Phenomenology 2005

In this article I will consider, both theoretically and experientially, an improvisational style of comportment by means of which one can enter into a potentially meaningful exchange or Ineinander with animal others. In such moments of communicative comportment, it would be appropriate to say that one is utilizing empathy as an investigatory posture—as a way of “feeling into” the gesticulating body of the other, and possibly even “seeing into” the other’s world. As a reference point for reflection, I will draw upon my encounters over the course of a decade with bonobos held in captivity at the Fort Worth Zoo.

Philosophers have traditionally aimed to die in life. From Socrates who argued that death was nothing to Spinoza who claimed “to think of death least of all things,” the “life” of the mind was an escape from the death of the body. In a sharp break from this tradition, Martin Heidegger in the groundbreaking phenomenological-ontology of Being and Time (1927), and thereafter, made death—as a person’s anxious ”being-toward-death”— the basic revelatory structure, the very self-understanding of the human person. As such, it is for Heidegger the privileged access to being’s historical revelation of itself to itself. Emmanuel Levinas, in independent and, as this essay shows, deeper phenomenological studies, fundamentally criticizes and rejects Heidegger’s vision. This is because without turning back to an escape into the eternal he discovers in human mortality and suffering a completely different meaning: the moral primacy of caring for the mortality of the other person before my own mortality, up to the point of “dying for” the other person and, even beyond this personal extremity, to the point of caring for the justice of the world “beyond my own death.” These meanings—whose exigency transcends a purely phenomenological science yet remain bound to human sociality—re irreducibly ethical. As such, as imperatives of greater and higher bearing than the call to ontological thinking, they impose the demands of ethics as “first philosophy.”

In much the same way that psychology mimics the goals and methods of natural science for purposes of studying the inner life of the mind instead of outer life, non-profit advertising mimics the methods of commercial advertising for social goods instead of profits. Using a few public service advertisements, particularly an anti-rape campaign poster, this essay lays out the parallel between psychology and non-profit advertising, and further, it explores how the failure of psychology to overcome the problem of naturalism is at the root of the growth of all forms of advertising and the attempt to manipulate citizen consumers.

In this essay, I explain how Sartre’s phenomenological ontology forms the ground for his elaboration of an ethics of freedom. I demonstrate that the ethics of absolute freedom is the logical outcome of Sartre’s views concerning the notion of consciousness as intentional. This ethics, despite the fact that it gives “no recipes,” entrusts the human being with full ethical responsibility and allows him to flourish as the creator of the world, of values and of meaning.

What is the problem of givenness in Husserl’s phenomenology? This essay seeks to answer this question by developing the problem in terms of both static and genetic phenomenological analysis. Together, both dimensions of analysis lead to the importance of the question of time and temporality for phenomenology: the problem of givenness is the problem of time. It is suggested that Husserl’s approach to these questions is both rich and subtle enough to meet the objections of those who would argue that his phenomenology is unable to handle problems of being, intersubjectivity, and individuation.

“Frontier” signifies not only a line between areas but also the area beyond one’s home area. The early giants in phenomenological philosophy were often concerned with other disciplines. Husserl knew much about the psychology as well as the mathematics of his time. Heidegger had an involvement with Greek philology that others have continued. Gurwitsch and then Merleau-Ponty gained much from the psychiatry of Kurt Goldstein and they plus Sartre took Gestalt psychology very seriously. And Schutz founded the phenomenological theory of the cultural sciences. This pattern of interest in and benefi t from disciplines beyond philosophy continues in Klaus Held, Thomas Seebohm, and Bernhard Waldenfels, but is becoming increasingly atypical because of, among other reasons, the non-German model for the preparation of philosophers. The present essay is an attempt to remind phenomenological philosophers of this component of their deeper tradition and then to explore how it can be revived.

Th e neurophilosophical project, as envisioned by Churchland, involves intertheoretic reduction, moving from (or eliminating) theories formulated in terms of common sense and folk psychology, to theories that have stood the test of scientific experiment. In her view, folk psychology, as well as introspective phenomenology, will be eliminated in favor of neuroscience. Neurophenomenology holds that phenomenology (as a practice)is not only possible, but is in fact a useful tool for science; and that phenomenology is ineliminable if the project is to pursue a neurobiology of consciousness. Clarification of these issues rests on an understanding of how phenomenology can be an alternative source of testable theory, and can play a direct role in scientific experiment. Rather than talking in the abstract about the role of theory formation in science, I consider two specific issues to show the difference between a neurophilosophical approach and a neurophenomenlogical approach, namely, the issues of self and intersubjectivity. Neurophilosophy (which starts with theory that is continuous with common sense) and neurophenomenology (which generates theory in methodically controlled practices) lead to very different philosophical views on these issues.

We intend to prove that the concept of consciousness is impossible without assuming the existence of what is not conscious. And that the need of such assumption stems from a rigorous analysis of intuitive data. We wish to put phenomenology to its own test and to demonstrate that in its essence Husserl’s analysis radically goes beyond the sphere of what is understood as “conscious”. Our argument is that in his studies on the structure of the object of consciousness Husserl developed highly creative and important ideas which may be used as a starting point for the reformulation of the concept of the unconscious which has so dominated contemporary thinking, and the relation between conscious and what is not conscious.By viewing an intentional act, or even its ideal object, as a certain phenomenon of consciousness, we entirely change its nature and its ontological status. It ceases to be an act by which an object was constituted and it turns to be an object constituted by another act. We shall demonstrate that Husserl was, at least partly, aware of that.We wish to demonstrate that the metaphor of the absence, an empty space in which an object of consciousness is constituted corresponds with Husserl’s notion of the intention which he developed in his “Logical Investigations”. It is also a metaphor which makes one recognise some intentional space, the space where an intuitive object of consciousness constitutes itself, the space which is a prerequisite for the object to be constituted, the space which is itself not intuitive and not conscious.

This essay shows links between linguistic (mental) meanings and perception, and proposes that cognitive theories of language acquisition should find some foundation in phenomenological evidence. A need for the sharp distinction between linguistic and extra-linguistic is questioned because regularities of categorization processes, manifested in the meanings of terms denoting natural kinds, are the regularities of perceptual processes and language. In this the role of language as the one and only determinant of the structure of experience is limited. The first part deals with Merleau-Ponty’s theory of immediate perception to show the place for spontaneous normalization and its norms. The second part takes into account a more general view on consciousness in order to show the domain where the connection between perception and language is being created.

In what follows I offer a comparison between two significant instances of the doctrine of intentionality, the view of Plato, and that of Edmund Husserl. My purpose is to show four things. (1) I shall argue that the notion of intentionality goes back to Plato. (2) I argue too that the notion of Platonic intentionality entails the notion of personal intention. (3) While Platonic intentionality is theistic in a certain way, Husserlian intentionality is not. (4) This omission in the Husserlian conception of intentionality is due to an unsolved problem in Husserlian metaphysics.

The hypertrophy of Ego or “I” is a deformation of experience differentiation, which leads to the formation of the fictive center claiming to rule all of our mental life. The Ego is rather a designation of the lacuna in experience, which represents the hypertrophied unity of consciousness. Husserl’s various attempts to describe the unity of the consciousness in terms of “flux” and “I” (Ego) are instructive for the investigation of the Ego-hypertrophy. The differentiation of fore- and background, whole and parts, and simple and complex are relevant for preventing of any hypertrophy of Ego.

Jan Patočka made a tentative to renew phenomenology as an investigation of the appearance as such. This project should not only liberate the phenomenal field from certain « metaphysical closure » imposed on it by the construction of a transcendental subjectivity. The givenness of the sensible world with its possibilities for corporal activity is opposed also to Heidegger’s concepts of understanding and projection as another types of subjectivism. However, in the end, these kinds of « metaphysical closure » seems to be replaced by another one when Patočka looks for the ultimate foundation of the appearance in a « ground of the world ».

The question of a naturalistic explanation of human existence ultimately means naturalizing conscious embodiment. This requires two steps. First we need a sound definition of the socalled phenomenal consciousness that is typical of embodiment. Secondly, we need to clarify the nature of a naturalistic explanation of this phenomenal consciousness. The paper argues that classical phenomenological analyses of embodiment (Husserl and Merleau-Ponty) can be relevant here.Phenomenology’s noetico-noematic analysis can help to distinguish phenomenal consciousness from so-called qualia. In accordance with recent representationalism, qualia are to be understood as phenomenal properties of the perceived object, and are elements of representational or intentional content (noema). Noematic phenomenology of the experience of the lived body further permits an identification of the phenomenal properties of the lived body, and a complementary noetic phenomenology identifies a specific bodily self-awareness as the proper phenomenal consciousness (subjective experience) of embodiment. Phenomenology thus leads to the clarification of several central issues in the actual discussion about the possibility of naturalizing consciousness, and more precisely to a defense of a nonrepresentatonalist conception of phenomenal consciousness. This clarification substantiates the claim for a more radical naturalistic explanation of conscious embodiment.

This is an attempt to analyze the process of practising a non-theoretical epochē by a phenomenology of transcendental-bodily emotion. It will be realized in four steps pointing out 1. the possibility of epochē within the scope of the structure of the life-world; 2. the conditions to carry out the epochē; 3. the response of the epochē to the threats for life; and 4. possible results of a non-theoretical epochē.

This essay is devoted to the analysis of the conceptual grounds of Heidegger’s and Fink’s interpretations of the relation between generations as a factical (anthropological) concretization of being-with-one-another. It is shown, that the cosmological teaching of Fink overcomes a systematic negativity of the existential analysis of Heidegger concerning the following questions: 1) what kind of infinity is accessible for human being in its fundamental finitude? 2) how is constituted the authentic being-with-one-another? 3) what kind of attunement is decisive for human being? These three moments are considered in their interconditionality which is clarified in the frame of the phenomenological description of the interrelation between parent and child.

The article explores a formal similarity between two investigations of human body presented by M. Merleau-Ponty and M. Foucault. Considering human body in its relation to space, time and bodily scheme they come to oppositely different conclusions. While Foucault stresses that human body is always in process of production and alienation, Merleau-Ponty argues that it opens the way to self-understanding. In the article I am performing a shift from the Foucauldian analysis to that of Merleau-Ponty and back in order to present a variety of subjects – counter-subject, co-subject, transitive subject – which allows understanding human being beyond metaphysical and social reductionism.

This article investigates phenomenology’s potential to deepen our understanding of violence. Its major aim consists in elaborating an integrative approach to the many faces of violence, i.e. to physical, psychic, social, and cultural violence. Approaching these various forms from the unifying viewpoint of the subject’s embodiment opens a renewed perspective on understanding violence. Displacing the very architectonics of Husserl’s “constitutive analysis,” this undertaking requires far reaching revisions of phenomenological method, which will be explicated respectively.

This article deals with the pivotal and complex theme of Merleau-Ponty’s late work. This means the relationship between the visible and the invisible. First, six systematic steps will clarify this relation. Second, it will be asked in which way one could say that the invisible really is or can be an absolute one.

The Husserlian phenomenology of intersubjectivity has gained increasing interest in recent years. However, some aspects of the traditional interpretation still obstruct the meaning of Husserl’s views and block the access to the phenomenological theme of intersubjectivity. This essay aims to disclose and unravel some of these obstacles.The constitution of the other is still often understood as being, for Husserl, merely a matter of empathy, of a relation between two full-fledged egos. This misreading connects to the interpretation according to which the constitution of the ego is independent of the constitution of the other. It will be argued that both these notions are untenable in the light of Husserl’s writings.