Abstract

The author calls phenomenological intentionality, into question while taking it, nevertheless, as a starting point. From the analysis of the meaning of phenomena he goes back to a pathic dimension which precedes them. What happens to us or affects us and to what we respond in different ways cannot be reduced to previous horizons. Between pathos and response, there is an irreducible cleft which constitutes a special sort of time-lag. What happens to us comes is always too early; our responses always come too late. Our experience is never completely up to date. In order to explore this pre-semantic and pre-pragmatic depth of experience we need a sort of responsive reduction, which guides all meaning toward something we respond to. In conclusion, the author evokes some areas in which such a revision of phenomenology shows its effects, namely the genesis of life in bioethics, the historical elaboration of memory and the experience of the Other.