Giulio Marchegiani | Bergische Universität Wuppertal (original) (raw)

Papers by Giulio Marchegiani

Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 2024

Hermann Weyl, mathematician, physicist and philosopher, represents one of the most prominent and ... more Hermann Weyl, mathematician, physicist and philosopher, represents one of the most prominent and interesting cases concerning the issue of the limits of objectification and formalisation, and of the necessary rooting of any objectifying practice in the concrete, pre-scientific life of the subject as interacting in the world, as stated by Husserl in the Krisis and in The Origin of Geometry.

The attempt that modern natural science makes to eliminate any subjective residue, which would not be reducible to quantitative and formalizable relations, finds – according to Weyl – an insurmountable limit in the fact that this objectivising enterprise must make use of a coordinate system, which cannot itself be subjected to objectivization. This coordinate system is thus the remainder of the annihilation of the ego in the process of objectification, the residue of Husserlian subjectivity that cannot be eliminated. The origin of the coordinate system represents the most formal representation of the bodily situated position of the experiencing subject, which always precedes the constitution of spatial experience in the sense of a necessary condition of its possibility. Mathematical representations of physical reality then are necessarily founded on an intuitive dimension that cannot be reduced to mathematical formalism, but rather is presupposed by it.

Linked to this is the fact that it is impossible to reduce the intuitive continuum as experienced in space and time to absolute objectification; the space-time continuum of physics contains an intuitive-qualitative residue rooted in experience and not translatable into a purely ideal-quantitative language. This continuum is for Weyl not a composition of independent individual elements, which would be represented through the formal model of real numbers, but is a dynamic whole, the explanatory model of which can be provided by Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of temporality. The fact that from static ultimate individuals it is not possible to obtain a continuum as a dynamic whole, leads to overcoming the paradigm of set theory through an approach that does not violate the nature of the experienced continuum (by breaking it down into its ultimate elements), but derives the points in it as ideal limits of an infinite process of division of the continuum. The points, therefore, cannot be absolutely fixed and then assembled to make the continuum, but on the contrary are defined against the background of the phenomenal givenness of the latter.

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2023

Fichte Studien 50, 2021

Fichtes umgearbeitete Konzeption der Identität des Ich in der Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaft... more Fichtes umgearbeitete Konzeption der Identität des Ich in der Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre führt zu einer dynamischen Konzeption der Identität selbst, die nur in gegenseitiger Abhängigkeit von einer Differenz entstehen kann. Diese dialektische Bewegung weist eine Struktur auf, die an die Dynamik der Zeitlichkeit in Husserls Phänomenologie erinnert, in der sich die Zeitlichkeit des Bewusstseins aus der Beziehung zwischen dem urimpressionalen Moment (Sein) und seiner Retention (Denken) entwickelt. Aus der gegenseitigen Abhängigkeit beider Momente geht der Vorrang ihrer Beziehung vor den Momenten selbst hervor, was metaphysische Hypostasierungen unmöglich macht. Die Erfahrung spielt sich im Raum zwischen den beiden Momenten ab, die an sich nichts als ideelle Grenzen sind. Andererseits deuten die Notwendigkeit eines externen ‚Anstoßes‘ und die Abhängigkeit des Subjekts davon auf ein wechselseitiges Verhältnis zwischen Subjekt und Objekt hin, das sich in Fichte und in der Phänomenologie in einer unausweichlichen Faktizität des menschlichen Daseins ausdrückt.

Horizon 11 (1), 2022

Starting from the emphasis that Levinas makes of the role of otherness concerning the very consti... more Starting from the emphasis that Levinas makes of the role of otherness concerning the very constitution of the subjective dimension, it is discussed how the articulation of this complex and the consequences that derive from it recall specifically Fichtian themes. Although the comparison between Levinas and Fichte is little investigated, it can nevertheless be shown that themes such as the ‘call’ of the subject from outside, from the unattainable dimension of an otherness, which is irreducible to any immanence, and the factual and finite character of his freedom that follows, can be articulated according to the categories that Fichte develops in his texts on law and morals. The reference to Fichte, who already in his considerations on the Wissenschaftslehre recognizes an external Anstoß as determining concerning the reality of the subject, will, therefore, allow illuminating the fundamental structure of Levinas’ thought itself. Particular attention is paid in Levinas to the belonging of otherness to an immemorial past, which in the impossibility of being traced back to the presence of consciousness finds the guarantee of its radical transcendence. Thus another temporal (or rather, extra-temporal) dimension is configured which also in Fichte refers to an ‘exteriority’ that cannot be assumed by the subject, but only ascertained a posteriori, hence its factual character. Through an interpretation of the fundamental meaning that the primacy of otherness over sameness has in Levinas and the attempt to reflect this relationship through the reference to similar Fichtian motifs, it becomes clearer that the basic meaning of a radical thought of otherness does not cancel the sameness of subject, but on the contrary allows to found it by referring it to its constitutive, unavoidable heteronomy.

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

The paper attempts to clarify the structure of the experience of faith by making use of some fund... more The paper attempts to clarify the structure of the experience of faith by making use of some fundamental elements of the phenomenological theory of knowledge. The dynamic between intention directed towards the object and intuitive fulfilment provides a key to understanding the peculiar form of intentionality proper to faith, in which there is the necessity of the intentio n directed toward the position of existence, without, however, this being accompanied by the givenness of the object posited as existing. What we find is a kind of anomaly in the relationship between the mode of belief and the fulfilment that is supposed to motivate it. In the case of the position of the object of faith, this fulfilment is not given in any intuitive form. Religio us consciousness is thus characterised by the absence of any epistemic basis for justification, but on the other hand also by the necessary permanence of the existential mode of belief. The result is an interplay between presence and absence, fullness and emptiness, certainty and non-determinacy, which will provide the key to revisiting Anselm's ontological proof of God's existence from a particular perspective.

Annuario Filosofico 32, 2016

How is it possible to think about the paradox of the relationship that is es-tablished between no... more How is it possible to think about the paradox of the relationship that is es-tablished between non-related terms? Transcendence means difference, ex-clusion from any relationship. Of course, saying that transcendence is not relative is a way to relate to it, and this, again, reconstructs a totality. To give this explanation without reducing transcendence to the totality, the possibility of a relationship in which one of the two terms remains outside of the relationship must be conceived, as is particularly clear in Pareyson’s thought. This can show interesting similarities with that of other thinkers. For Levinas, transcendence is revealed in the face of the other, but the face paradoxically maintains the distance of transcendence. Only a trace re-mains of transcendence, but the trace of an absence; this, however, is pre-cisely its evidence. The infinite is revealed only if it disappears in the image, because if it is shown as infinite, it would no longer be otherness, but would be only identity with itself. For Barth, there is an absolute separation be-tween God and man, but God prevails infinitely and therefore denies man. Even here, there is no relationship between man and God as between two opposites, but one of the two terms, that is God, is within the relationship but outside of the relationship: it is absolute. All this explains that thinking of transcendence as a movement means thinking of it not as an object, but as an opening of a distance, empty space, as this opening itself, which pro-duces a distance that cannot be filled. But this movement starts from the finite, from man. This means that the infinite is the condition of the finite, but the finite is also important for the infinite, which requires the limit, be-cause the infinite “produces” itself from the finished term. As in the con-ception of Pareyson, for whom the truth is offered in the interpretation as a fundamental human experience, constituting its existence, but, paradoxi-cally, not relative.

Conference Presentations by Giulio Marchegiani

The enlargement of the concept of object that phenomenology undertakes and the inclusion of the c... more The enlargement of the concept of object that phenomenology undertakes and the inclusion of the constitutive function of a subjective perspectivism can be made fruitful for an understanding of the current situation of physical knowledge. The common philosophical interpretation of classical physics corresponds to a mechanistic view, which aims at objectivity in the sense of a reproduction of the An-sich of the physical world, which is modelled as a system of individual points, and in such a way that the state of each point is completely determined, so that every state at every point in the system completely determines the states at every other point.
All this is based on the principle of continuity and ontological determinacy of reality (independent of the observer-perspective). This has been undermined by quantum mechanics. The ‘wave function’ representing the state of a quantum system does not describe exact spatio-temporal processes: “It represents… a tendency for processes, the possibility for processes” (Heisenberg 2011). It would therefore make no sense to ask what exactly happens between two observations and independently of them. Only the probability of an outcome of the observation can be predicted. The deterministic scheme of classical mechanics is thus replaced by a ‘possibilistic’ one. In line with Husserlian phenomenology, we are dealing with a ‘horizon’, with a multiplicity of possible processes, and only observation ‘selects’ between them the process that actually takes place. The transition from possibility to reality is therefore made by the observer, in the irreducible contextuality of a process in which the measuring instrument is not neutral (Bohr 1928).
In this possibilistic character consists the ‘ontological indefiniteness’ of physical states. The location measurements of particles are subject to unavoidable imprecision. The assumption that the particle x follows a well-determined path between two observations and has an exact position at every point in time is no longer justified. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle transforms the limits of measurability into intrinsic limits of the behaviour of reality itself.
The classical image is thus overcome: determinateness is now tied to the perspectival operation of observation. There is no path leading from one determinate description to another on the basis of the reference to an already determinate object, so there is here no possibility of tracing two observations back to an object that already existed before. For physicists, predication was often done by extracting an individual from a set of already given real individuals, giving it a name (‘this F…’) and then determining it (‘...is white’). But this extraction is not possible in quantum physics. So, it seems that there is no substantiality in it (see Friebe 2001). As Bitbol (2010) affirms, “the ‘microstate’ does not have the temporal continuity required to carry the determinations obtained by measurement, so that it would be acceptable to consider that they are information obtained about … something determined and persistent. No substance without constancy”.
This could be an eminent case of what Quine called ‘ontological opacity’, whereby coreferential determinations cannot be substituted for each other salva veritate in non-extensional contexts. In such contexts, the reference is not determined by an identical extra-semantic entity of which the different senses (i.e. the way of referring to it) would only relate to an epistemic access that from time to time captures a different determination of the identical object. On the contrary, the sense determines the reference itself, without it being possible to base the latter on a reality independent of any sense-determination.
Referential opacity, however, is for phenomenology not an anomaly, but a structural and general feature; the phenomenological perspective represents an alternative to the traditional logical and ontological approach, which begins with Aristotle and leads to Frege and beyond. In the latter, an object is first postulated as real and only then, ‘afterwards’, determined by predication, so that there is a clear asymmetry between the priority of the material substance (regarded as independent) and the secondary and ‘perspectival’ nature of the accidence. The phenomenological view is exactly the opposite: something is first determined ‘in a certain way’, and only on the basis of this is its reality posited, without ascribing a reality to something substantial before its determination.
An objectivist realism of ‘thing-like’ substance in quantum mechanics proves untenable because of that kind of ‘opacity’ of the object reference, for which, on the contrary, the access in a certain way (always perspectival) is a constitutive element; one cannot radically distinguish between ontology and perspectival access to it. The completely determined physical singularity and the ontologically gapless explanation of the real turn out to be myths: “Elementary particles are not individuals, which announces a radical reform of ontology” (Bitbol 1998). It is then no longer possible to completely replace the subject-relativity of empirical nature (Husserl 1976) with a completely irrelative, non-perspectival objective description; the resulting realism can only be a form of empirical-perspectival realism.

Programm des 2. Workshops "Monismen und Dualismen in der Phänomenologie"

Talks by Giulio Marchegiani