals and moral practices for Yogācāra devotees. (shrink)

The notion of mathesis universalis appears in many of Edmund Husserl’s works, where it corresponds essentially to “a universal a priori ontology”. This paper has two purposes; one, largely exegetical, of clarifying how Husserl elaborates on Leibniz’ concept of mathesis universalis and associated notions like symbolic thinking and symbolic knowledge filtering them through the lesson of the so called “bohemian Leibniz”, Bernard Bolzano; another, more properly philosophical, of examining the role that the universal mathesis is allowed to play, and the (...) space it occupies in Husserl’s intuition-based epistemology. (shrink)

This research project attempts to fruitfully integrate Husserl's phenomenology in contemporary debates in analytic philosophy regarding perceptual content. More specifically, it focuses on the question whether perceptual content would be conceptual or non-conceptual. Besides Husserl, central attention will be paid to the works of Kant and McDowell.

The article deals with the problem of phenomenological interpretation of Cartesian idea of evidence. The author demonstrates that implicit but constitutive characteristic of evidence is a property of excessiveness. The analysis of its conceptual versions and methodological representations in Husserl, Marion and Derrida’s philosophies deconstructs some stereotype interpretations of evidence as an attribute of I-centric philosophical systems and also as a carrier of qualities of fullness and presence. The author claims that excessiveness of evidence has two main aspects: (1) non-belonging (...) to the system assured by this very evidence and (2) tendency to self-surpassing (hyperbolization). The excessiveness of evidence is shown in particular with regard to the system of thinking governed by the “truth-falsehood” opposition. The author brings to light a trend to the increasing of degrees of evidence as a consequence of phenomenological critique and deconstruction as methodological hyperbolizations of Cartesian doubt. The common ground between Marionian and Derridian critiques of Husserl’s conception of evidence is found that is inconsistency between the principle of fulfillment of intention and the unrealizable regulative of the “Idea in Kantian sense” as two main ways of representation of evidence idea in Husserlian phenomenology. It is shown that in accordance with the paradigm of possibility as the common denominator of phenomenological attitude in general the very same criticized evidence becomes assimilated in Marion’s conception of “saturated phenomena” (a principle of hyperbolical givenness) and in Derridian deconstruction (hyperbolicity-excessiveness as heterogeneity and impossibility within the framework of his critique of presence). The author uncovers the essential connection between the idea of evidence and basic elements of deconstructive discourse, such as the metaphorical concept of secret and the quasi-concept différance. (shrink)

Naturalism in twentieth century philosophy is founded on the rejection of ‘first philosophy’, as can be seen in Quine’s rejection of what he calls ‘cosmic exile’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology falls within the scope of what naturalism rejects, but I argue that the opposition between phenomenology and naturalism is less straightforward than it appears. This is so not because transcendental phenomenology does not involve a problematic form of exile, but because naturalism, in its recoil from transcendental philosophy, creates a new form (...) of exile, what I call in the paper ‘exile from within’. These different forms of exile are the result of shared epistemological aspirations, which, if set aside, leave open the possibility of phenomenology without exile. In the conclusion of the paper, I appeal to Merleau-Ponty as an example of what phenomenology without epistemology might look like. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between Augustine’s and Husserl’s conceptions of time, consciousness, and memory. Although Husserl claims to provide a phenomenological understanding of the paradox of time so famously formulated by Augustine in his Confessions, this paper explores the apparent similarities between Augustine’s concept of distentio animi and the Husserlian concept of inner time-consciousness against their more profound differences. At stake in this confrontation between Augustine and Husserl is a fundamental divergence in the sense of time as the movement (...) of transcendence in immanence. Within this discussion, the contrast between speaking time and seeing time, time and eternity, and contrasting notions of the past and future are explored. (shrink)

Phenomenological accounts of intuition are often considered as significantly different from, or even incommensurable with most of the conception of intuitions defended in analytical philosophy. In this paper, I reject this view. Starting with what I consider to be a relatively neutral phenomenological account of intuition, I first present the main features of Husserl’s and Brentano’s accounts of intuition, showing the structural similarities and differences between these two views. After confronting them, I finally come back to what unites the two (...) views in order to outline a map of the problem of intuition in which both traditions, the analytical and the phenomenological, appear as two complementary takes on one and the same problem. (shrink)

In this paper, I intend to make a case for Buddhist phenomenology. By Buddhist phenomenology, I mean a phenomenological interpretation of Yogācāra’s doctrine of consciousness. Yet, this interpretation will be vulnerable if I do not justify the way in which the anti-essentialistic Buddhist philosophy can countenance the Husserlian essence. I dub this problem of compatibility between Buddhist and phenomenology the ‘problem of essence’. Nevertheless, I argue that this problem will not jeopardize Buddhist phenomenology because: 1) Yogācārins, especially late Yogācārins represented (...) by Xuanzang do not articulate emptiness as a negation but as an affirmation of the existent; 2) Husserl’s phenomenological essence is not a substance that Yogācārins reject but the ideal sense that Yogācārins also stress. After resolving the problem of essence, I formulate Buddhist phenomenology as follows: on the epistemological level, it describes intentional acts of consciousness; on the meta-epistemological level, it entails transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Purpose. The article is aimed to figure out the features of Husserl's reception of anthropological Descartes rationalism. Its implementation requires a consistent solution of the following tasks: 1) schematically express a modern vision of the basic intentions of philosophizing as an anthropological rationalism; 2) highlight the main points of the Husserl's reception of Descartes’ rationalism as the deanthropologizing and analyze radicalization of its basic design as the reanthropologizing. Conclusions. When clarifying the question of the method of reception and completion of (...) the philosophical Descartes’ project in the doctrine of Edmund Husserl, the author finds that the originality of his reception of anthropological Descartes’ rationalism appears as the paradoxical union of denying the existence of anthropology in the base project and the rediscovery of its key role in the radicalization of Descartes. Thinking of its way, he comes to the rediscovery some of the key ideas of the French philosopher, rooted in his anthropological rationalism. Among them is the basic intention of the ambivalence, the rejection of Descartes’ ideas of panrationalism, recognition irreducibility of philosophical method to the mathematical, constitutive of human presence in the new rationalism. Prospects for further research in understanding the author sees a meaningful relationship and continuity of the two great thinkers - namely, the personal nature of philosophizing and the ethical focus of their searching. Originality. Appeal to the reception of Husserl's Cartesian project confirms the thesis of an essential importance for the basic anthropological project of Descartes. The presented version of Husserl reception base project Descartes is a reproduction of the surface age stereotypes, which link the quest of the philosopher with the natural sciences and neglected anthropological measurements. The proposed version of the radicalization of Descartes’ project is largely rediscovery of the key importance of anthropological measurements in the quest for the founder of rationalism. Although Husserl himself afraid of phenomenology transformation into anthropology, significant trends anthropologization rationalism for his pursuit is certain. (shrink)

This paper reviews the concept of ‘essence’ in Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas as found presented by Edith Stein in her Festschrift article, ‘Husserl’s Phenomenology and the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas: Attempt at a Comparison,’ in the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung (1929, 370). The aim of the paper is to perform an analysis of Stein’s understanding of the principal similarities and differences in the understandings of essence found in the writings of Husserl and Aquinas, and primarily in (...) terms of the immediacy of the intuition or cognition of essences. I begin by a basic analysis of this commonality and difference with a focus on the interweaving of the following themes: essence and existence; essence and sensual knowledge; essence and its objective ground; essence as intuited, as actively acquired and as passively received; insight into essence, immediate and mediate knowledge. Despite certain misunderstanding arising between the phenomenological movement and the scholastic tradition in this sphere, Stein recognises a number of points of agreement, namely, 1) the beginnings of all knowledge in sense experience, 2) the intellectual ‘work’ (erarbeiten) that is required to achieve a clear vision of essences, and 3) the finally passive nature of the act of understanding. I critically analyse each of these enumerated points of agreement towards clarifying how Stein conceives of the possibility of using the phenomenological method for achieving an understanding of essences coherent with a Thomistic metaphysical worldview, and how she parses and explains the further disagreements over the question of the mediacy or immediacy of human knowledge of essences of different kinds. (shrink)

El ser en su riqueza se expresa en el lenguaje que emana también del ser. El lenguaje emergió de su olvido en la filosofía griega, gracias a las ideas cristianas de encarnación y trinidad que le hicieron más justicia. El mayor milagro del lenguaje no estriba en que la palabra aparezca en su ser externo, sino en el hecho de que lo que emerge y se manifiesta sea siempre palabra. La vuelta de Gadamer al final de Verdad y método, en (...) torno a la evidencia de que el ser de lo bello consiste en presentarse, ilustra la estructura universal del ser mismo. Apalabrar a lo que es el ser mismo. Lo que determina y hace posible la interpretación es el presentarse del ser de lo que es. Being in its richness expresses itself in language, which itself emanates from Being. Language emerged from its oblivion in Greek philosophy thanks to the Christian ideas of incarnation and trinity, which did it more justice. Language's greatest miracle does not rest on the fact that the word appears in its external being, but on the fact that that which emerges and manifests itself is always word. Gadamer's turn at the end of Truth and Method, regarding the evidence according to which beauty's being consists of presenting itself, illustrates the universal structure of Being itself. Bespeaking what is Being itself. What determines and make possible interpretation is the presentation itself of the being of what is. (shrink)

The paper shows connection between the cultivation of attention in Buddhist meditation vipassanā and the phenomenological theory of affectivity. At first, it shortly describes the way how the praxis of meditation achieves progress of mindfulness. Then, this experience is interpreted from the point of view of Husserl’s theory of passive constitution. Finally, it describes mindfulness in terms of the boundary between activity and passivity of human being in the world.

David Hume’s thought has interrupted entire disciplines from dogmatic slumbers. Yet Hume’s influence is even more expansive and continuous than we might have thought. There are two significant areas of inquiry where Hume’s influence has not been adequately appreciated or articulated: analytic phenomenology and analytic process philosophy. My dissertation explores these traditions’ indebtedness to Hume by engaging with the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred North Whitehead, who introduce consequential changes into their systems in direct response to what they see (...) as Humean problems with their initial models. Three major themes are of special interest. First, vis-à-vis “Unity of Mind,” each philosopher asks what accounts for the apparent unity of mind and experience, including what principles connect distinct experiences. Second, vis-à-vis “Temporal Awareness,” each philosopher inquires into what grounds temporality and the experience of temporal passage, including what principles connect distinct moments. Third, vis-à-vis “Personal Identity,” each philosopher investigates what constitutes the experience of continuity and unity over time, including personal continuity and unity qua “personal identity.” A fourth concordance is methodological. In pursuing the aforementioned themes, each philosopher accords epistemic primacy to lived experience and what discloses itself therein. An overarching Humean problem for all, correlatively, is how continuity and unity arise from distinct items: perceptions, intentional experiences, and actual occasions, respectively. My dissertation attempts to explicate this and related systematic issues from a historical perspective informed by contemporary analytic metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and recent scholarship in Hume, Husserl, and Whitehead studies. Chapter One argues that Hume’s infamous “Appendix problem” concerns reconciling the incontrovertible unity of mind with his unrenounceable epistemological principle that the mind never perceives real connections between distinct perceptions. Chapter Two traces Hume’s proto-phenomenological influence on Husserl’s theories (not theory) of temporal awareness. Chapter Three examines Hume’s proto-processual influence on Whitehead's theories (not theory) of personal identity. Unfortunately, neither Husserl nor Whitehead read each other’s work. Nevertheless, both take Hume to be the one who knocks at, yet ultimately fails to walk through the doors that his explorations unveil. By so doing, they beg that we do the same with them. (shrink)

Since the late nineteenth century ‘Scientific Philosophy’ has become a label ascribed to many research programs. German theoretical philosophy of the early twentieth century was dominated by three different trends—Phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism, and Logical Empiricism: Each trend claimed to represent the ‘Scientific Philosophy’. In this context it is astonishing that we know almost nothing about the relationships between these schools. It is true, all of them rejected the speculative metaphysics found, for example, in German Idealism, but knowledge about other connections is (...) scarce. Starting with the question what exactly ‘Scientific Philosophy’ means and how these meanings relate to each other, a thorough investigation of the connections between all three trends has yet to take place.The main goal of the conference was, therefore, to better understand the relationships of these schools through their notions of ‘Scientific Philosophy’. In this context the works of Edmund Husserl (for Ph .. (shrink)

Although cultures far away and with other languages and customs are felt to be exotic by many in one s own culture, all cultures recognize the importance of a consistent bodily praxis as a basis for ethical behavior. I show that thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, Dewey, James, Peirce, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty all acknowledge this habitual-bodily basis as well as its deeply social character. So does Confucius, even if he emphasizes ceremonial aspects more than Aristotle, the American pragmatists, and phenomenologists. (...) Linking these thinkers is a common emphasis on the performative dimension of reliably repetitive bodily actions that engender effective social actions and interactions. (shrink)

In examining phenomenology as a base onto-generative hermeneutics I find the gradual movement from pure phenomenology in Husserl to an ontological phenomenology in Merleau-Ponty through Heidegger and Gadamer. I argue thus that there is an implicit connection between the phenomenological and the ontological. In order to bring out the desirable connection between the two we must have hermeneutic interpretation of one in terms of the other. This leads to the idea of onto-hermeneutic circle of phenomenology and ontology based on the (...) integration of the four phenomenologies which represent a wider comprehension and deeper intuition. It is in terms of this wider comprehension and deeper intuition of reality I introduce the Chinese notion “ben-ti 本體” as “onto-generative” as well as onto-phenomenological. I suggest five principles as constituting the basic formulation of such a hermeneutic system as both theory and methodology: Principle of comprehensive observation ; Principle of objective reference 1 ; Principle of perception, reflection, and memory ; Principle of intersubjective understanding and interpretation based on ; and Principle of practical end and action. (shrink)