No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl
Abstract
In order to present the guiding, fundamental problem of a documented philosophy, it is appropriate that one turn only to the documents. The texts must provide the basis for interpretation, and thus the fundamental question must be elicited from them. However, just how this question is included in the texts cannot always be univocally ascertained.
... In its essential formulation, this is the question concerning the being of intentionality.' 17 As Derrida himself puts it, the question of a 'transcendental logos' consists in whether it is possible to 'describe through worldly [mondains] concepts that by which there is a world, things and objects for us'. 18 Thus, how can the non-worldly, transcendental origin of our 'mundane' experience be conveyed using terms (including those of traditional metaphysics) whose figurative properties maintain a metaphorical reference to the world? ...
... This is what Husserl has in mind when, in the above passage, he narrows the use of the term 'sign' to those expressions whose purpose is, precisely, to indicate something to another person. However, Derrida's reading of the first investigation turns on an (arguably forced) attempt to interpret this functional overlap as an intrasubjective 'entanglement' (Verflechtung) or 'contamination' in which expression cannot be distinguished from indication (VP, [17][18][19][20][21]. 25 At the level of language, he interprets Husserl's notion of 'essentially occasional expressions' not just as a specific mode but as a general condition of signification. ...
This article explains how Derrida’s notion of an originary or generalised metaphoricity can be understood in terms of the analyses presented in Voice and Phenomenon (1967) in response to Eugen Fink’s question of a ‘transcendental logos’ and of the paradoxical ontological status of phenomenological language. Tracing Fink’s impact on Derrida, as well as the key differences between them, the article shows that underlying Derrida’s reappropriation of the phenomenological concept of ‘life’ is an expansion of indicative relations—which in Husserl typify the function of signs within intersubjective communication and modes of judgement characterised by the non-presence of the intended object—to a general feature of the ‘living present’. While for Fink the indicative or metaphorical nature of the transcendental concept of ‘life’ does not threaten the founding unity it serves to name, for Derrida it is this very unity which is undermined by the proliferation of indication at the core of temporal experience.
... To further press the point, I would argue that it can even be described as a deeper level than the experience and feeling of sadness, suffering, concern, attentiveness, acceptance, relaxation, patience, curiosity, surprise and deep interest. 12 When Fink (1981) talks about 'wonder in the face of the world' he tells us that we are placed in a 'not-expecting-to-know' attitude. This is a kind of break-down of our certainties (cognitive as well as emotional). ...
... The whole of the existent dawns upon him anew" (Fink, 1981, p. 24). According to Fink (1981) in wonder we 'visit the ground of things' and are positioned in an original relation to the world. ...
The phenomenological attitude is essential for practising phenomenology. Many refer to wonder and wonderment as basic attitudes and ways of being present with and listening to phenomena. In this article a critical view is placed on the typically psychologically-loaded language and tonality that is used by phenomenological researchers in the human sciences in order to describe the wonder and openness they try to be a part of when doing phenomenology. With reference to the difference between Heidegger's and Gadamer's views on Socratic dialectics the author points to an ontological dimension in the phenomenology of wonder that cannot be reached by taking only an emotional-bodily-oriented approach (the psychological approach) or an aesthetical-intuitive-oriented approach (the late Heidegger poeticised philosophizing). Instead this dimension must be reached through a Socratic questioning and Community of Wonder.
... This statement is especially significant since Fink was Husserl's chief assistant and was considered by Husserl to be his most trusted interpreter (e.g. Fink, 1981;. ...
Although phenomenologist Edmund Husserl's project was not directed at transpersonal experiences, his methods are nevertheless applicable in a profound and effective way. We explore Husserl's project and its methods for their relevance to transpersonal studies. Husserl laid out the proposition that science, including psychology, must be grounded in the study of perception, which after all is the source of all data of interest to the sciences. He held that until the essential structures of experience are laid bare, scientists have no idea of which elements of experience come from the environing world (Umwelt) and which are projected by the cognizing mind upon the world. His methods of reduction and epoché are explored and rudimentary steps toward realizing the 'phenomenological attitude' are defined. Once we are clear about how Husserlian phenomenology is actually accomplished, we turn to its relevance to transpersonal studies, offering examples first by applying them to the Taylor-Hartelius debate in transpersonal psychology, and then to the issue of absorption states in transpersonal anthropology and the study of the roots of religion cross-culturally.
... Here, our attentiveness and gaze move toward receiving a phenomenon or insight passively in silence, which someone can be open toward by being in a listening and dialogical relationship to the world around him/her and others who are part of that world. Some speak of apophatic insights that occur through wonder (Fink, 1983;Hansen, 2010Hansen, , 2018Rubenstein, 2011), or being in a saturated silence (Picard, 1952), or being open to enter a dialogue with the artistic work (Davey, 2013) or in an I-Thou-relation with the world (Bresler, 2015;Buber, 2004Buber, [1923), or, from an ethical perspective, in the moments of seeing the face of the Other (Levinas, 1998). In her paper on aesthetic-based research, Liora Bresler aptly describes that when researchers are in an I-Thou relationship with the subject of their research, the subject "speaks" to them, it addresses them. ...
In qualitative research, the importance of knowledge production is illustrated by the confidence in logos, that still flags. Although there is significant attention for approaches that are inclusive to the body, affect and non-rational dimensions, these approaches still aim to generate understandings by the appropriation of knowledge. This paper critiques that view and proposes another view of inquiry that centers the praxis of living the questions instead. Here, research is seen as a gradual unfolding of a process. The quest that belongs with this view of research is concerned with how to make space for life phenomena to emerge. We frame this as apophatic inquiry, a non-methodology, as it is not a matter of applying activities in a set of steps. For apophatic inquiry, a process of unknowing and wonder is imperative. The paper discusses how to foster a triadic inter-beingness in a research praxis that fosters the calling forth of and reflection on phenomena. For that, the researcher nurtures awareness and reflection on a triadic sphere of three closely connected spaces: the Inner Space, the Aesthetic Space, and the Wondrous Space. By being receptive to the impressions that unfold within and between these spaces, the research becomes part of a process of living a question in real-time. Thus, living and life itself become the heart of the research.
... she didn't know it either, but she did what was right, because it needed it. Some speak of apophatic insights that "occur" through wonder (Fink, 1983;Hansen, 2010Hansen, , 2018Rubenstein, 2011), or being in a saturated silence (Picard, 1952), or being open to enter a dialogue with the artistic work (Davey, 2013), or in an I-Thou-relation with the world (Buber, 2004(Buber, /1923Bresler, 2006), or, from an ethical perspective, in the moments of seeing the face of the other (Levinas, 1998). ...
Arts-based research (ABR) provokes different ways of thinking about how art relates to knowledge in research. There are few authors, however, who explicate their view on aesthetics in the context of ABR and the type of knowledge that it generates. Accordingly, this article clarifies an aesthetic view in the context of a phenomenological approach to ABR. Ample arts-based researchers explore questions that touch upon the liminal nature and complexities of our lived experiences. Phenomenology is about that exactly: It leans into the unsayable dimensions of our reality and is interested in poetic and apophatic knowing. Apophatic knowing is a negating approach to understanding the unsayable, that is, a way of “nonknowing.” It can be practiced as a silent receptiveness. Consequently, we propose a Gadamerian approach to aesthetics that perceives ABR as an event. We argue for a poetics of research that is about being open and responsive to the movements of the artwork that ABR generates. Thus, by being receptive to movement, the enigma of phenomenality or life itself becomes the heart of ABR.
... The pursuit and maturation of the phenomenological attitude (Husserl, 1931(Husserl, /1977Koestenbaum, 1967;Miller 1984;Schmitt, 1967) produces a state of mind marked by astonishment and wonder, and by a cognition relatively free of the constraints of received, culturally conditioned frames of reference (see Fink, 1981; for an Eastern view of this state of mind, see Suzuki, 1970). This freedom allows the inner-directed study of the factors of consciousness as objects of awareness, rather than conditioned attention to phenomena naively presumed from the natural attitude to be "out there" somewhere and requiring response (see Funke, 1981). ...
Every thought, image, feeling, intuition, awareness and sensory experience is mediated by the organ of experience—the brain. This chapter discusses the concepts of consciousness and phenomenology, and goes on to talk about the origin and meaning of the concept of neurophenomenology. It focuses on “study of experience” and examines the natural biological basis of lived experience. The chapter explores the range of problems that might profitably come within the purview of a neurophenomenological analysis. For cognitive neurophenomenology, the implications are radical, in that the approach requires considerable alteration in the design of laboratory or clinical research protocols. For cultural neurophenomenologists, the challenge is to acquire the requisite training in neuroscience (or add a neuroscientist to the team) as well as learn to use transpersonal field methods to access the experiences had by one's non-Western hosts while in alternative states of consciousness.
This paper argues that Husserlian philosophy offers a powerful methodology for feminist phenomenology and for any phenomenology with ethico-political aims. I will first explicate the widely spread notion that Husserlian phenomenology is fundamentally inadequate for such critical purposes and incurably distorted by Husserl’s supposedly ideological commitments. I will distinguish the main variants of this view recently put forward in the field of critical phenomenology. The second part of the paper argues that this widespread notion about inadequacy is based on selective readings and misreadings of the sources, Husserl’s own explications as well as Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of them. In the third and final part of the paper, I will introduce the phenomenological method of Besinnung to critically study two current strategies of revising Husserl’s philosophy for contemporary political ends. Both strategies use classical phenomenology for antinaturalistic purposes but delimit its operations on transformative grounds demanded by Critical Theory and/or Foucauldian analytics of power. I will demonstrate that, in addition to these two strategies, there is a third alternative, which does not submit Husserl’s philosophical aims to the neo-Marxist idea of world-transformation nor delimit these aims by such ideas but, in contrast, ventures to suspend the world thesis permanently and in toto and, on this radical basis, proceeds to build its critical and transformative concepts anew.
Partindo do exemplo de um processo de Pesquisa Baseada na Prática desenvolvido no âmbito de uma investigação de doutoramento em dança, este artigo faz uma reflexão que foca a natureza e mais valias do conhecimento gerado pela prática artística em contraponto com a natureza do modo de conhecimento tradicionalmente associado à produção académica. Fundamentando-se em diversos autores do âmbito de estudos de Embodied Cognition, na análise dos conceitos de know-how e know-what de Gilbert Ryle (2009) e nas questões de linguagem e intersubjetividade de Daniel Stern (1985), o conhecimento desenvolvido pela prática artística é aqui exposto enquanto um conhecimento incorporado no qual se gera sentido através das perceções somáticas e sensoriomotoras, ao passo que o conhecimento académico é caracterizado essencialmente enquanto um modo de conhecimento teórico, onde se concebe e formula sentido através da estrutura da linguagem verbal. Desse modo, deduz-se que, num processo de Pesquisa Baseada na Prática caracterizado pela interação entre a prática artística e a investigação teórica académica, torna-se fundamental desenvolver metodologias que consigam refletir estas diferenças (relativas ao modo de sentir e conceber sentido) e, simultaneamente, integrá-las. Além disso, considerando que a estrutura da linguagem verbal influencia a forma como pensamos, propõe-se que no âmbito de tais metodologias se questione e desafie o modo de usar a linguagem verbal. Partindo destas considerações, este artigo aponta uma proposta metodológica para a transferência entre modos de conhecimento intrínsecos à prática investigativa do âmbito da criação artística e os modos de conhecimento concebidos no domínio da investigação académica. Defende-se ainda que o conhecimento incorporado, ao invés da tendência tradicional do conhecimento académico, predispõe-se a uma atitude ética de qualidades dinâmicas, adaptativas. Uma atitude que não aspira agarrar o mundo como algo estático e definitivo ou controlar o ambiente enquanto algo extrínseco mas sim experienciar o desafio de incorporar e navegar o ambiente.
No abstract. Herewith publishing information: title of book and editors of book:
The Routledge Companion to Performance :Philosophy
Editors: Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and Alice Lagaay
n this article, the author considers the particularities of Franz Brentano’s psychognosy (descriptive psychology) in the context of notion of “basic” or “analytic” truths and his methodological approaches to scientific, philosophical investigations as well as his influence upon Kasimir Twardowski, who was the pupil of Brentano and accepted the main points of his methodological program.
The author also stresses that the study of Brentano’s and Twardowski’s heritage is important for tracing the origin of scientific/analytic philosophy. It is very important to investigate Brentano-Twardowski relations in the context of the concept of “basic truths” or “analytic truths”. Brentano stresses that “basic truths” can be found thanks to “psychognosy” or “pure psychology”. For Twardowski, psychology is the base for philosophical investigations because it helps to understand the formation of notions and judgements.
This article is also dedicated to the inquiries of Brentano’s and Twardowski’s legacy provided by Ukrainian scholars Borys Dombrowskiy and Yanosh Sanotskiy. The reception of Brentano’s theory of judgement in Dombrowskiy’s works and the problem of Brentano’s psychologism in Sanotskiy’s works were examined.
Hegel sees philosophy as the only rigorous science that does not have any presupposition, but he rejects the possibility of an absolute foundation for philosophy, instead maintaining that only the system as a whole can be free from all presuppositions. Hegel’s system lays claim to presuppositionlessness, not on the ground of any presuppositionless beginning, but rather as a holistic system of concepts in which inevitable presuppositions are made transparent and comprehended. This paper examines Hegel’s analysis of the concept of immediacy and his critique of the foundationalist conception of philosophy. Although Hegel’s critique is targeted against his predecessors and contemporaries, it has important implications for Husserl’s phenomenology, which represents one of the most ambitious foundationalist projects in the history of philosophy. The final part discusses the later development of Husserl’s thought and his introduction of the concept of lifeworld in light of Hegel’s critique.
In the literature on Derrida’s philosophical formation, the name of Eugen Fink is usually forgotten. When it is recalled, it is most often because of his 1930s articles on phenomenology. In this paper, I claim on the contrary that Fink’s writings exerted a lasting influence on Derrida’s thought, well beyond his early phenomenological works. More specifically, I focus on a 1957 paper presented at a conference on Husserl’s thought where Fink formulates an important distinction between operative and thematic concepts. By adopting both historical and theoretical perspectives, I show how this couple of notions can help to understand Derrida’s singular way of reading philosophical texts. In particular, I present the Derridean concept of supplement as a reworking of Fink’s notion of operative concept. I conclude by suggesting that deconstruction can be understood in part as a radicalization of Fink’s theses.
In this paper I claim that Heidegger exposes himself to phenomenological vulnerability in his encounter with Jünger’s reflections upon nihilism. Jünger insists in the essay “Over the Line” on the necessity of the alternative to nihilism because nihilism reveals itself as an existential global threat. Heidegger challenges Jünger’s suggestion, proposing that one’s alternative to nihilism needs to take into account one’s fundamental complicity in its global domination. Nihilism necessitates the fundamental-ontological investigation into its essence, which is the way of the access to the question of being. Furthermore, the turn of being, according to Heidegger, emanates precisely through its forgetfulness in nihilism. I challenge Heidegger’s ability to remain faithful to the co-constitution between the turn of being and its forgetfulness in nihilism by observing that the turn of being is, at times, given an uncanny significance that extends beyond its capacity to point back at its forgetfulness through nihilism.
Since Husserl, the task of developing an account of intentionality and constitution has been central to the phenomenological enterprise. Some of Merleau-Ponty's descriptions of 'the flesh' suggest that he gives up on this task, or, more strongly, that the flesh is in principle incompatible with intentionality or constitution. I show that these remarks, as in Merleau-Ponty's earlier writings, refer to the classical, early Husserlian interpretations of these concepts, and argue that the concept of the flesh can plausibly be understood to advance a refined account of intentionality and constitution. Instead of a first-personal, unidirectional act or embodied motor project, intentionality is a latent openness to things, where the roles of subject and object are reversible. Whereas the view of constitution as meaning-bestowal is untenable, the flesh has a constitutive role, which is supported by a 'constitutional passivity' from the subject. On this reading, Merleau-Ponty's later work aims to develop basic tenets of his earlier thought, albeit at a critical distance, an attempt he thought was continuous with the central problems that Husserl claimed a phenomenological philosophy must grapple with, even if Merleau-Ponty's answers to these problems are not Husserl's.
Lorenz re-evaluates a contested figure from Blake’s mythologies through the metaphorical lens of disability. No central figure in Blake’s Four Zoas is more misunderstood than Tharmas, who appears as shepherd and innocent victim in some passages and as sea god and cruel tyrant in others. Tharmas is a holistic figure whom the violent stimulants of modern science and philosophy have divided and disabled. By attending to the internal conflict latent in the figure of Tharmas and to the external conflict between Tharmas and Urizen, one observes, first, that the self-directed sublimity of the fallen Tharmas represents a kind of aesthetic blindness when compared to the other-directed wonder of his unfallen state; second, that the instrumental reason of the fallen Urizen represents a kind of epistemological blindness when compared to the wondering reason of the unfallen Tharmas; and third, that the ‘innocent head’ and ‘holy hand’ of the unfallen Tharmas crystallise Blake’s effort to renew the interconnected ideals of wholeness, healing, health and holiness.
The main purpose of the article is to reconstruct a therapeutic potential of phenomenology, in particular, within Edmund Husserl’s and Eugen Fink’s program of transcendental inquiry about time. However, the Project of objective claims of phenomenology, which is presented in the Logical Investigations seems to exclude all therapeutic approach. Rather, the program postulates the striving for abstract “truths in themselves,” also it ignores the surrounding world, as well as intersubjectivity, and finally leads to the solitary life of a phenomenologist. How then is the therapeutic potential of phenomenology possible? The case of questioning plays the crucial role in the context of objective science. According to Husserl, each science which does not allow to ask “the most burning questions” is naļve, and therefore it limits the therapeutic potential. While focusing on propositions, objective phenomenology excludes all questions, indeed. In contrast to such a view, transcendental phenomenology allows to ask over and over again, and by doing so, it introduces the world, as well as intersubjectivity as horizons of phenomenological inquiry. Concluding, Husserl’s collaboration with Fink presents such a communal effort into questioning about time. Therefore, “therapeutic potential” of phenomenology means precisely the methodological movement of the possibility for communal formulation of transcendental investigation.
Many Merleau-Ponty scholars have questioned the validity of Merleau-Ponty’s Husserl-interpretation. In contrast, this paper argues that Merleau-Ponty’s reading was ahead of its time and has been confirmed to a very large extent by recent Husserl scholarship. This is shown in detail through a presentation of Husserl’s late reflections on reduction, constitution, embodiment, passivity, and intersubjectivity, reflections which are primarily to be found in posthumously published manuscripts.
This paper examines the concept of evidence, with specific focus on the problem of evidence in Husserl’s phenomenology. How this problem was dealt with and resolved by philosophers such as Plato, Descartes and Kant is compared and contrasted with Husserl’s approach, and the implications of the solution offered by Husserl discussed. Finally, in light of the issues outlined, it is assessed whether or not Husserl can be said possibly to have been philosophically inclined towards notions such as idealism, empiricism, solipsism and scepticism.
The neurophenomenology of time-consciousness is presented. This lays a foundation for exploring the ways that society and culture influence the experience and interpretation of time without losing sight of the embodied, neurophysiological and universal aspects of time-consciousness. The neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) are summarized as they relate to temporal perception and cognition. Phenomenological approaches to time-consciousness (using Edmund Husserl's work) are integrated with theorizing about subjectivity, experience, and social action, and the relationship between narrative and higher order forms of time-consciousness are discussed. The authors suggest that there are fundamental similarities between the ways that human societies in the past experienced and interpreted primordial aspects of time-consciousness and the way peoples do so today.
This paper clarifies the relationship between Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception and Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation with regard to ‘the idea of a transcendental theory of method’. Although Fink’s text played a singularly important role in the development of Merleau-Ponty’s postwar thought, contrary to recent claims made by Ronald Bruzina this influence was not positive. Reconstructing the basic methodological claims of each text, in particular with regard to the being of the phenomenologist, the nature of the productivity that makes phenomenology possible, and the problem of methodological self-reference, I show that Phenomenology of Perception is premised on a decisive rejection of the main theses affirmed in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation. In contrast to Fink’s speculative reinterpretation of phenomenology as an absolute science, Merleau-Ponty viewed it as participating in the historical realization of the world, and hence as ultimately based on a practical faith. Albeit with a Marxian inflection, Merleau-Ponty thus related phenomenology much more closely to Kant. This may not be a better philosophical position, but circa 1945 it was Merleau-Ponty’s, whose work must be approached accordingly.
The purposes of this paper are twofold: first, I wish to correct a systematic bias in Husserlian transcendental phenomenology. This bias is in favor of intuition of essences of meaning and against the intuition of essences of sensation. This bias is explained as a product of Husserl's mind-body dualism. Second, I suggest the possibility of a neurophenomenology from a biogenetic structural point of view. This neurophenomenology merges the knowledge of essences derived from mature contemplation with knowledge of the structures of experience derived from neuroanthropology. After addressing these two issues I proceed to describe the sensorium from a neurophenomenological perspective, and the constituent element of perception, the dot. I hypothesize fat experience arises in the dialogue between prefrontal cortical processes and sensorial processes, that experience is constituted within a field of sensorial dots that arise and dissolve in temporal frames. I conclude that Husserl's view of the phenomenology of time is essentially correct and is both in keeping with findings from current neurophysiology, and amenable to a modem scientific view of consciousness and to many of the religious traditions encountered by ethnographers. The implications of a neurophenomenology for the anthropological study of consciousness are suggested.
Within Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, the concept of question seems to be essentially connected to the concept of science,
reason and language. Nevertheless, the position of the concept within phenomenological philosophy seems to be merely marginal.
The article aims at the reconstruction of the inner development of the concept of question from the Logical Investigation to the Husserl’s mature philosophy. The reconstruction points out two possible concepts of the question, i.e., the instrumental
and the existential concept. The latter involves responsibility as the condition of human practice. This article asserts that
the very notion of question is fundamental for all phenomenological inquiry.
“A lot of strange things go on in the name of phenomenology.” (Van de Pitte 1988, 33)
Die Absicht, die leitende Grundfrage einer dokumentierten Philosophie herauszustellen, kann sich sinnvoll nur an die Dokumentation halten. Der Text des Schrifttums muß die Grundlage der Auslegung sein; aus ihm also ist die Grundfrage herauszuholen. Allerdings ist die Weise, wie sie im Text beschlossen ist, nicht immer eindeutig feststellbar.
Harlan from “Das Problem der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls
- M Translated By Robert