"Political Salvation through Husserl's Phenomenology"1 (original) (raw)
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The Political Anthropology of Edmund Husserl
Dialogue & Universalism, 2018
The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the relation between phenomenology and philo-sophical anthropology by analyzing it in the selected, theoretical as well as historical contexts. The author focuses primarily on the problem of Husserl’s criticism of anthropologism and analyzes the practical meaning of the rejection by Husserl of anthropology as a true foundation of philosophy. The thesis of the paper is that already by rejecting anthropologism in logic and theory of knowledge, Hus-serl presupposed some idea of philosophical anthropology in the “foundational” sense he criticized, and that this implicit idea was pursued by him not only from pure theoretical reason. In reference to Leszek Kołakowski and the methodology of the Warsaw School of the History of Ideas, which he applied in his interpretation of the idea of phenomenology, the author of the article attempts, unlike Kołakowski, to reveal not only the „religious” (in a vague sense), but also the specific political meaning of this idea. What is argued here is that the only possible reconciliation between anti-anthropologism on the one hand and the outspoken humanism of transcendental phenomenology on the other lies in the adoption by Husserl of Fichte’s ideal of humanity as its practical, world-view framework. The practical, if not directly political, motif of Husserl’s radical criticism of anthropologism is, in author’s interpretation, Husserl’s attempt to answer, in the reference to this ideal, to the main political question of his times as consisting in the rising racist and anti-Semitic tendencies in the German naturalistic anthropology.
Questions concerning the status of the other and of otherness have had extensive— albeit rarely ostensible— consequences for the self-conception of phenomenological research since Edmund Husserl's groundbreaking work. Indeed, the epistemological and ontological status of the other has always been analyzed within his phenomenology— be it in the Cartesian Meditations (Husserl 1960) or in his three extensive volumes on intersubjectivity (Husserl 1973 a— c)—but it has mostly remained under the surface, often being neglected in favor of analyses concerning object constitution. Only in a later stage of reception has alterity turned out to be one of the most pressing issues of classical and post-classical phenomenological thought. In classical phenomenology, the main focus was on epistemological questions concerning the modes of experience and knowledge of others, which often overshadowed the ethical and political import of alterity. Larger discussions of the ethical and the political were fi rst propounded in post-classical phenomenological frameworks, and they involved transformations of both the phenomenological method and its epistemological presuppositions (cf. Flatscher and Seitz 2016). Certainly, the work of Emmanuel Levinas played a decisive role in this transformative process. In what follows, we will discuss this development under the heading of an " ethico-political turn of phenomenology " by paradigmatically focusing on the thought of Husserl and Levinas. Our aim is to show that the notion of otherness in Levinas's post-classical phenomenology not only has a strong potential for the critique of traditional metaphysical thinking, but also represents a radical attempt to envisage new ethico-political ways of reasoning, forms of justifi cation, and modes of critique, directed precisely against the traditional focus on fi gures of autonomy, sovereignty, and self-presence.
Edmund Husserl and the inauguration of phenomenology as distinct philosophical discipline
Phenomenology, as philosophical discipline, aims according to Edmund Husserl at the gnoseological dynamics of the human spirituality. The metaphysic meditations of René Descartes represent for the phenomenological thoughtfulness the body of fundamentals, from which a real reform can be generated at the level of human knowledge. Taking the model of methodical doubt, and prolonging it within the act of transcendental reduction, Husserl will insist upon the importance of the ego, as transcendental nucleus of the entire human individual awareness. Taking away all the knowledge and checking their grounding will be transposed by Husserl at the entire philosophical thoughtfulness level, so that only the rigorously grounded and rationally justified ideas will be accepted. Here, the rigorous filtering and reconsidering all intellect's data will lead towards its purification of presumptions and not argued thesis; the result of such ample demarche-censorship consists in a fundamental authe...
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"
Responsibility & Crisis: Lévinas and Husserl on what calls for Thinking
The point of the present article is to re-examine the relationship between the phenomenological projects of Emmanuel Lévinas and Edmund Husserl with a view to challenging the notion that their projects are radically incompatible. This will involve a bringing together of the two thinkers from both sides. On the one hand, I will offer a reading of Lévinas’ phenomenology as operating within the framework of transcendentalism even while it problematizes aspects of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. On the other hand, I will address the notions of crisis and the call to self-justification in Husserl’s later philosophy as suggesting an irrecuperable transcendence in immanence that cannot be fully recovered by the phenomenological method in the way that Lévinas often suggests.
Husserl and Other Phenomenologists
Husserl and othe Phenomenologists , 2016
This article addresses a basic question: what elements in Husserl’s phenomenology can account for the variety of post-Husserlian phenomenologies? The answer, I suggest, is that Husserl’s idea of reality, particularly his notion of givenness vis-à-vis self-givenness, facilitated the work of his followers by offering them at once a firm ground and a point of departure for their inquiries. However, adopting Husserl’s phenomenology as their starting point did not prevent his followers from developing their own independent phenomenological theory. Moreover, despite the elusive particulars that shape one’s individual experience of the world, so it transpires, Husserl’s thinking which was different and beyond their own observations and actual experiences, namely, transcendent, appears to have been a genuine guide along their path to achieve meaning. This interpretation thus gives precedence to a metaphysical point of departure, that is, to Husserl’s idea of reality as ‘givenness’, in launching phenomenological investigation—over any specific aspect of his work—as that which continues to sustain phenomenological discourse. (This article appears in a special issue "Husserl and other Phenomenologists" which i edited for The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms, 21, 5-6, 2016)
Renewal and Tradition: Phenomenology as “Faith Seeking Understanding” in the Work of Edmund Husserl
This paper seeks to understand the place of phenomenology within the Christian philosophical tradition. Contrary to common conceptions of phenomenology, and in spite of Husserl's own description of phenomenology as an "a-theistic" project, this paper will attempt to interpret the complex relationship of Husserl's understanding of phenomenology to the religious tradition ultimately as a function of that very tradition. In so doing, this paper will explore the philosophical concept of "vocation" in Husserl's usage, its application to the intended role of phenomenology as an agent of moral and religious "renewal," and the role played by the concept of tradition in Husserl's thought, which demands explicit reflection on Husserl's own relation to the tradition. This will allow the possibility of re-envisioning the overall sense of phenomenological discussion and its place within the tradition of philosophy, particularly in the relation of Husserlian phenomenology to the Anselmian project of "faith seeking understanding."
Husserl and Levinas: The Ethical Structure of a Philosophical Debt
The article examines Levinas’s evolving relationship with Husserl. It shows how the critical dialogue with Husserl and, specifically, the transfiguration of Husserl’s key notion of “intentionality,” grounds the maturation of Levinas’s ethical thinking. It does so by unpacking the manner in which the Levinasian critique of Husserl is tied to a concept of “debt” through which Levinas understands his long-lasting relationship with the founder of phenomenology.
The Subject(s) of Phenomenology
This paper investigates phenomenological philosophy as the critical consciousness of modernity beginning from that point in the Vienna Lecture where Husserl discounts Papuans and Gypsies, and includes America, in defining Europe as the spiritual home of reason. Its meaning is analyzed through the introduction of the concept of institution (Urstiftung) in Crisis to argue that the historical fact of encounter with America can be seen as an event for reason insofar as the encounter includes elements previously absent in the European entelechy. The conclusion shows that phenomenology must become a comparative, Socratic, diagnosis of the planetary crisis of reason. The entelechy of reason that becomes evident through the concept of institution should be understood less as a renewal of a pre-existing tradition than as an exogenic encounter and incursion of an outside that together define an instituting event as new in relation to its tradition.