The main goal of the present paper is to offer a preliminary study of the relations between phenomenology and metaphysics in Husserl. After a brief presentation of what Husserl means by the term “metaphysics”, the rest of our research will consist of a detailed commentary on §60 of the Cartesian Meditations. Our aim is to explain in what sense, according to Husserl, the “outcomes” of the phenomenological constitution of monadological intersubjectivity entail the solution to a traditional metaphysical problem, i.e., that (...) of the existence of just one real world. The present investigation does not pretend to be more than an introduction. Besides shedding some light on a specific text, it will pave the way for a future inquiry into the relations between phenomenology and metaphysics in Husserl. (shrink)

This article takes a phenomenological approach to thinking about ways in which the future comes to pass without being derived from the present, i.e. without being based on our current and past objective engagements. In the first part, I look at Husserl’s idea of “protention” in order to discuss how phenomenology has conceptualized the indeterminacy of the present moment. In the second part, the Heideggerian notion of “projection” is discussed as a modification of protention. In the third part, I argue (...) for an empty teleology of time in which our temporal engagement in the world is distinguished from our existential concern with temporal things. The basic idea of the paper is that for the future to arrive “as future” (instead of as another present), it has to happen in spite of the present, i.e. in spite of the interested stance that defines our present engagement in the world. (shrink)

The main goal of the present paper is to offer a preliminary study of the relations between phenomenology and metaphysics in Husserl. After a brief presentation of what Husserl means by the term “metaphysics”, the rest of our research will consist of a detailed commentary on §60 of the Cartesian Meditations. Our aim is to explain in what sense, according to Husserl, the “outcomes” of the phenomenological constitution of monadological intersubjectivity entail the solution to a traditional metaphysical problem, i.e., that (...) of the existence of just one real world. The present investigation does not pretend to be more than an introduction. Besides shedding some light on a specific text, it will pave the way for a future inquiry into the relations between phenomenology and metaphysics in Husserl. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In spite of the supposed lack of attention paid to it by Husserl in his early works on time, the future is an important topic for phenomenology that gains increasing relevance in his late works. Regarding the experience of the future, phenomenology can approach the subjective possibility of anticipating what is not yet given, both actively and passively. A new perspective on the subject’s relation to the future arises thanks to the consideration of practical phenomena. What is at stake (...) here is the possibility of doing something with what is not yet given. In this sense, our principal concern is to contextualize Husserĺs reference to the relationship between willing and future in the framework of his more general analysis of the future; at the same time, we seek to answer a question that arises in the analysis of time: the problem of novelty, and the possibility of creativity. (shrink)

Although conceptually distinct, ‘ time ’ and ‘community’ are multiply intertwined within a myriad of key debates in both the social sciences and the humanities. Even so, the role of conceptions of time in social practices of inclusion and exclusion has yet to achieve the prominence of other key analytical categories such as identity and space. This article seeks to contribute to the development of this field by highlighting the importance of thinking time and community together through the lens of (...) political apologies. Often ostensibly offered in order to re-articulate both the constitution of ‘the community’ and its future direction, official apologies are prime examples of deliberate attempts to intervene in shared understandings of political community and its temporality. Offering a detailed case study of one of these apologies, I will focus on Australian debates over the removal of indigenous children from their families, known as the Stolen Generations, and examine the temporal dimensions of the different responses offered by former prime ministers John Howard and Kevin Rudd. (shrink)

Borrowing conceptual tools from Bergson, this essay asks after the shift in the temporality of life from Merleau‐Ponty's Phénoménologie de la perception to his later works. Although the Phénoménologie conceives life in terms of the field of presence of bodily action, later texts point to a life of invisible and immemorial dimensionality. By reconsidering Bergson, but also thereby revising his reading of Husserl, Merleau‐Ponty develops a nonserial theory of time in the later works, one that acknowledges the verticality and irreducibility (...) of the past. Life in the flesh relies on unconsciousness or forgetting, on an invisibility that structures its passage. (shrink)

In this thesis I develop an account of the nature of limits of thought in terms of Husserl's phenomenology. I do this by exploring in terms of Husserl's phenomenology various ways thought-limits are encountered. Chapter One employs Husserl's analyses of meaning and intentionality to clarify the limits of conception and of questioning that emerge in wonder at the existence of the world. Chapter Two undertakes a critique of Husserl's refutation of psychologism in logic in order to clarify limits encountered in (...) reflection on the possibility of knowledge and how Husserl's phenomenology proposes to overcome these limits. Chapter Three turns to Husserl's own encounter with intellectual limits in his phenomenology of time-consciousness. Here I show how some of the limits explored in the first two chapters re-emerge on a transcendental level and argue that time-consciousness marks the limit to Husserl's phenomenology in the sense that it frustrates cognitive desire. In this way the thesis shows how Husserl's phenomenology both clarifies and itself illustrates an ineliminable desire in reason to exceed its limits, even when these limits are recognized. (shrink)