Madness and emotion could be said to share, to a certain extent, their definition as kinds of human response to influences from their environment. The connection between madness and emotion is stressed in modern psychological observations establishing strong links between the causation of madness and human emotionality. Despite the fact that similar insights were absent from Greek medical theorists, or indeed from other contemporary writers, this would come as no surprise to either Sophokles or Euripides. Both tragedians handled their material (...) in such a way as to demonstrate how the strong pressures of familial or social influences can lead to mental disturbance. While it is most probably Sophokles who, for the first time, turns to the influence of internal forces in the process of madness, the lack of subject matter in his surviving plays allows us little scope for further comparison. On the other hand, Euripides seems to have dedicated more of his portrayals to madness. These portrayals offer an almost unique opportunity to examine the introduction, not only in drama but perhaps in the whole of Greek literature, of the emotions as contributing factors in madness. (shrink)

In §69.b of BT Heidegger attempts an existential genetic analysis of science, i.e. a phenomenology of the conceptual process of the constitution of the logical view of science (science seen as theory) starting from the Dasein. It attempts to do so by examining the special intentional-existential modification of (human) being-in-the-world, which is called the "mathematical projection of nature"; that is, by examining that special modification of our being, which places us in the state of experience that presents the world to (...) us as taught by, e.g., Galileo and Newton. The idea he puts forward is that modern mathematical physics and the corresponding experience of the real is the result of the mathematical projection of nature. Modern science, Heidegger says, stands out because it is mathematical. But we cannot get the answer to what this mathematicality consists in from mathematics, because mathematics is only a special manifestation of mathematicality. Here is what Heidegger means by "mathematicality" and, accordingly by "mathematical projection of nature." If one were to let two bodies of different weights fall simultaneously from the top of the tower of Pisa, Heidegger notes, both Galileo and an Aristotelian would see that the two bodies would reach the ground with as little time difference as possible, and not at exactly the same moment. Galileo, however, does something decisive: he claims that under conditions that would be impossible to ensure (if we removed absolutely all resistance to the motion of the bodies), the two bodies would reach the ground absolutely simultaneously. This is not something that he or the Aristotelian sees happening empirically. How, then, does Galileo insist so firmly on his position? How exactly does it happen that he has before him such a view of things? Heidegger's answer is that Galileo is mathematically projecting nature. In his Dialogues Galileo says "I conceive with my mind" (mente concipio) a body thrown to move on an infinitely extending horizontal plane, having eliminated from its path every possible obstacle. Finally, I argue that from the detailed interpretation of Heidegger's points of the mathematical and of the notion of mathematical projection of nature, we can arrive at the conclusions I had arrived at in my doctoral dissertation (2000) as regards the meaning and function of thought experiments in physics as seen from a Husserlian phenomenological point of view as intentional acts. In a nutshell, in thought experiments physics constitutes the special metaphysics (to use the Kantian term) of the primordial ontological region it investigates as well as attempts to make natural sense of the mathematical formalism in cases it proves necessary. (shrink)

Different people have different perceptions about artificial intelligence (AI). It is extremely important to bring together all the alternative frames of thinking—from the various communities of developers, researchers, business leaders, policymakers, and citizens—to properly start acknowledging AI. This article highlights the ‘fruitful collaboration’ that sociology and AI could develop in both social and technical terms. We discuss how biases and unfairness are among the major challenges to be addressed in such a sociotechnical perspective. First, as intelligent machines reveal their nature (...) of ‘magnifying glasses’ in the automation of existing inequalities, we show how the AI technical community is calling for transparency and explainability, accountability and contestability. Not to be considered as panaceas, they all contribute to ensuring human control in novel practices that include requirement, design and development methodologies for a fairer AI. Second, we elaborate on the mounting attention for technological narratives as technology is recognized as a social practice within a specific institutional context. Not only do narratives reflect organizing visions for society, but they also are a tangible sign of the traditional lines of social, economic, and political inequalities. We conclude with a call for a diverse approach within the AI community and a richer knowledge about narratives as they help in better addressing future technical developments, public debate, and policy. AI practice is interdisciplinary by nature and it will benefit from a socio-technical perspective. (shrink)

In Less Than Nothing, the pinnacle publication of a distinguished career, Slavoj i ek argues that it is imperative that we not simply return to Hegel but that we repeat and exceed his triumphs, overcoming his limitations by being even more ...

On the dominant contemporary accounts of how practical considerations affect what we ought to believe, practical considerations either encroach on epistemic rationality by affecting whether a belief is epistemically justified, or constitute distinctively practical reasons for belief which can only affect what we ought to believe by conflicting with epistemic rationality. This paper shows that a promising alternative view can be found in a surprising source: the writings of Søren Kierkegaard. I argue that in light of two of his central (...) epistemological commitments—belief-credence dualism and epistemic permissivism about outright belief—Kierkegaard holds that practical considerations can affect what we ought to believe without either encroaching on or (necessarily) conflicting with epistemic rationality. The central idea is that practical considerations can determine which among the epistemically permitted outright doxastic attitudes one should all-things-considered adopt. In addition to constituting a novel, systematic interpretation of Kierkegaard’s account of how practical considerations affect what we ought to believe, this suggests that Kierkegaard holds a distinctive and underexplored view that constitutes a serious philosophical rival to dominant contemporary views. (shrink)

According to a traditional interpretation of Kierkegaard, he endorses a strong form of direct doxastic voluntarism on which we can, by brute force of will, make a “leap of faith” to believe propositions that we ourselves take to be improbable and absurd. Yet most leading Kierkegaard scholars now wholly reject this reading, instead interpreting Kierkegaard as holding that the will can affect what we believe only indirectly. This paper argues that Kierkegaard does in fact endorse a restricted, sophisticated, and plausible (...) version of direct doxastic voluntarism. On Kierkegaard’s view, when we take ourselves to be in an epistemically permissive situation, we have the ability to form outright beliefs (but not credences) at will in virtue of our ability to voluntarily 1) open or close inquiry and 2) determine our attitude towards epistemic risk. (shrink)

Ideas II has been the source of several issues in the broader phenomenological literature. Some of these issues focus on the particular aims of that work and its place within the system of transcendental constitutive and genetic Phenomenology. Others are concerned with its significance in the development of Husserl’s thought on the possibility and direction of a phenomenological philosophy of natural science (still under discussion), along with a systematic phenomenological grounding of the human sciences. Furthermore, the manuscript of Ideas II (...) seems to have contributed to the formation of Heidegger’s views on the nature and status of Husserl’s Phenomenology and of Phenomenology in general. Thus, an examination of the actual meaning of the analyses in Ideas II would contribute significantly to the understanding of a variety of important issues in phenomenological philosophy. Husserl’s so-called “transcendental turn” between 1905 and 1907 represents the beginning of the path to Ideas II. From 1907 onwards, Husserl attempted a clear and systematic development of his ideas on the transcendental constitution of intentional beings in their—whatever—actuality. This is a task he undertook in the Ideas I, in which he expounds the general core of the new discoveries that allowed him to go beyond the analyses of the Logical Investigations. Having established transcendental subjectivity as the ultimate ground where “the Mothers” accomplish their constitutive work, Husserl became convinced that he had discovered the source from which all Being (Sein) arises. [...] In Ideas II, inanimate nature is presented as comprising the most basic region and as the fundament for the constitution of all the other ontological regions (or regions of Being or Being-regions). But, in Part I of that work (the English translation reads “Section One”), we find Husserl providing an analysis of the constitution of naturething (Naturding).1 What is Husserl’s conception of nature-things there? How do they relate to inanimate beings in general? How do they relate to the things that are supposed to be given in simple visual perception or in simple sense or sensory experience? Are they the accomplishment of a predicative or of a pre-predicative intentionality? Are they the subject matter of natural science, and in what sense— and, if not, why? The text of the Ideas II generates puzzlement and confusion, much of which is reproduced in the relevant literature. (shrink)

With a new introduction by the author In this deliciously polemical work, a giant of cultural theory immerses himself in the ideas of a giant of French thought.

The article starts with a brief overview of the kinds of approaches that have been attempted for the presentation of Phenomenology’s view on the emotions. I then pass to Husserl’s unsatisfactory efforts to disclose the intentionality of emotions and their intentional correlation with values. Next, I outline the idea of a new, “normalized phenomenological” approach of emotions and values. Pleasure and pain, then, are first explored as affective feelings . In the cases examined, it is shown that, primordially, pleasure and (...) pain are recordings for our bodily and spiritual states resulting from our confrontation with beings and situations in the world. Delight and distress are, subsequently, approached as the first full-fledged emotive acts that animate or intentionally interpret pleasure and pain in specific ways. The elementary values of agreeableness and disagreeableness appear correspondingly to the latter in relation to the very pleasure or pain and to what has caused them. In other words, agreeable and disagreeable show how what we confront in the world weighs for us, what value it has for the embodied intentional consciousness, for its state and functioning as well as for its existentio-praxial possibilities in the lifeworld. (shrink)

3 In live performances seated audiences have restricted opportunities for response. Some 4 responses are obvious, such as applause and cheering, but there are also many apparently 5 incidental movements including posture shifts, fixing hair, scratching and adjusting glasses. 6 Do these movements provide clues to people’s level of engagement with a performance? Our 7 basic hypothesis is that audience responses are part of a bi-directional system of audience- 8 performer communication. This communication is part of what distinguishes live from (...) recorded 9 performance and underpins live performers’ moment-to-moment sense of how well a performance 10 is going. Here we investigate the range of visible real-time movements of audiences in four live 11 contemporary dance performances. Video recordings of performers and audiences were analysed 12 using computer vision techniques for extracting face, hand and body movement data. The 13 meaning of audience movements were analysed by comparing clips of the audience at moments 14 of maximum and minimum movement to expert and novice judges. The results show that audience 15 clips with the lowest overall movement are judged as displaying the highest engagement. In 16 addition, we found that while there is no systematic relationship between audience and dancers 17 movement, hands seem to play an especially significant role since they move significantly more 18 compared to the rest of the body. We draw on these findings to argue that collective stillness is 19 an especially salient signal of audience engagement. (shrink)

Husserl and Cassirer stand, according to their own self-understanding, as key 20th century figures in the cultivation of Enlightenment’s principles and views on humanity, culture, and history. In a word, they both understand European culture and history as a story of progress (§ 1). As I see it, central in a culture and its dynamics is its system of values, and a grounded understanding of the issue of progress presupposes an adequate theory of the standing or constitution as well as (...) of the givenness and transvaluation of values. Neither Husserl nor Cassirer, however, actually advanced any such theory. We are still in need of one in order to account for culture’s formation and dynamics in history. Next, I briefly review Husserl’s and Cassirer’s available problematic views on values (§ 2). Then, in § 3, I examine some of the central problems in the traditional approaches to culture and to values. In § 4, I appeal to Köhler’s very interesting Gestalt theoretical approach to values and pinpoint some of its problems. Next, in § 5, I suggest how we could start the research from below, from the level of the organism, which could eventually shed some new light on the problem of value constitution and givenness. Finally, in § 6, I attempt to sketch an explanation for how we can use this new approach to values in order to understand actual cultural formation and its historicity, in a way that goes further than the whiggish philosophy of history. (shrink)

This book deals with foundational issues in Phenomenology as they arise in the smoldering but tense dispute between Husserl and Heidegger, which culminates in the late 1920s. The work focuses on three key issues around which a constellation of other important problems revolves. More specifically, it elucidates the phenomenological method of the reductions, the identity and content of primordial givenness, and the meaning and character of categorial intuition. The text interrogates how Husserl and Heidegger understand these points, and clarifies the (...) precise nature of their disagreements. The book thus sheds light on the meaning of intentionality and of its foundation on pre-objective time, on the sense of the phenomenological a priori, on intentional constitution, on the relatedness between intentionality and world, and on Heidegger’s debt to Husserl’s categorial intuition in formulating the question regarding Being/Nothing. The author revisits these fundamental issues in order to suggest a general intra-phenomenological settlement, and to do justice to the corresponding contributions of these two central figures in phenomenological philosophy. He also indicates a way of reconciling and interweaving some of their views in order to free Phenomenology from its inner divisions and limitations, enabling it to move forward. Phenomenology can re-examine itself, its obligations, and its possibilities, and this can be of benefit to contemporary philosophy, especially with regard to problems concerning consciousness, intentionality, experience, and human existence and praxis within a historical world in crisis. This book is ideally suited to students and scholars of Husserl and Heidegger, to philosophers of mind, consciousness and cognition, and to anyone with a serious interest in Phenomenology. (shrink)

Two seemingly opposing philosophies, Plato’s and Heidegger’s, are brought together by reading the philosophy of politics in the Republic through the existential-analytic lenses of Being and Time and also by using the former in order to explore the philosophico-political potential of the latter. Plato’s thematic of errancy (αμαρτία) is shown to interlock harmoniously with Ηeidegger’s thematic of the fall (Verfall). This provides a single, penetrating interpretation of how philosophy thinks humans are supposed to respond to the predicament of their original (...) condition (painfulness connected with injustice, meaninglessness, etc.). It turns out that in these otherwise antipodean versions of philosophizing, the view emerges, according to which the original difficulty can be fully overcome. The question whether the aforementioned predicament can be actually fully overcome (or rather not) however, would form the basis for a novel phenomenology of the political. (shrink)

Even in the relatively recent literature on the issue of the philosophical relation between Husserl and Heidegger, some scholars recognize that despite a large number of very good accounts, the darkness surrounding the matter has not yet been totally lifted. In particular, we still lack a complete account of the exact influence that Husserl’s Phenomenology exerted on Heidegger’s project of a Fundamental Ontology. To use, e.g., Dahlstrom’s wording, until now, the available works on this subject “merely provide points of departure (...) for an explanation of the relation between the two phenomenologists” (Dahlstrom 2001, 142 n. 103; emphasis added). The situation is, of course, somewhat awkward, since Heidegger himself not only admitted his debt to Husserl’s philosophy, but also sometimes tried to guide us through the inner itineraries of this debt. In his Ontology: the Hermeneutics of Facticity (SS 1923), Heidegger admitted, in front of his students, that it was Husserl who gave him his philosophical eyes: “die Augen hat mir Husserl eingesetzt” (GA 63, 5). There are many occasions on which Heidegger thematizes his debt to Husserl’s Phenomenology. Two years later, in his Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time (SS 1925), he introduced his students to what he presented as the “three fundamental discoveries” of Husserl’s Phenomenology: intentionality, the doctrine of categorial intuition, and the phenomenological sense of the a priori, thereby publicly acknowledging his admiration for Husserl’s work. Both there and in BT, (1927) as well as in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (SS 1927), Heidegger constantly acknowledges the decisive dependence of his philosophy on Husserl’s thinking. [...] All the available textual evidence, then, makes clear that Heidegger considered the doctrine of categorial intuition, developed in the sixth LI, as the most decisive influence from Husserl on his own thought (with intentionality and the phenomenological a priori following closely). Now, what precisely is the meaning of this influence? How might that Husserlian doctrine have helped Heidegger shape the way in which he treated the sole concern of his entire philosophical career, namely the question of Being (Seinsfrage)? (shrink)

The evolution of Husserl’s thought did not follow a linear route. Time and again, crucial changes were taking place in its course. The content of fundamental concepts was shifting; successive discoveries of new thematics were happening; incessant expansions of the ever-under-rework teachings to new fields of application were being developed. The evaluation of Husserl’s work in its entirety becomes, thus, an extremely difficult task. The huge bulk of the writings, the multifariousness of their thematics, and the successive reforms and shifts (...) in it make the understanding of even the overall plan wherein the intermediate findings fall very difficult. One thing, though, is certain. In order to overcome all these obstacles to approaching Husserl’s work, we must first deepen our understanding of his method, the phenomenological method of philosophizing. Whatever is said in Husserl’s Phenomenology makes sense and has its value only to the extent that it is a result of ‘the’ phenomenological reduction. (shrink)

Žižek as comedian: jokes in the service of philosophy.

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of G.W.F. Hegel, Slavoj Žižek gives us a reading of a philosophical giant that changes our way of thinking about the post-human era we are entering. No ordinary study of Hegel, Hegel in a Wired Brain reveals our time as it appears through Hegel's eyes. Focusing in on the idea of the wired brain, this is a philosophical analysis of what happens when a direct link between our mental processes and a (...) digital machine emerges. Here Žižek explores the phenomenon of a wired brain affect, and the notion of singularity subsequently arising when we can share our thoughts and experiences with others. He hones in on the key question of how it affects our experience and status as free human individuals, dealing with what happens with the human spirit, our subjectivity and the very essence of being-human when a machine can read, action and disperse our thoughts. With characteristic verve and energy, Žižek connects Hegel to the world we live in and shows why he is much more fun than anyone gives him credit for, and why the 21st century might just be Hegelian. (shrink)

Politics presupposes an understanding of meaning in history, according to which it manages the actions that accord with or serve this meaning (as an ultimate good). The aim of this paper is to examine the process by which meaning in history is formed, as well as its character. To do this, I employ suitably modified phenomenological analyses of intentional consciousness to bring them as close as possible to the thematic of the psychoanalytic unconscious. I first try to sketch the basis (...) on which the modern problem of meaning in history arises and the fundamental responses produced by modern philosophy. Then, I delineate two basic understandings of meaning in history as developed by the founders of Phenomenology, Husserl and Heidegger, which are surprisingly close to those of modern metaphysics. Next, I draft the process by which the topic of the unconscious surfaces in the context of difficulties faced by critical epistemology in its effort to penetrate the unperceivable folds of reality, which should be acknowledged as a precondition of experience but also of action and ethics. After this, a brief phenomenological account regarding action and praxis in response to evil is presented as a specific concretization of this philosophy after its vaccination with the thematic of the unconscious. Next, I examine MerleauPonty’s final, although ultimately failed, attempt to construct a phenomenological proof of the possibility of objective knowledge regarding historical meaning. In addition, I consider how persistent maintenance of the ideologically optimistic reading of history simply concocts political action that crucially exposes humanity to the danger of perpetrating what Arendt called “banal evil.” The question, then, is whether Phenomenology can offer a non-nihilistic understanding of existence, action, and events in history. I argue that a cautious non-Marxist and de-Messianized reinterpretation of Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940), in tandem with an Aristotelian analysis of praxis and Kantian-Arendtian “common sense,” offers a sober, perspectivist, realistic understanding of the place of humans in the cosmos and of the historical course we happen to take in it. (shrink)

This study offers an experiential and practical way of understanding Plotinus' thought and philosophy through a focus on the act of contemplation. Mateusz Stróżyński argues that contemplation, or direct seeing of the principles of reality, is not merely a part of Plotinus' thought, but rather a significant dimension of it.

As a slew of recent work in epistemology has brought out, there is a range of cases where there's a strong temptation to say that prudential and (especially) moral considerations affect what we ought to believe. There are two distinct models of how this can happen. On the first, “reasons pragmatist” model, the relevant prudential and moral considerations constitute distinctively practical reasons for (or against) belief. On the second, “pragmatic encroachment” model, the relevant prudential and moral considerations affect what one (...) is epistemically justified in believing. The pragmatic encroachment model appears to have several advantages over reasons pragmatism, and this has led many recent philosophers to endorse the former. However, in this paper we argue that a version of reasons pragmatism can be (at least largely) saved from these purported disadvantages once paired with an independently plausible permissivism about epistemically justified outright belief. This hybrid view—“permissivist pragmatism”—holds that when there is more than one epistemically permitted doxastic attitude, practical (including moral) considerations can determine which epistemically permitted doxastic attitude one all-things-considered ought to have. This view avoids both the problems faced by simple versions of reasons pragmatism, and those that distinctively attend pragmatic encroachment, while preserving the advantages of each view. (shrink)

Phenomenologists are yet another group of philosophers who have also dealt with the problem of values and valuation. What do they have to say about it? Heidegger, to be sure, emphatically warned that we’d better stop approaching serious philosophical problems in terms of valuing and values. It is actually the result of all the efforts to the contrary, he claimed, that has brought nihilism into history and has continued to enhance it along with the accompanying despair. Values and nihilism are (...) in fact the outcome prepared by the dynamics of the traditional metaphysical dichotomy between a positing subject and a posited there-standing object with properties—valuing and values being just one of its latest expressions. Scheler and Hartmann, on the other hand, devoted their lives to the effort of elucidating valuing and values. However, here we will focus on the thoughts that Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement, developed regarding this problem. This is necessary if we want to deepen our understanding of the intensity and the breadth of the work that the phenomenologists he inspired developed on the possibility (or impossibility) of a philosophy of values. It is also necessary for an assessment of the real prospects of such a project, which today seems to attract progressively greater attention. To this effect, the structure of the present paper is as follows. In §2, I describe the basic features of the way Husserl carried out phenomenological-philosophical research. I will focus in particular on the meaning of “intentionality,” of “phenomenological method,” and of “intentional constitution.” In §3, I present Husserl’s idea regarding the possibility and meaning of a phenomenological critique of reason in general. The general outline and fundamental orientation of Husserl’s original project for a critique of the axiological and practical reason as well as of his essentialist-normative philosophy of valuing and of values is presented in §4. Section 5 contains an account of Husserl’s approach to emotive phenomena and to value-appearance in the Logical Investigations (1900/01) and in subsequent treatments of the issue along the lines of that original project. In §6, I present the key issue and the key problem in Husserl’s essentialist-normative Axiology. Finally, in §7 I sum up the conclusions and make some further critical remarks. (shrink)

In this paper I deal with the problem of how Husserl can coherently claim that life-world is both (1) the founding presupposition of science and (2) a whole that has science as its part. The approach suggested here is based on Husserl's ideas regarding multi-layered transcenden tal intentional constitution of correlative noemata. In our intentional correlations we experi ence objectities in their appropriate horizons of co-givenness. Both the objectifies and their horizons are multi-layered structures containing a core of primordial, perceptual, (...) pre-thematic givenness and a series of historically, thematically, and scientifically established noematic sedi ments. Nevertheless, we directly experience the at-each-time actual or active constitutive layer. In its constitution, however, the latter comprises also the underlying founding noematic layers that make what is directly given possible. "Life-world", then, means two things: (a) the totality of the actual and possible horizon- and object-givenness, and (b) the core of it, i.e., the pre thematic, simple perceptual, object- and horizon-givenness - with the latter only experience able via the currently prevalent level of the former. Sense (b) supports Husserl's claim (1); sense (a) supports his claim (2). (shrink)

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 26, Issue 3, Page 335-343, September 2012.

Previous research highlighted that the desire for neighborhood improvement is an antecedent of the citizens’ involvement in green urban areas maintenance. Nevertheless, the topic of civic participation in the maintenance of green areas is not yet well developed in the literature and a link with local legislation is missing. We investigate the intention of participation in such maintenance through a web-based experiment. We hypothesize that stimuli of poor maintenance will be associated with a higher intention of contributing to the upkeep (...) of green areas following the administrative barter law. The administrative barter is a law approved in Italy, which gives citizens the possibility of a reduction of local taxes in exchange for their involvement in the improvement of the territory. One hundred ninety-six participants were assigned randomly to good maintenance condition or poor maintenance condition. The level of maintenance was manipulated through photographs of a neighborhood depicting good or poor maintenance of the urban green ornamentation. Results pointed out that people showed a greater willingness to engage in the improvement of green urban areas in the poor condition as compared to the good condition, according to the administrative barter law. This study suggests that local legislation may provide an incentive fostering citizens’ involvement in green urban areas maintenance. (shrink)

Neurophenomenology maintains that the intelligent behavior we recognize in living beings is based on the fact that they are intentionally directed toward and are embodied and embedded in a world, which they actively constitute. This is the way in which it understands the intentionality of the mind and its meaning-making essence. Meaning-making, however, presupposes organization and synthesis of sensed reality elements within a horizon of temporality. But whence is the opening-up of this horizon given to the living? Attempts have been (...) made to “transplant” Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological analysis of temporality (“internal timeconsciousness”) into the neural infrastructure of living organisms. We critique the main available relevant views and proposals put forward, focusing on the problematic way in which they assimilate Husserl’s analysis of intentionality and temporality. After distinguishing the desiderative (ephetic) phenomena on different levels of organization of the living being, we develop the argument that temporality, in the sense of the temporal horizon of lived time, is rooted in the deepest desiderative phenomenon, that of primordial orexis. Primordial orexis is directed not toward concrete or specific objects or sensory contents, but toward evolutionarily/survivally significant values. Then, we interpret Panksepp’s psychological and behavioral neuro-ethological findings regarding a SEEKING system in dopaminergic circuits in the subcortical frontal brain as an orectic value-seeking neural system and show that Panksepp’s results underpin our idea that such a system makes possible the opening-up of the primordial temporal horizon. As an application of the idea, we claim that primordial orexis (also) relates to truth or evidence as value and, in perception, conditions the meaning-giving process leading to the evident appearing of the perceptual object as a constitution that unfolds in the context of the orectically opened-up temporal horizon. (shrink)

Pierre Gassend, or, as he is widely known, Gassendi, was a French materialist philosopher, physicist, astronomer, theologian and Catholic priest. He was the son of Antoine Gassend2 and Françoise Fabry, and was born on January 22nd in 1592 in Champtercier, a village of Provence, and died on October 24th in 1655 in Paris. He received his first education in the cities Digne and Riez and by the age of twelve he began his initiation to Catholicism. He belonged to the Franciscan (...) Order.3 The continuation of his formal education was supported by the Catholic Church as an aspect of his preparation for priesthood.4 He studied Aristotelian philosophy and Catholic theology for the next eight years at the College of Aix in Provence. Pierre Gassendi is typically remembered for introducing the ancient atomic philosophy of Epicurus in 17th century European thought. Gassendi aspired to articulate a new philosophy of nature, in order to replace Aristotelianism, which had been prominent in the context of scholastic thought for centuries, and had constituted the foundation of physics as well as moral philosophy. Gassendi was a priest and an ardent follower of the new scientific methodology of empiricism and of experimental trial. He devoted his life’s work to bringing together the Christian doctrines with the principles of the new science. Gassendi, along with Francis Bacon and Descartes, was one of the most significant figures who exerted influence on the development of science and mechanistic philosophy in the second half of the 17th century, especially in England. His views can be seen throughout the summary of Francois Bernier, a work that emphasizes the atomic views, and materialistic tendencies, of philosophical thought. Gassendi’s adapted Epicurean philosophy spread to Britain with Opera Omnia and the Abregé of Bernier, and also due to Walter Charleton, who published a modified English translation of parts of Animadversiones in 1648. There was also a group of enthusiastic empiricists, who belonged to the circle of Newcastle, as well as a small Epicurean club whose members were among others Kenelm Digby and Nathaniel Highmore. All of the above saw a deep and pervasive influence of Gassendi’s views on British thought. His influence is seen in the writings of major thinkers, such as Boyle, Locke, Hobbes, Newton, Hume, Reid, and in the early works of Leibniz. The multi-dimensional personality of Gassendi, as a pastor, humanist and physical philosopher, accords with a moral and the physical universe in which the Creator God of the Christian faith holds a prominent role. He has been characterized by many researchers as the founder of mechanical philosophy, and as the successor of humanistic historiography. He was a defender of atomic theory, which was flourishing in the second half of 17th century, and also inspired Locke, one of the major proponents of moral theory. Gassendi’s contribution in moral philosophy is unexceptionable; his notions of freedom and pleasure formed the basis of the liberal tradition of late 17th and 18th centuries. (shrink)

The optimistic perspective opened up by the preceding possibilities and promises does not grant that everything in this research project is rosy. Phenomenology may be a philosophy of infinite tasks, but it cannot pass for a philosophy of infinite means. By its very methodological principle, this philosophy is restricted to the elucidation of the phenomena in their horizontal and vertical (as it were) structure or, otherwise put, in their synchronic/diachronic or static/genetic structuring. To this extent, the specifically phenomenologically justified significance (...) of Phenomenology’s discoveries and teachings is restricted to the phenomena themselves, to what is phenomeno-logizable. To be sure, this restriction does not necessarily signal a diminishing of Phenomenology’s dignity as a kind of philosophizing. As we will see, what it signals is a more deeply entrenched self-awareness. Both Husserl and Heidegger nonetheless flirted with (and were sometimes fully enchanted by) the charm of the non-phenomenologizable. It is in the nature of our truth-seeking process in philosophy to frequently find ourselves moving along the boundary that separates the soundly intuitional from the merely speculative. According to Phenomenology’s strict rule, the possible drift into the merely speculative is the philosophical original sin against truth and knowledge, yet Phenomenology does not appear fully innocent of this drift. In this final chapter, we will have the opportunity to see what I believe to be the most crucial trespasses of these self-posed phenomenological limits. Generally speaking, this might be an expected result, given philosophy’s own high expectations in the field of truth and knowledge. The fact remains, however, that without any specific notice both Husserl and Heidegger do on occasion pass from the domain of phenomenological description of the things themselves into a speculative conjecturing of the phenomenologically unchartable. In their efforts to further extend the elucidatory capability of Phenomenology, fully absorbed in following the traces of the phenomena under investigation, they allow themselves to fall down the rabbit hole. (shrink)

It has already been remarked that Heidegger’s early Kriegsnotsemester of 1919 plays an important role in the development of his project toward a phenomenological Fundamental Ontology, which would elucidate the meaning of “Being as such.” However, both the reason why this happens and why it eventually fails appear to have been poorly understood. In this paper, I initially present the meaning of Heideggers effort, in that ‘semester,’ to build philosophy as a genuinely “primordial science.” Then, I explain the sense in (...) which the neo-Kantian philosophy of values became a crucial constituent of his inspiration. In this direction, Heidegger’s thought experiment with the “African aboriginal” is examined and placed at the right position within his overall search for the “primal something” qua critical “formal indication” in the search and pheno-menologization of “Being as such.” Finally, I present three serious difficulties that make this early attempt by Heidegger phenomenologically flawed and probably lead him to the new orientations of Being and Time. (shrink)

In the vast majority of the literature on Kant, the prevailing view is that his conception of analyticity and analytic truths suffers from obscurities and inconsistencies that render it, in the end, unintelligible. In the present paper, I try (i) to underline the meaning of these conceptions of Kant’s, (ii) to bring to the fore a crucial hidden presupposition in his account of analytic truths, and (iii) to present an interpretation that restores an intelligible account of Kantian analyticity and analytic (...) truth. Contrary to the ‘received’ view, I claim that definition is the royal way to Kant’s analyticity and analytic truth, and that the latter cannot be understood apart from a very specific kind of appeal to the intuition of the object falling under the concept being defined. I call this elusive and fragile act “simple intuition,” pointing thus to the medieval notion of apprehensio simplex (and the long history behind it). Then I try to show how this is done with reference to the most suitable species of concepts, the mathematical, and by analogy (and with expectable limitations) to the empirical ones. Of course, the present attempt to reconstruct an intelligible Kantian account of analyticity and analytic truths does not also mean that I endorse it as successful and final in the context of philosophy’s effort to clarify the possibility and kinds of a priori truths. (shrink)

Kuhn uses the distinction between `(simple) seeing', and `seeing as' in order to claim that among competing paradigms there cannot be found any middle (experiential) ground; nothing `same' can be located behind such radically different paradigm-worlds. He claims that scientists do not see a common something as this thing at one time and as that thing at another. Each time scientists simply see what they see. To claim the contrary is to claim that scientists arrive at their paradigmatic experiences of (...) the world due to an interpretation of something `same' beyond the paradigms,and Kuhn rejects this. The question of whether a common ground can be found behind two or more different paradigmatic world-views relates to many issues in philosophy of science and in general epistemology (e.g., realism-idealism, relativism-objectivism, etc.). As a first approach to these, in this paper I examine the presuppositions of Kuhn's claim, its consistency in the exposition, and its overall viability. I conclude that the actual way in which Kuhn refers to the historical examples he examines undermines his explicit thesis. But also the paradox he himself recognizes in his thought that `though the world does not change with a change of paradigm, the scientists afterward works in a different world' can be solved only if we start to think seriously about the necessity and nature of a `same in the different' behind the competing paradigmatic world-experiences. (shrink)

Progressively Husserl started referring to the whole sphere of the life of intentional acts in terms of praxis. Perception, imagination, judgement, scientific consciousness, etc., are all seen as practices. What is the meaning of this move? A seemingly self-evident possibility is that intentionality is praxial, because even perception is not completely free from empty intending moments that demand fulfilment; and all fulfilment is attained by means of bodily activities that enable our senses to acquire the relevant contents. I reject this (...) approach as insufficient and misguided. I argue that perception and intentionality in general is praxial because consciousness, in all of its constituting syntheses, is or becomes organized as a practice-structure. Intentional consciousness organizes its contents according to rules so as to accomplish the evident or true givenness of its intended correlates. (shrink)

In his Ideas I (1913), with his thought experiment of world-annihilation, Husserl becomes persuaded that the beings of which we are conscious do not simply lie ‘out there’ in themselves, enjoying an independent (realistic) existence. Our experience of beings in a world, qua total horizon of beings, is the achievement of our intentional consciousness, which unfolds its overall constitutive possibilities. It is because of this that in our everyday meaningful comportments, we are always intentionally correlated with what is “Vorhanden” for (...) us. In what we know as Ideas II, Husserl sought to offer concrete analyses of such intentional constitutions. He distinguished three fundamental spheres of intentional objectities: inanimate material nature, animate or psychic nature, and spirit or culturality. These constitute, as Husserl puts it, three different regions of Being, comprising beings that are meaningfully given in the three corresponding kinds of intentional correlation. Thus, he divided the problem of intentional constitution into three corresponding sub-problems. Now, according to Husserl’s Phenomenology, some intentional interdependence holds between these three regions of Being. In the way the matter was approached in Chap. 5 of the present book, the region of inanimate material nature, which comprises the nature-things (Naturdinge), is presented as being the most fundamental. The constitution of animate-psychic nature is, in its turn, thought of as presupposing inanimate nature-thinghood as its intentional foundation. Spirit and culturality, finally, presupposes the first and, somehow, the second region. It is generally thought that Husserl was of the view that, for us, primordial consciousness is the perceptual experience of nature-things; simple sensory perceptual things. That is, on the lowest level of our conscious life, we are intentionally correlated with simple perceptually appearing things. Our experience of cultural beings or, more broadly speaking, things of value (goods) like tools, books, etc., is intentionally derivative and founded upon the former. In his Being and Time (1927), Heidegger, who had already been influenced by Husserl’s discussion of the aforementioned ontological regions, claimed that primordially, intentional experience presents us with a world where equipment and other beings like us appear. Moreover, the givenness of beings as nature-things, or simply as sensory perceptual beings, is the result of a theoretical construction. In what I would like to call “standard” or “received” Heideggerian criticism of Husserl’s Phenomenology, it is held that Husserl starts his analysis at a high level of theoretical intentionality. What Husserl takes as primordial intentionality, the story goes, is an experience that is possible only as attentive-observational and thematic givenness of beings; nature-things can appear only in ‘elaborate’ derivative experience of such a kind. In addition, in this judgmental constitution of nature-things, the properties attributed to them appear to belong to science. This thesis, Heidegger maintains, makes Phenomenology unfaithful to its very dictum that calls us to remain close “to the things themselves.” If Phenomenology were to stay close to how things indeed are, it would discover that primordially, we are not correlated with theoretically constituted vorhanden nature-things, but with zuhanden equipment of different kinds. Positing nature-things or perceptual things as the ultimate fundament of intentional givenness moves us away from the original sense of Phenomenology and accepts phenomenologically unjustified prejudices. (shrink)

At some point of his career, Husserl started adopting a new terminology to refer to what were previously known as “intentional acts” or “intentional living experiences.” He now speaks about “intentional practices” in general. Every unfolding of consciousness’ intentional possibilities may now be understood as some kind of “Praxis.” Even the intentionality characterizing simple perceptual consciousness is now seen as a practice, a perceptual practice (Wahrnehmungspraxis). The intentionality of the acts of predicative thematization is now seen as another kind of (...) practice (Handeln). The special acts of consciousness by means of which we do theoretical and scientific work are also collectively called “theoretical praxis” (theoretische Praxis). The question is: what does this mean and what does this change signify? It is only recently that some sporadic interest in this aspect of Husserlian scholarship has begun to arise. (shrink)

At least after 1907, Husserl recognized that in the Phenomenology of the LI (1901), i.e., in Eidetic Descriptive or Pure Eidetic Psychology, elements that were silently presupposed were actually in need of phenomenological clarification and reconsideration. This was also the case with regard to the problematic ontological status of the world, as it is experienced in the natural attitude. In order to overcome this difficulty, Husserl invents the method of transcendental reduction and, on its basis, transforms the Eidetic Phenomenological Psychology (...) of the LI into the Transcendental Phenomenology, which, in a systematic form, is first expounded in the Ideas I (1913). The transcendental reduction is conceived of as a widening and a radicalization in comparison to the possibilities of the psychological reduction that was already at work, albeit silently, in the LI. [...] Despite this, as Husserl repeatedly complained, the meaning of Transcendental Phenomenology was never completely understood by even his closest disciples and collaborators. This is no surprise. As we know, the series of difficulties one must face in the effort to appropriate Husserl’s Phenomenology, let alone the passing from the LI to the Ideas I, are disheartening, if not totally repelling. In Chap. 2, we have already seen and confronted various difficulties in the exposition of the teaching of the reduction, as well as some representative recent misappropriations of the meaning of the transcendental reduction. We have done the same with regard to the specific confusions related to the—notorious—notion of “unintelligibility.” In the present chapter, we will focus on another misappropriation of Husserl’s phenomenological method, the one for which Heidegger himself was responsible, and which the Heideggerians continue to follow unquestioningly. (shrink)

In this essay, I will show one way in which Ricoeur utilizes Aristotle’s discussions in Rhetoric and Poetics; I will take my point of departure from his hermeneutic theory of metaphor. Here, he reverses the Aristotelian intention by blending the domains of discourse we call mythos and logos in a way which suggests that the latter is subsumed by the former. While one can argue that the two are co-emergent processes, Ricoeur’s formulation undermines one side of the dialectic between them.

Scheler developed the fundamentals of his theory of emotions and values wanting to overcome the common-sensical empiricist and the critical rationalist approaches to ethics. Both refused that there are laws of essence as regards the character, deployment, evolution, and interconnection/opposition of the emotions and their relatedness to values. Scheler distinguished between mere feeling states and the intentional feelings of something (principally of values). Moreover, he claimed that a normative inner organization of intentional emotive phenomena can be discovered. Thus, a corresponding (...) phenomenological ethics of values, based on the ‘rationality’ of the emotive life itself, appears possible for the first time. After a comprehensive elucidation of Scheler’s and phenomenology’s approach to the matter, I critically reconstruct in some detail Scheler’s analysis of emotions as intentional experiences. I examine the way in which Scheler understands intentionality and the way in which he silently applied it in the case of emotive experiences. He articulates three relevant proposals. Intentional feeling functions are turned toward feeling states as their intentional objects. He also suggests that, e.g., a snow-covered mountain, whose beauty has amazed someone, is also an intentional correlate of this amazement as intentional feeling. Scheler finally maintains his fundamental thesis that values are the intentional objects of intentional emotive phenomena. However, he does not develop a clear and coherent analysis of how the three candidates for the place of the intentional object of an emotion intermingle or are otherwise interconnected. In the end, I survey some other closely related problems, regarding his understanding of reduction and of the status of values, and attempt to trace them all back to Scheler’s phenomenological realism. This examination, however, shows that we can use the latter’s analyses as preparation for a demythologized, this time, concrete phenomenological theory of emotions and values, in the direction of a future critical transcendental and persuasive phenomenological praxeology. (shrink)

Heidegger connected his name with the endeavor of renewing the question regarding Being (Seinsfrage). In BT (1927), he attempted to bring the issue of Being and everything concerning it back to the fore, by investigating the question of what the things themselves (die Sache selbst) are in its case. In this way, he managed to maintain his distance from the inherited and uninterpellated theories and speculations around "Being" (είναι). At the time, he continued to think that the precondition for arriving (...) at the very things themselves was—more or less—the phenomenological method that Husserl introduced in his breakthrough phenomenological opus, the Logical Investigations (1900-01). On this basis, in his "What is Metaphysics?” (1929) (WM). Heidegger explicitly maintained that the truth with regard to the issue of Being could and should be mediated—no matter how paradoxical this may sound—through the question regarding Nothing (Nichts). Parmenides, to be sure, had warned that nothing (μηδέν) is not, for that which is the έόν, and that only with what is can understanding (νοείν) and speaking (λέγειν) be correlated. The possibility of arriving at truths depends on propositions that say “is” with regard to what is, and “is not" with regard to what is not. Heidegger, however, thought that the most important issue for philosophy as ontology (but even for humans as beings engaged in praxis) was Nothing (Nichts)—and, moreover. Nothing as Being! But how could someone conceive of and bring to language these obviously limit subject matters? Haven’t we seen that Logic, following Parmenides' instruction, has progressively burked all talk of Being, and barred all talk about Nothing? (shrink)

In his Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time (1925), Heidegger develops what at first sight could be seen as a masterful presentation of the “three fundamental discoveries” of Husserl’s Phenomenology: intentionality, categorial intuition, and the new conception of the a priori. Nevertheless, closer examination of the text discloses a series of subtle but serious problems. Our interest here will be restricted to Heidegger’s presentation of his understanding of Husserl’s theory regarding the intentionality of perception and of categorial (...) intuition. In §6 of that work (48/64), we read that Husserl’s discovery of categorial intuition means two things. Firstly, it means that there is an experience of objectities in which we also have a simple apprehension of categorial constituents, i.e., of the elements which the tradition, in a “crude” fashion, called “categories” (48/64). Secondly, it means that this apprehension is already present in every experience and, as Heidegger explains a few lines later, according to what he has “already suggested” in his preceding analyses of the fundamental discovery of intentionality (in §5), categorial intuition is found even in every perception (48/64). Heidegger insists on this claim, and at several points of his presentation (see, e.g., §6.b.“), he repeats the idea that the intentional act of perception is, after all, permeated with categorial elements, with “categorial intuition.” Now, how should we understand this dense and heavy idea? Is it a hidden criticism of Husserl’s views on perception, or is it Heidegger’s sincere understanding of Husserl’s original discovery? The relevant literature seems to take Heidegger’s reading as a true depiction of Husserl’s theory of categorial intuition. However, as we will see, this reading of the latter theory is far from self-evident, a fact that also casts doubt on the corresponding stance regarding its actual motive. In this chapter, I plan to cast new light on the details of Husserl’s theory, and thus also on this fold of the philosophical relation between Husserl and Heidegger. (shrink)

How do metaphors and symbols embedded in sacred texts and narratives refigure meaning in the worlds of texts and readers? This is one of the problems that drives Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory, where symbolic language moves beyond the constraints of denotation to enable us to interpret human experience in a plurivocal, rather than univocal ways. In my essay I examine Ricoeur's adherence to a disclosive theory of language, borrowed from Heidegger, and argue that it does not provide an adequate theory (...) of linguistic reference. Ricoeur does not give a structural explanation for how it is that the new meaning provided by metaphors actually impacts upon the cognitive dimensions of the interpretive process. I argue that Hegel's analysis of language is stronger in that it includes a discussion of the perceptual and cognitive stages of understanding, which include moments of hermeneutic "reversal"; here we see how it is that language simultaneously refers to and mediates experience. This might become the basis for developing a stronger explanatory model of the refiguring process which Ricoeur describes. (shrink)

Reading Marx: unexpected reunions -- Marx reads object-oriented-ontology -- Marx in the cave -- Imprinting negativity: Hegel reads Marx -- To resume (and not conclude).