'Biology, The Empathic Science: Husserl’s Beilage XXIII of The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology' (original) (raw)

2013, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

A link to the published copy can be found under links or http://www.darianmeacham.org/uploads/1/2/1/2/12120398/dmeacham\_jbsp\_44-1\_10-24.pdf Thanks to Niall Keane’s careful translation, English-speaking readers of Husserl have a first chance to read this important appendix to the Krisis text, omitted from the original English translation of 1970. The translation of Beilage XXIII also offers a rare glimpse at a dimension of Husserl’s late thought that seldom gets seen in English, but which nonetheless left an important legacy in the development of phenomenology. This is particularly the case with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, but also, perhaps more indirectly, the phenomenological biology of Hans Jonas and contemporary work in the field of neurophenomenology and philosophy of mind (I am thinking here of Evan Thompson’s Mind in Life). While Thompson’s work draws explicitly on Husserl, Merleau-Ponty and Jonas, he does not (to my knowledge) anywhere mention Husserl’s few writings on biology. I will briefly return to Jonas and Thompson later to argue that one of the central insights that Thompson draws from Jonas: “life can only be known by life”, is already very much present in Husserl’s thought as presented in this appendix. Though these few pages offer only some hints at what Husserl thought the relation between biology and phenomenology might be, and beyond that what light the relation between biological life and consciousness or sense-bestowal (Sinngebungen) might shed on more general ontological problems, they present an interesting set of issues that continue to be of relevance today in several areas of philosophy (phenomenology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of life, philosophy of biology, philosophy of nature).

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The “Biology” To Come? Encounter between Husserl, Nietzsche and Some Contemporaries

As we know, it was Nietzsche’s project to reconceptualize Kant’s “judgment.” His choice of force managed to elude the problem of units of quantity, opting instead for an early dynamics. Nietzsche’s dynamics introduced interpretation, accommodation, and domination into the biological model of his time, emphasizing structures of obedience and command in order to preserve the hierarchy intrinsic to value judgments. This simply means that certain organizations of cells, tissues, even living beings “work” better for their growth and flourishing than do others. The problem we noted of a common currency is temporarily suspended with the epochē on quantity—displacing for heuristic ends the primacy of quantity and its metaphysical recourse to units of measure. As a number of Husserl’s commentators have asked (Paul Ricoeur, among them): What are we to make of conscious life when we remove the phenomenological brackets? Could not a similar question be posed of the neuro-phenomenology flowing simultaneously out of Gilbert Simondon and Maurice Merleau-Ponty? To be sure. But what we would have, upon removing the brackets, simply breaks into the objects of psychology and biology, or again, comes down to human experience as the object of multiple sciences or regional ontologies. Gilbert Simondon, like Andrieu and others since the publication of his work in the 1960s, attempted to demonstrate the possibility of a monism based on energetic interactions. His work resists summary because of its complexity and the plethora of new concepts he created. Some of these were the direct result of advances in chemistry and geophysics. The formation of crystalline structures provided one image of what he called “systems of potentials,” on the basis of which elementary schemas constitute “meta-stable fields.” The meta-stable field comes from the dynamics of liquids but should not be restricted to that domain. It could well be argued that the Nietzschean contribution to a psycho-physics lies in its similar refusal of statics and individual substances. And this strikingly anticipates the structural coupling and dynamic co-determination of organism and Urwelt in Thompson and von Uexküll. Without denying that beings “individuate” in transitional and ongoing ways, Nietzsche strove to keep his forces within a framework wherein becoming was not opposed to being. He might have found a real interest in the innovations of Simondon, Andrieu, Thompson, and Varella. That does not mean that we can, or should, speak poetically of qualities, as though no difficulties arose in the absence of some theory of energy or energetics. But most of these theories shared the fate of socio-political environments through whose lens they were read and adjusted to the ideals of a given cultural politics. Those readings are, of course, as hazardous as Hans Driesch’s 1930’s vitalism in which the concept of organic totality and a governing principle slid deplorably into an aestheticized, politicized Führerprinzip. Such slippages may be unavoidable and an entire history of 19th and early 20th century misappropriations of vitalism and Lebensphilosophie could be written. Nevertheless, the imperative of bridging body-world and mind-body dualisms must be taken up by a biology in continuous dialogue with psychology and, today, with neuro-philosophy. I have argued throughout that that was the direction in which Husserl’s biology as the universal ontology was moving.

Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl.

This volume brings together essays by leading phenomenologists and Husserl scholars in which they engage with the legacy of Edmund Husserl’s philosophy. It is a broad anthology addressing many major topics in phenomenology and philosophy in general, including articles on phenomenological method; investigations in anthropology, ethics, and theology; highly specialized research into typically Husserlian topics such as perception, image consciousness, reality, and ideality; as well as investigations into the complex relation between pure phenomenology, phenomenological psychology, and cognitive science. TABLE OF CONTENTS: Preface by U. Melle PART I The Nature and Method of Phenomenology 1 Husserl on First Philosophy by R. Sokolowski 2 Le sens de la phénoménologie by M. Richir 3 Transzendentale Phänomenologie? by R. Bernet 4 Husserl and the ‘absolute’ by D. Zahavi 5 Husserls Beweis für den transzendentalen Idealismus by U. Melle 6 Phenomenology as First Philosophy: A Prehistory by S. Luft 7 Der methodologische Transzendentalismus der Phänomenologie by L. Tengelyi PART II Phenomenology and the Sciences 8 Husserl contra Carnap : la démarcation des sciences by D. Pradelle 9 Phänomenologische Methoden und empirische Erkenntnisse by D. Lohmar 10 Descriptive Psychology and Natural Sciences: Husserl’s early Criticism of Brentano by D. Fisette 11 Mathesis universalis et géométrie : Husserl et Grassmann by V. Gérard III Phenomenology and Consciousness 12 Tamino’s Eyes, Pamina’s Gaze: Husserl’s Phenomenology of Image-Consciousness Refashioned by N. de Warren 13 Towards a Phenomenological Account of Personal Identity by H. Jacobs 14 Husserl’s Subjectivism: The “thoroughly peculiar ‘forms’” of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind by S. Crowell 15 “So You Want to Naturalize Consciousness?” “Why, why not?” – “But How?” Husserl meeting some offspring by E. Marbach 16 Philosophy and ‘Experience’: A Conflict of Interests? by F. Mattens PART IV Phenomenology and Practical Philosophy 17 Self-Responsibility and Eudaimonia by J. Drummond 18 Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer phänomenologischen Theorie des Handelns: Überlegungen zu Davidson und Husserl by K. Mertens 19 Husserl und das Faktum der praktischen Vernunft:Anstoß und Herausforderung einer phänomenologischen Ethik der Person by S. Loidolt 20 Erde und Leib: Ort der Ökologie nach Husserl by H.R. Sepp PART V Reality and Ideality 21 The Universal as “What is in Common”: Comments on the Proton-Pseudos in Husserl’s Doctrine of the Intuition of Essence by R. Sowa 22 Die Kulturbedeutung der Intentionalität: Zu Husserls Wirklichkeitsbegriff by E.W. Orth 23 La partition du réel : Remarques sur l’eidos, la phantasia, l’effondrement du monde et l’être absolu de la conscience by C. Majolino 24 Husserl’s Mereological Argument for Intentional Constitution by A. Serrano de Haro 25 Phenomenology in a different voice: Husserl and Nishida in the 1930s by T. Sakakibara 26 Thinking about Non-Existence by L. Alweiss 27 Gott in Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie by K. Held"

The Phenomenology of Husserl

The central thesis of this paper is to specify the main features of Husserl's phenomenology and also its significance in philosophy. The first section of this paper will examine Husserl's main features of phenomenology, which are; the mind and the body, the epoché, consciousness and intentionality, inter-subjectivity and also the life-world. Then, I will proceed to examine the importance of Husserl's theories in philosophy.

Husserl's Phenomenology

Springer Verlag, 2023

This text examines the many transformations in Husserl’s phenomenology that his discoveries of the nature of appearing lead to. It offers a comprehensive look at the Logical Investigations’ delimitation of the phenomenological field, and continues with Husserl’s account of our consciousness of time. This volume examines Husserl’s turn to transcendental idealism and the problems this raises for our recognition of other subjects. It details Husserl’s account of embodiment and examines his theory of the instincts. Drawing from his published and unpublished manuscripts, it outlines his treatment of our mortality and the teleological character of our existence. The result is a genetic account of our selfhood, one that unifies Husserl’s different claims about who and what we are.

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