Phenomenology and Existentialism in the Twenthieth Century: Book III. Heralding the New Enlightenment (Analecta Husserliana)

PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

VOLUME CV

Founder and Editor-in-Chief: ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning Hanover, New Hampshire

For other titles published in this series, go to http://www.springer.com/series/5621

PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Book Three Heralding the New Enlightenment

Edited by ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA The World Phenomenological Institute, Hanover, NH, U.S.A.

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning A-T. Tymieniecka, President

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Editor Prof. A-T. Tymieniecka The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning 1 Ivy Pointe Way Hanover NH 03755 USA [email protected]

ISBN 978-90-481-3784-8 e-ISBN 978-90-481-3785-5 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Library of Congress Control Number: 2010926222 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This collection of studies stems from our Third World Congress of Phenomenology attempting a philosophical appreciation of the origins, growth, dissemination, and metamorphosis that phenomenology and existentialism brought to the Twentieth Century into our culture. The Congress was held at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland August 17–20, 2008. Under the general title, “PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY” the studies presented are appropriately divided in three phases. The present book holds the title: PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: Book Three, HERALDING THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT. Our Conference, which has gathered philosophers from numerous fields of research has been hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University and we owe our thanks to the Dean, Professor dr hab. Maria Flis for the most friendly hospitality with which we have been received. Our special appreciation goes to our local co-organizers chaired by Professor dr hab. Piotr Mroz and helped by Dr. Joanna Handerek, Mgr. Maciej Kaluza and their coworkers who have given great and sustaining care to all the details of the local organization so that this complex group of participants who came from all parts of the world have felt in Krakow and Poland at home. The beautiful historical location of the event, receptions, sightseeing, gave a special charm and aura. I owe special personal thanks to Professor Thomas Ryba, Vice-President of the World Phenomenology Institute, who in my absence, has assumed the role of directing as well as to Professor Piotr Mroz, with assistance of Konrad Rokstad, for having carried out the Conference with a masterly cooperation. Our last, but foremost thanks go to the Jagiellonian University, to its rector, Professor dr hab. Karol Musial, for having received us with open doors. I am particularly sensitive to it being an alumna of this university and feeling belonging to it. Our faithful associate Robert Wise Jr. and our editorial assistant Jeffrey Hurlburt, deserve and appreciation for the editorial preparation of this volume. To our publisher, Ms. Maja de Keijzer of Springer Science+Business Media B.V. we owe sympathetic encouragement for our work. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

v THEME

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA / Heralding the New Enlightenment

3

INAUGURAL LECTURE ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA / The New Enlightenment

7

SECTION I DANIELA VERDUCCI / The Development of the Living Seed of Intentionality. From E. Husserl and E. Fink to A.-T. Tymieniecka’s Ontopoiesis of Life

19

RONALD BRUZINA / Phenomenology in a New Century: What Still Needs to be Done

39

KATHLEEN HANEY / Tymieniecka’s First Philosophy

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ANGÈLE KREMER-MARIETTI / Jean Wahl and the Renewal of Metaphysics

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SECTION II JAN SZMYD / Post-Modernism and the Ethics of Conscience: Various “Interpretations” of the Morality of the Post-Modern World. Role of A. T. Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life

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CARMEN COZMA / On the Meaningfulness of Man’s Existence: from the Existentialist Thinking to Phenomenology of Life

123

PETER ABUMHENRE EGBE / Creative Imagination in Harmony as Full Maturity of Phenomenological Inquiry

131

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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

SOL NEELY / Hermeneutics and the Vocative Structure of the Divine: Toward a Dramatic, Redemptive Phenomenology

151

ANÍBAL FORNARI / Arriving in the World-of-Life

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SECTION III SIMEN ANDERSEN ØYEN / Intersubjectivity – an Existentialistic, Phenomenological and Discourse Ethical Approach

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IHOR KARIVETS’ / Is the Phenomenon of Non-Intentional “Self-Other” Relation Possible?

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PAWEŁ MALATA / Two Dimensions of Human Being in Karl Jaspers’ Philosophy – Existence and Hermeneutics

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RONNY MIRON / The Guilt Which we are: An Ontological Approach to Jaspers’ Idea of Guilt

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SECTION IV EGIL H. OLSVIK / Freud, Husserl and “Loss of Reality”: Classical Psychoanalysis, Transcendental Phenomenology and Explication of Psychosis

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ˇ EVA SYRIŠTOVÁ / A Contribution to Phenomenology of the Human Normality in the Modern Time

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ANTONIO DE LUCA / Toward a Phenomenological and Existential Psychology

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DAVID DOYLE / Paradoxes of Intention: Logotherapy, Phenomenology and Existentialism

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SECTION V LUDMILA MOLODKINA / Phenomenology of Utilitarian-Aesthetic Dynamics of Nature

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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

BENEDETTA GIOVANOLA / Human Flourishing Beyond Economic Well-Being: The Contribution of Phenomenology Towards a “Richer” Idea of Personhood

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SECTION VI ANE FAUGSTAD AARØ / Phenomenological Perspectives on Philosophical Didactics

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RIMMA KURENKOVA AND LARISA VYSOTSKAYA / Phenomenology of Education: Contemporary Dialogue of Philosophy and Pedagogics

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CONCLUDING MARIA-CHIARA TELONI / The Phenomenological Way: A Philosophical View on the Vitality of Being

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NAME INDEX

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ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

HERALDING THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT

Caught as we are within the stream of life, absorbed by its experiential and intellectual currents and eddies, we need a distance from past turns in its course in order to understand their significance with perspective. Instantaneous evaluations and interpretations can only be limited. With some distance from lived stimuli, impressions, we can extricate a movement from its moment. Stepping back from the immediacy of its day, we can search out its not so obvious causes, reasons and, what is even more valuable, can learn from its consequences. In our pondering, those reasons, influences, and hidden sources are brought to our questioning attention. Perspective is also gained from appreciating the long past impacts a movement had, its successive consequences. Just when a movement has spent itself and is set to dissolve into other movements, like the circles made on a surface of water by the impacts of stones thrown upon it, we can trace its approximate lineage. From the distance of a century, we may now, indeed, see the striking anticipations of the explosive revival of Kierkegaard’s intuitive thought and appreciate Husserl’s tortuous struggle as he wended his way through the numerous debates of his time over the naturalistic/positivist outlook. We may see as well how the first adherents of existentialism and phenomenology developed the major foci for thematization and so channeled what became the mainstream of each movement. This is what we attempted to capture in our first volume on phenomenology and existentialism. In the second, we progressed to the mutual phenomenologico-existential unfolding of philosophical inspiration. We singled out the great individual thinkers who, drawing from and amalgamating both of these streams of inspiration, framed powerful and personal philosophical theories compassing the philosophical orbit and saw too how these inspirations impinged on the cultural imagination of the day much more than did other lines of thought and given insights. Seeing how the full-fledged phenomenologico-existential project came to suffuse literature, the arts, science, and social theory, and since the manuscripts of Husserl and his closest disciples – Heidegger, Sartre, Scheler, MerleauPonty etc. – have received scholars’ exhaustive attention, completing the inventory of phenomenology’s original insights and directions, it could seem that both existential philosophy and phenomenology have spun the entire gamut of their marvels and that we now need simply to draw upon their insights and pursue them further. 3 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 3–4. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_1, 

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Not so. First of all, the final principles proposed by these great thinkers as they arrived at definitive philosophical visions of reality, principles like “brute being,” Being and Nothingness, Dasein, God, etc., conflict with each other. Secondly, none of these philosophies has found an Archimedean point providing purchase on the architectonics of the All. Thirdly, even though the philosophical field has been renewed by phenomenology and existentialism and the constant flux of ever nuanced thought bedazzles us and ever new perspectives beckon, and though scholars have now provided us with access to Husserl’s and existential philosophers’ novissima, phenomenology as such has strikingly remained in itself an open question. The questions of its ultimate foundations, of the “phenomenology of phenomenology” – its unconditional “positioning” as the source of sense – are left yet to be answered. Phenomenology’s claim to be the “first” and “last” foundation of knowledge is yet to be established. What has been brought into light far after Husserl’s demise is that the late Husserl was deeply dissatisfied in his failure to give ultimate philosophical concerns adequate elucidation through the lines of inquiry he had thus far pursued. He remained still at loss when it came to the validation, justification, final foundation of the phenomenology he had scrupulously unfolded (on this, see herein Verducci’s study of Husserl and Fink, infra p. 19). But in this conundrum in which we find ourselves, there is gathering a wave of thought that is regenerating philosophy. The deepest phenomenologicoexistential wave, driven by a prompting logos, is undertaking a new critique of reason (see Verducci, infra p. 19), apprehending the pivotal role of Imaginatio Creatrix (see Egbe, infra p. 131), realizing Jean Wahl’s importance as an early precursor of the quest after ultimate meaning (see Kremer-Marietti, infra p. 97), finding a new point of departure or all phenomenology in the ontopoiesis of life and so stablishing the sought for “first philosophy” encompassing all (see Haney, infra p. 77), and is clarifying the Logos of the “Moral Sense” (see Cozma, infra p. 123), in fine, is fructifying the coalescing reformulations of issues found in the phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life I have plumbed. We have here a powerful ferment we may call the New Enlightenment. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

INAUGURAL LECTURE

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT

As is frequently lamented, with today’s explosive geometric growth in scientific knowledge and technology, a development underway now for centuries, we are facing a real upheaval in our view of the world and in our approach to life and its conditions. Unprecedented events like our probes sent to other planets, extraordinary inventions transforming human life in time and space like the aircraft shrinking the globe for us, instant telecommunication, and the many appliances easing and accelerating the pace of everyday life have not only transformed in numerous ways our existence but also have us on the alert for further wonders and shocks. All humanity simply expects and is in some dread of a never ending, advancing transformation of life. Living in these extraordinary times, we are immersed in such a variety of new ideas, experiences, practices, intuitions. We need to devote time and effort to familiarize ourselves with them, understand them, and employ them in practice. It seems not only that we remain lost in the mass of the ever changing but also that we cannot come to terms with and embrace the ever fresh, even startling appearance of reality. Expanding knowledge of nature, the world, the cosmos, of human beings too, keeps humanity in perpetual incertitude. The perspectives that have long conditioned the aims of human endeavors, the coherence of the world has undergone a loosening, even ruptures. Criteria and rules of validity have become questionable or have been outright rejected. The world-sprawling migration of peoples confronts us with people of different cultures. Since newcomers do not adapt at the most profound level to their chosen communities, they provoke an inner fermentation in the cultural habits of their new countries. Standing now within a maze of fragmentary worldviews, we find ourselves lacking points of orientation, which seems to make it impossible to assess the bounds or the expansion of the givenness with which living beings/the human being is dealing. From numerous intellectual perspectives and philosophies, social scientists and humanists alike lament the distortion and downfall of our culture, deploring what Michel Henry calls its abysmal fall into “barbary.” Philosophical reflection as well has suffered diminution. Great philosophical endeavors that have aimed at grasping and understanding the significance of the numerous horizons encircling the human mind and our lived world, at differentiating the respective realms of human experience and seeking their coherence, have lost their meaningfulness. 7 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 7–15. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_2, 

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How could we even dream now of embracing this ever escaping infinity open to our human gaze in a harmoniously coalescing vision? How could we seek its sense, its reason? It seems as if humanity’s classic dream of a metaphysical vision has vanished from sight. Not so. We may compare, in fact, the present-day situation of our seemingly deep down disorientation within the fluctuating and rapidly advancing waves agitating our civilization with ever new perspectives opening upon reality with the turmoil that agitated the early modern age in the Occident as the rigid worldview of the Aristotelian-Scholastic framework of thought was shaken off. Then, as now, discontent with the received worldview and human orientation roiled religion, natural philosophy, cosmology and the human being’s view of his place in the cosmos, matters that had been interrelated in an all-embracing system of thought that fell into discredit with surprising new scientific findings and philosophical scrutinies. Under new impulses. Aristotelian rationality ceded to the Newtonian. Still, in spite of all the assaults of Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, the world revealed an order and coherence and the human mind could grasp it, reinterpreting its order within the perspectives of new approaches. What was in question, therefore, was the nature of rationality, when in a conceptual revolution, mathematical models captured empirical science. Even so, today as previously obscure enigmas of reality and human cognition are illuminated, “first principles” have not dropped out of sight altogether. The last century saw great contributions made to the purely unprejudiced progress of the human mind. The evolution of knowledge, of the human mind, the growth of human faculties, the discovery of ways to control nature’s forces has brought powerfully to the fore not only all the classically formulated questions – of the final reasons and principles of reality – but this very evolution has also brought to light striking gains: prospects for human advance in scrutinizing life, the world, man him/herself, and our capacities for availing ourselves of the forces of nature and expanding our mastery of them. There is to be considered not only our more fundamental understanding of our fabric, of the human mind in its evolutionary course, but also the contemporary clarification of the nature of language in framing reality’s interpretation. There are being elaborated stricter postulates of reasoning, criteria of certainty that call for a critical assessment of conceptions hitherto accepted in philosophical inquiry (e.g., subject and object, individual and community, essence and existence, substance and accident). Furthermore, there is to be appreciated the significant new insights we have into the associative links, communicative threads, etc. that lead to a more adequate picture of the real.

THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT

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By the same stroke, old sclerosed conceptual chains, theories, preconceptions about human nature, the world, nature, moral standards, ethical laws and principles have loosened up, weakened in their validity: and the strength of conviction they carry with themselves has yielded to new perspectives opened by scientific progress. But from this seemingly disjointed situation there seems to be emerging the promise of a dynamic skeleton for future fusions of sense. In its expanding advance toward the unknown, scientific inquiry further and further differentiates itself and prompts us to pursue more and more inquisitive paths as there freshly emerge new suggestions of shaping and generative links. Consequently, we cannot in our presentation of our new vision follow the discursive patterns of traditional conceptual frameworks. We have, to the contrary, to follow our spontaneous intuitions as they appear to our mind/sight in a “zig-zag” fashion, simply in order to, as the French say, “Reculer pour mieux sauter.” A transformative progress is occurring not only in scientific inquiry but also and even more in the development of the human mind conducting that inquiry. Let us recall the vision of future things set forth by Turgot and the Marquis de Condorcet, who at the end of the enthusiastic (but actually failed) wave of optimism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that is called the Enlightenment viewed human history as a record of the race’s advance toward perfection, an advance that proceeded despite cataclysms, plagues, and phases of barbarism. In his Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progress de l’esprit humain, Condorcet maintained that we had reached an epoch in which this perfection could no longer be stopped and will come to pass. Compare that with the situation and spirit of our times, in which humanity, after further periods of human barbarism and despair, is apparently plunging into further chaos as disorientation about everything and the “deconstruction” of all footholds in life proceeds. We cannot but be struck by the seeming failure of hope, but equally by the profound misunderstanding therein of the present situation of humankind. I am claiming that, in fact, beneath the present-day mood of disarray and our feeling that we lack a compass, there is a deeply brewing flux of renewal, growth, and the perfecting of humanity. As Voltaire, the herald of the Enlightenment, voiced it, the progress of humanity depends upon the renewal of reason. It is, indeed, from a rebirth of reason proper that we are heading toward a New Enlightenment, which I herald. In a situation comparable to that of the Eighteenth Century, we are, indeed, ready to launch A NEW ENLIGHTENMENT FOR HUMANKIND.

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In order to assess the transformations that the present-day scientific, technological, social, and civilizational upheavals are creating, a new critique of reason is indispensable. A vision of reason that breaks out from the narrow traditional framework and opens up creatively toward appreciation of the host of new rationalities now expounded is needed in order to deal with the changeable currents of existence, to generate criteria of validity, predictability, prospects, measure.

IN LOGOS OMNIA

With this urgent call for the new critique of reason, we are back to philosophy. However, philosophy with its full range of queries, reaching to the abysses of physics and reaching beyond physical horizons to the innermost existential promptings elevating mind/spirit, all as an extension of questions traditionally considered as “metaphysical,” has been abandoned. With today’s exuberant multiplicity of empirical-experiential inquiries into reality, the great principles formerly framed by speculative imagination to deal with philosophy’s queries as well as to pursue the innermost personal quest for wisdom have lost their application. In our postmodern period they are simply outlived. These great principles are in the first instance denigrated because of their inadequacy given how their universal/abstract conceptualizing dominates the questions they were meant to answer. But in the last analysis, are they abandoned? Do they appear pointless? That is not the case. In the fundamental overthrow of their rationalized framing and conceptual formulation, these questions are revealed to have not been simply imagined futile placebos for existential queries and yearnings, for the thirst for the meaning of life and human destiny. To the contrary, although our view of reality and human involvement in it has so diametrically shifted, swinging away from the heights of speculative reason toward originary concreteness and its sources, the roads leading away from these sources take our querying in the direction of the ultimate questions that were ostensibly abandoned. Even a perusal of the historical unfolding of philosophical reflection prompts us to reflect on the “eternal return” of human concerns, of the insights, ideas to which our mind responds. They are being constantly transformed in their formulation, molded in sense and modes, or even altogether denigrated as to the validity of their correspondence to the “real” in their intended apprehensions and so are replaced by other insights, ideas. The inquiries perdure, however transformed. Expression after expression, these concerns return.

THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT

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It is with this perspective that, in response to the present-day sense of life, I will not suppress the perennial metaphysical concerns of the mind, and so I will introduce my own metaphysical panorama. The most concretely felt concern emergent at the present, and this is universally so, is with “communication.” This stems directly from the abovementioned spirit of our times but penetrates into the very foundation of life: its roots, the world, nature, the geo-cosmic positioning of the human condition within the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive, reaching to reflective human selfhood, which with its creative societal network, as well as with its personal life, lifts the threads of the logos, which extend throughout life and reach to the divine. The state of our culture prompts us to search after reason. This very state of affairs requires a remedy that proceeds from reason itself; it calls for philosophy to free us from our impasse and to lead on. Humanity is indeed struggling to master concrete issues concerning its survival and to deal with the overwhelming differentiation of rationalities bursting forth from scientific discoveries, which with their inventive insights draw our search ever onward. These discoveries deal directly with nature, with human health, with immediate practical matters – with transactional environmental as well as societal dealings, with national and global affairs. The progress of the human mind with its sentient and emotional dimensions as well as with spiritual, intimately personal longings to see one’s very own meaning of life and self-fulfillment elucidates our ties with the Divine – calls for a meaningful, cogent coordination of our sensibilities, valuations, convictions, and our faith, all of which are indispensible to our maneuvering upon the chaotic flux of life. To begin with, it is enough to point out the need for establishing a cooperative network between the different planes of reality that multiply with our interdisciplinary work in all fields of inquiry and practice. To discover links, ties, modes of coalescence, and generative as well as evolutive fusions in biological inquiries involves an entire network of vital forces, processes, which differentiate into the biological, chemical, physical scientific realms, and that calls for interdisciplinary work. It is already at that generative level that networks of “communication” have to be projected by the vital forces of generation of life, evolving, dissolving, which calls for the scientist to reach and search ever deeper. Furthermore, human societal dealings – in communal as well as personal life – among groups and nations springing forth from ties from time immemorial are constantly in question. The human quest for wisdom, for making sense of the things we believe on faith, is being pulled apart by the intellectual program of “deconstruction,” on

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the one hand, and by a revived religious distrust of reason, on the other. This situation calls for a deep-down revision of the foundations that faith and reason generate in our reality. As traditional standards for morals, habits, principles of conduct, aims, and prospects have been dissolved by the spirit of progress, the standing of expectations vanishes from sight. Without even a provisional framework of reference, the instantaneous measures taken for handling immediate necessities do not seem to lead, direct, or even promise to conduct us to a foreseeable point. New modalities of ties, contracts, laws, and moral sensibilities as well as procedures for generating “information” are constantly being revised in the search for new accommodations in emerging situations. Only a novel elucidation of all underlying principles of reason adequate for meeting the needs of present-day formulations of concerns may satisfy these imperatives. Communication, it is understood universally, is key to our new assessment of reason. Yet can we amid the dazzling differentiation of rationalities by which we view reality adequately approach its constructive coalescence, the coordination of the fleeting stream of events, transformations, insights by which we propel ourselves? Can we envisage any rationale – scientific, artistic, spiritual – as being decisive for the rest of them? The stream of reality flows forward, and we, the operative and reflective agents who maintain ourselves within it, float along. We turn to the wisdom of philosophy, but no common denominator is available by which to delve into its ever further escaping levels. Neither any permanent structure of being such as that assumed by the Ancients, nor any ordering laws of the human mind such as those that for Moderns account for our knowledge may do justice to the abundance and variety that our present state of human experience reveals, to say nothing of the expanding perspectives on our horizons. Only a new framework acknowledging the common modality of all differentiation, only an authentic mathesis universalis has the alphabet by which to convey comprehensively the full sense of creation: constructivism, energy, metamorphic versatility, the force prompting growth as well as dissolution in the regenerative fonts of the Unconditioned. To account for the pendulum’s swing from the pit of dissolution to regeneration in a novel mode, we have to reach the sense of sense, the ancient logos, that is. We have to rediscover it within the maze of novel data revealing reality and to assess it with the givens newly emerging and hence freshly available to our mind. Logos, the sense of sense, penetrates All; it encompasses human reality, the entirety of its fulgurating waves, our new cultural enlightenment, as well as what is to come. IN LOGOS OMNIA!

THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT

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THE ONTOPOIESIS OF LIFE: THE NEW ACCESS TO THE LOGOS

Yet how to approach the logos, that of which everything essentially partakes? Having carefully, tortuously unraveled the levels of the rationale of life as they join together at the fonts of the human creative experience, I believe I have reached the gate to its secret: the logos of life in its pristine modality, in its ontopoietic constructive course, which stirs the genesis of beingness, its originary entrance into and unfolding of the real. How can we seize the intricacies of the reality from which the innumerable rationalities flow in their constructive/destructive entanglements other than by apprehending the very origin, generation, and constitutive evolving of beingness – of living beingness – as such? Flux and stasis, arbitrariness and order have been perennial concerns of humankind and remain such. We have, however, to scrutinize anew, to assess, measure, order as newly revealed streams of life’s cohesive reality challenge our established conceptions of how that coherence maintains itself, with which ordering we maintain ourselves in our advance. As mentioned above, the ontological principles of order recognized in traditional philosophy’s conceptualizing do not correspond any longer to the links, bonds, structural interrelations among communicative factors fusing the dynamic flux of rationalities operative in life. The dissolution of traditional forms of seeing reality is offering us innumerable and deeper and deeper insights that reach life’s generative routes, the paths of the logos carrying the individualization of beingness. It is bringing us to the primogenital sphere where the emergence, generation, unfolding of the individualizing life occurs. At this primogenital level, the logos of life enters and unfolds its function of ontopoietic prompting and carrying of life as selfindividualizing beingness. We are here, indeed, dealing with the philosophy – the proto-phenomenology – of the beingness of life. We are, in fact, facing the ontopoietic insight present within the forge of rationality. To begin with, permanence and change, stasis and fluctuation, transformation and perdurance take place within the generative/evolutionary flux of life carried constructively/destructively, step by step, by reason itself – by the logos of life’s timing/spacing constructively the flux. It is the logos of life in its pristine laying down of its course that gives us access to the very becoming of beingness. Through its deployment and efficiencies in the modality of life it reveals to us the further horizons extending toward its Fullness.

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Through the ontopoietic process of life, the logos indeed lays down the flesh and the cornerstones of the ultimate and primary mathesis universalis. In its universal alphabet are signs ciphered by the infinitely versatile transformability of the constructive processes of individualizing beingness. In its syntax are the laws of the modality of life together with its arsenal of constructive devices – all of which reminds one of a spider’s spinning its web, for even so, life spins its sense along the track of its life-timing and -spacing. Suspended upon its existential becoming – like a spider upon its web – the self-individualizing in the ontopoiesis of beingness differentiates through a sequence. Through its functional tentacles the individualizing beingness achieves its existential crystalization through a distribution of forces around the vortex of its sequence; this latter through its nucleic pattern of embodiment guides the binding together, centralizing of energies and forces, which pass from neutral elements to life-significant ciphers of forms and sensibilities and guides their dissolution as well. The logos of life, on reaching the apex of its constructive course, accomplishes the complex unfolding of the Human Condition within the-unity-ofeverything-there-is-alive, in which the logos of life undergoes an intrinsic metamorphosis. Through the embodiment of beingness, the logos of life performs the crucial operation of life – its positioning. Through the creative surge of its power in the Human Condition, the logos of life carries forward a social thread leading toward the fulfillment of life’s journey.

THE POSITIONING OF LIFE: GEO-COSMIC TRANSCENDENTAL POSITIONING

“How can we know?” asked modernity following Kant. “What can we know?” “What can we hope?” These questions may legitimately be repeated today, but with the sharpening of our inquisitiveness, we should ask first, “How can I be?”, “What makes our beingness possible?” “What can we hope?” remains valid, therefore, but is asked in a different key. The transcendental consciousness held up by Kant, Husserl, and their followers, despite all its minute and penetrating rules and procedures of intentional constitution, does not reach the individual’s conditioning. Not even the descent to kinesthesia, not even the descent to the level of instincts can account for our beingness in a body-soul living complex; nor can these apprehensions, however basic, account for life itself.

THE NEW ENLIGHTENMENT

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In our natural focus on the operations of our consciousness, on the central sense-promoting agency of the person, we constitute with our conscious faculties a world around us. The world horizons that our experiences open before us appear and vanish as our focus shifts. Yet the initial spontaneity of that consciousness’ emergence is not self-explanatory. It is not its own cause, neither does it carry its own “reason.” With the progress of human knowledge we have not only become aware of the existential roots of each living beingness within the matrix of nature, of the energies and forces that being draws upon, but we are also aware of the conditions set by the logos for the processing of these forces in the individualization of life. We are more and more aware of the vital conditions for generation and growth. Lastly, and most importantly, we are aware of the network of universal laws governing the immeasurable cosmos and impinging on our tiny planet, where they are translated into the conditioning of life. Transcendental consciousness does, indeed, posit an objective world around us but one with established or now being established forms, ways of proceeding. However, these recognized modalities and their very coming about are being existentially conditioned and have their roots not in themselves but within the primordial positioning of life and its individualization – positioning within an immense network of logoic forces, schemata, and routes, of which human consciousness is but a constructive knot on a larger scale.

THE SENTENCE OF THE LOGOS OF LIFE – A THREAD RUNNING THROUGH THE DIVINE SCRIPT

After having in the present study followed the meanders of the logos of life through to its self-creative expansion in the Great Metamorphosis that is the Human Condition within the Unity-of-Everything-There-Is-Alive, we find ourselves where we have started: at the quintessential core of life, logoic sentience. Here is the thread running through the logos of life’s differentiation of its innumerable rays and its then bringing them all together, with the stepwise metamorphic constitution proceeding from pregenerative being to vitality and then through physical dissolution to sacral redemption. This is anticipated by a redemptive passage to the logos’ Fullness, wherein is conditioned the unconditioned, the absolute truth of beingness, the God of all creation, Who announces Himself to humanity as “I am Who am.” Thus, the science of the logos of life, the science of all beingness is rooted in Beingness itself. As we partake of the wisdom of the Ancients and draw on contemporary interpretive visions, this science reveals itself in the guise of a fulfilled metaphysics.

SECTION I

DANIELA VERDUCCI

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIVING SEED OF INTENTIONALITY. FROM E. HUSSERL A N D E . F I N K T O A .-T . T Y M I E N I E C K A ’S ONTOPOIESIS OF LIFE

ABSTRACT

Husserlian phenomenology maintains a surprising vitality even in its posthumous condition. Habermas observes, in fact, that unlike structuralism and Marxism, phenomenology has not in the least passed into a post-phase, but is still permeated with lively existentiality. In his philosophical testament, Husserl himself epistemologically engages this condition of phenomenology, seeking its foundation through the essential description of the dynamic of philosophizing and its tradition. Even though Husserl and Fink thus manifest the lived experience of iteration of finality with which the “I” of the individual philosopher, in intrinsic and living intersubjective correlation with all the other philosophers, creatively enriches natural life, they failed to devote attention to the newness this offers to the intuition. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, in contrast, grasps and draws forth the phenomenon of the ontopoiesis of life that flowers from Husserlian phenomenological intentionality and its developments in Fink, describing it in her phenomenology of life. In the quality of “producer of being” of human creative acts, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka identifies, as unexplored foundational terrain of phenomenology itself, the “point of contact” with the fountain/source from which the unique and originary poietic flow gushes, which leads being and thinking, nature and consciousness to existence. In this way, pushing the investigation beyond the realm of pure ideas in which Husserl and Fink remained imprisoned, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka carried out the intuitive resowing through which her individual phenomenological initiative was grafted into the very stream of flowing life, bringing to fruit the quality of spontaneous autoproduction of life. A new “Archimedean point” has thus been conquered and upon it each thing can now find its proper place.

19 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 19–37. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_3, 

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T H E P O S T U M O U S L I F E O F H U S S E R L ’S P H E N O M E N O L O G Y

History’s gaze has also fallen upon the thought of Edmund Husserl, after his death. Father Van Breda’s 1939 foundation of the Husserl Archive and the transfer of all the philosopher’s manuscripts there marked the beginning of Husserl’s vita postuma,1 one to which he had devoted his energies since as early as the 1920s, if one is to judge by the sheer volume of the manuscripts he was accumulating without managing to dedicate the necessary energy to bring them to publication.2 It may actually be said that Husserl’s vita postuma is quite lively: the ever-growing number of manuscripts published in Kluwer/Springer’s «Husserliana» series gives rise to natural correlates in the form of discoveries, re-discoveries, reprisals, in-depth analyses, and hermeneutical turning-points of phenomenology, which confer upon the Husserlian post-mortem story an authentic vitality. Notwithstanding the impressive volume of his productive dynamism, though, all this might merely reach us as the effect of an irrevocably terminated history from which we might at best draw inspiration were it not for the fact, – which Heidegger had observed as early as 1929 – that the Phänomenologiesieren that Husserl inaugurated, created a completely new space for philosophical inquiry, casting upon the “hidden forces” of the great tradition of Western philosophy a “gaze”3 that summoned all to participate in the infinite task, both in method and development, of bringing these forces to their “concrete realization”4 ; a gaze that solicits acceptance of Husserl’s legacy itself not just as a completed opus to be historically interpreted, but as a trail blazed in history and still open, leading us ever more deeply into history’s living depths. «Wege nicht Werke» (= “Paths, not works!”), therefore, for Husserl as well, according to Heidegger’s motto for his Gesamtausgabe, one which also describes the vicissitudes of Husserl’s thought after his death, “through a kind of retroactive genealogy”!5 J. Habermas would be wrong, then, if he failed to acknowledge phenomenology’s particular character as a living theoretics, giving into his suspicion prompted by «the fact that phenomenologists have not yet arrived at their own “post-ism”», unlike the post-analytics, the post-structuralists, or the postMarxists.6 One could certainly expect that phenomenology, too – which found its own “historians”, its own “standard portrayals”, its own “founding documents” long ago – would be destined for a Hegelian “shape of spirit” (Gestalt of Geistes) which, «as soon as [it] is recognized in its uniqueness and is named, [. . .] is placed at a distance and condemned to decline». One could even hold that «phenomenology [. . .] seems to be breaking up», «after a final productive impetus» given it in France by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, “unraveling” into superficial anthropologization and profound ontologization. However, it

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is difficult not to note, as Habermas rightly does, that phenomenology has not yet been reduced to the mere “history of its effects” (Wirkungsgeschichte) at all; indeed, it is still «permeated with existential topicality».7 In fact, as Habermas observes, while «an ontologically oriented phenomenology» discovers that «transcendental consciousness concretizes itself in the practices of the lifeworld and takes on flesh and blood in historical embodiments», «an anthropologically oriented phenomenology locates further media of embodiment in action, language and the body», having by now acquired evidence «for the rootedness of our cognitive accomplishments in pre-scientific practice and in our intercourse with things and persons».8 It is truly quite singular that Habermas should be the one to show us “life” as the cipher of phenomenological theoretics and the motive for its postmetaphysical survival! In fact, he comes from the same circles of critical thought that in the 1950s, with György Lukacs, had stigmatized the irrationality of Husserlian phenomenology as an occult philosophy of life.9 Later, his philosophical journey led Habermas to adopt the post-modern critique of logocentrism from the positive perspective of identification and enhancement of the “effective” universal suppositions of communication and discourse that permit the attainment of understanding and consensus among subjects capable of speaking and acting. In such a set up of universal pragmatism which, connecting language and socialization, returns the theoretical self-referentiality of the logos to a basis in performance, Habermas ran into the “lifeworld” as indispensable “semantic potential” or “horizon of sense” for the constitution of society, culture and personality and the constructive exchange among them.10 Even more, the «individual life histories and intersubjectively shared forms of life», which «are joined together in the structures of the lifeworld and have a part in its totalization», now represent for Habermas, as happened to Husserl and Fink, «the almost naturelike wellspring for problematizations of this familiar background to the world as a whole», to which the «basic philosophical questions draw the relation they have to the whole, their integrating and conclusive character».11 Thus for Habermas, rooted in the world of individually and socially lived human life is the possibility in the post-metaphysical age that philosophical discourse may maintain ownership of its theoretical function, «to mediate interpretively between expert knowledge and an everyday practice in need of orientation», or in other words, to support «an illuminating furtherance of lifeworld processes of achieving self-understanding, processes that are related to totality». He asserts that «the lifeworld must be defended against extreme alienation at the hands of the objectivating, the moralizing and the aestheticizing interventions of expert cultures».12

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These reflections of Habermas resonate closely with those of Husserl, as stated in his so-called “philosophical testament”, Teleologie in der Philosophiegeschichte (in three chapters, the first two dated June/July 1937 and the last the end of August, 1936),13 in which he outlined the phenomenological meaning of philosophy as an infinite «teleological movement toward reason»,14 achieved through the cooperative effort of those who practice the craft or the profession (Beruf) of philosopher. In this way, Husserl opens a broad passage in the eidetic-egological enclosure of his transcendental phenomenology, leading it into the flow of human life, rooting foundational transcendental reflection in the praxis of human subjects operating in lively collaboration with their peers. To Husserl’s retrospective glance, philosophy too, just as other crafts and professions, consists of the unitary idea of a “task” (Aufgabe) which is handed down intersubjectively through the course of history.15 The idea of the task of philosophy has broken into European history through an “originary foundation” (Urstiftung) laid by the first philosophers, men who first conceived of the completely new “intention” (Vorhabe) of Philosophy and whose realization they made their “primary mission” (Lebensberuf). They determined its “reproduction” (Fortpflanzung) in the social community through succeeding generations. Of course, for the new profession (Beruf) of philosopher to be handed down through history, it had to retain, unaltered in time, its “ideal aim” (Zweckidee) which has always defined it beyond the individual philosophical expressions linked to specific ages and personalities.16 However, for the historical transmission of the craft of philosopher, it has been equally indispensable that real individuals introject the telos “philosophy” as their “task” (Aufgabe), that is, as both a purpose of their own habitually constant will (habituell verharrende Willensziele)17 and a purpose for its concrete realization (Vorhabe zu einer Werk), rooting the telos “philosophy” in an “I”, in which just this telos assumes its place in an effective existence, which is to say that it finds a practical, apodictic driving force that leads it to realization (Ich, in dem eben dieses Telos eine Stätte wirklichen Daseins, praktischer apodiktischer Richtkraft hat).18 Husserl clarified that in the emergence of the task/telos “philosophy” with the ancient Greeks, we do not simply see the birth of a new type of craft/profession among many others, which always continuously arise through the ages. In it we find rather, an original and unheard of novelty, «a true turning-point in the general history of humanity» (eine Wendung in der Gemeintgeschichte der Menschheit),19 because from the beginning, philosophy

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has asserted that its pecularity (Besonderheit) was its sui generis intention to realize a «science of the universe of being as a science for each ‘rational being’ who thinks within that pure epistéme and leads to express a definitive cognition of the world» (Wissenschaft vom Universum des Seiendem als Wissenschaft für jeden, ‘Vernünftigen’, jeden in der reinen Episteme Denkenden, zu Gebilden endgültiger Welterkenntnis führenden).20

If, therefore, even the history of philosophy, as the work of philosophers, who have actually followed one after the other in history, is ruled by a teleology analogous to that which is active in other crafts and if philosophy’s perennial task is to reveal the “originary foundation” (Urstiftung) of every human experience, the result is an extraordinary possibility: through phenomenological “self-reflection” (Selbst-Besinnen) we may reach an awareness of the dynamics of living “reproduction” itself (Fortpflanzung) and comprehension of the logos by which the special form of the final ideas, present in the assignments of the crafts, may be transmitted intersubjectively, entering into the lives of single individuals so profoundly that they are able to determine, within the history of humanity, a new concrete historical level, produced by the praxis of their “professional humanity” (Berufsmenschheit) which generates its own historical concatenation (einen eigenen geschichtlichen Zusammenhang).21 One might catch here echoes of the post-metaphysical utopia of Max Scheler who, following the Nietzschean anthropology of the superman22 and interpreting man as an ens amans constituted by the “gesture itself of transcendence”,23 dreamed of a dynamic conception of ontological unity, open to the possibility of representing being itself as self-increasing, in virtue of how man and his work operate a synergy through the “interpenetration” (Durchdringung) of the subjective-ideal being and the objective-vital being.24 Such anthropologically borne interpenetration produces the growth of being: this can happen when through it, radically new beings come into existence, as “artificial” beings. All the products of human endeavor – be they agricultural, craftswork, industrial, cultural or philosophical – are “artificial” beings; they are created or produced by man, but they surprisingly result both enduring in existence and stably “rooted” in the pre-existent being. Certainly it is not in the course of our everyday “awake life” (Wachleben) or “life of the will” (Willensleben)25 that we become aware of the surprising fact that our individual action, though fully focused on particular interests and goals, obtains permanent results in the previously existing surrounding world, which we share with our fellow beings.26 Nor, in the course of our everyday life, do we ask ourselves about the «peculiarity of setting and fulfilling tasks»

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(das Eigentümliche von Aufgabestellungen und Erfüllung) or about the specific task of “philosophy” (das Spezifische [. . .] der Aufgabe [. . .] die den Titel “Philosophie” hat).27 As long as we are plunged into the everyday “life of the will” (Willensleben)28 of our current professions, in fact, we find ourselves in a “unique flowing current” (Einheitszug) which leads us to a variously interwoven pursuing (Fortstreben) of ever new goals, where we are continuously aiming exclusively at these particular goals and at the most other goals that act as mediators.29 It is only when we undertake the profession of philosopher that we learn to completely change our attitudes (totale Einstellungsänderung) and to perform a «total thematic inversion of our focus in order to aim at our effectively operative subjectivity as such» (totale thematische Umwendung auf die leistende Subjektivität als solche).30 Living as philosophers, in the condition of freely achieved “self-knowledge” (Besinnung) which the phenomenological practice of epochè allows us, we can suspend the validity for us of all tested and presumably achieved tasks and of all fulfillments which have been dedicated to these (betrifft die Epochè das uns Gelten der ganzen Aufgabe und aller ihr gewidmeten, versuchten, vermeintlich erreichten Erfüllungen)31 and grasp what we had never seen before «in the naïveté of everyday life»(in der alltäglichen Lebensnaivität)32 that is, that the operative modality of subjectivity (leistende Subjektivität) with its acts of «pursuing and achieving goals» (als abzielendes und erzielendes) founds eo ipso for ourselves as specific Egos, «habitualities directed toward a purpose» (zielgerichtete Habitualitäten) and consequently creates within ourselves «a structure of being that is persisting but transforming itself» (eine verharrende und doch sich verwandelnde Seinsstruktur). With this operative modality of subjectivity there also arises «an infinite iteration of the possible end-positions» (eine unendliche Iteration möglicher Zielstellungen) (in projects, proposals, habitual proposals; in the will as a persevering tension of the persevering “I”, in the act of doing, in the effectively achieved goals as permanent result of the “I”, etc.), and one arrives «at a certain act of understanding, that is, at a permanent understanding of something that lies in all of life» (zu [. . .] einem Verstehen bzw. Bleibendem Verständnis dessen kommt, was in allem Leben liegt). It is precisely «in this reflection on oneselves which includes iteration as such» (in der die Iteration als solche übergreifende Reflexion auf sich selbst)33 that one turns to oneself as “I”, in other words, to his being that perseveres in the changes of his activity; in this reflection, we can glimpse our truly intimate egological being as the real being of that life which, in personal acts individually intentioned, grounds that which is permanent (das unser eigentliches personales Ichsein als Sein in personal intendierenden, in personalen Akten

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bleibendes Sein stiftendes Leben ausmacht).34 In other words: in reflecting on our human dynamics of infinite iteration of the possible end-positions as such, we address ourselves «as to an “I”, that is, we address our being as it endures over time, even in the variations of its acts» (auf das Ich, auf sein im Wandel seiner Aktivität verharrendes Sein). Therefore we discover our “I” as «the apodictic condition of the possibility of our permanent being» (apodiktische Bedingung der Möglichkeit seines verharrenden Seins als identisch Ich ist), exactly because we can phenomenologically observe that our “I” remains identical while modifying his/her goals and aims.35 Then, Husserl added: «something much more important is implicit for we human beings through the aims of the will» (in dieser Weise impliziert ist aber für uns Menschen durch die Willensziele noch sehr viel mehr)! In fact, it is true that «all our natural life refers to our surrounding world, unceasingly pregiven to us» (all unser naturliches Leben bezieht sich auf unsere uns ständig vorgegebene Umwelt), as «universal and fundamental terrain of all our aspirations and their effective attainment» (Sie ist das allgemeine Grundfeld aller unserer Abzielungen und Erzielungen)36 ; it is equally true that for any decision we make, its content must be known to us in the form of “apperceptions” (Apperzeptionen), which – generated by individual experiencing and living in the for-us-effectively-valid world37 – flow within the concrete current of living experiences and move our will, entering as intentions of meaning. However, it is equally indubitable that, in regard to these apperceptions and to anything which comes to us from tradition or has become habitual, it is up to us both to shape the attitude of a «passive tendency to the assumption» (passive Tendenz zu Übernahme) and to place ourselves in active skepses that, by questioning the «original meaning and essence» (ursprüngliche und eigentliche Sinn) of every experience or thing,38 leads us to a new awareness. Here, in this intentional iteration, in those who gain self-awareness, the construction of a new, higher goal of distinction and clarity takes place and then imposes itself on the ingenuous setting of objectives and then living to attain them, inasmuch as it is a freely chosen goal that can be reiterated by will (so baut sich über dem naiv tätigen Leben, dem naiv Sich-Ziele-Stellen und dann den Zielen leben gegenüber als ein neues Ziel, ein Ziel höherer Stufe, das der Deutlichkeit und Klarheit, als ein freies, wiederholbares Willensziele).39 In such new attainment of awareness that is no longer philosophical or of second level, but phenomenological or of third level, the reflective man acquires awareness of his subjectivity, in experiencing a double freedom, on one hand, «in refusing to automatically appreciate any passivity» and, on the other hand, assuming the responsibility of continuously questioning and clarifiying problems (worin liegt, dass das Subjekt iterative keine Passivität gelten lassen will, die nicht im Vermögen,

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immer wieder in Frage zu können und zu Klarheit bringen zu können, zu verantworten ist. Das Bewusstsein dieses Könnens ist das der Freiheit, sich verantworten zu können).40 The dimensions of infinity and responsibility of an I that lives freely with those discovered “infinities” of goals and aims (ist offenbar [. . .] dass hier neue Dimension von Problemen – eben die der Unendlichkeit und der Verantwortung des in die entdeckten Unendlichkeiten frei lebenden Ich -und Wir- erwachsen) is especially evident in the profession of the philosopher, whose cognitive task is not only the opposite of any other special form of knowledge within the pre- and extra-scientific life, being purely theoretical, but also attests, within its plural history, to the judgment of the «impossibility, in early naiveté, of succeeding in achieving the fulfillment of the inherited task» (Ünmoglichkeit, in der alten [. . .] Naivität der Methode je zu einer Erfüllung der vererbten Aufgaben gelangen zu können).41 Husserl himself remembered having experimented with the unsettling role of the philosopher in which, precisely when «expressing oneself completely within one’s own system, one resorts to a personal – and unfortunately only individualistic – conviction of having taken philosophy down the road of a definitive realization» (Ein jeder, in seiner System sich auslebend, erringt eine personale – leider nur persönliche – Überzeugung, die Philosophie auf die Bahn endgültiger Verwirklichung gebracht zu haben, und unser exemplarischn Philosoph [=Husserl selbst] mochte ebenso schon sich in dieser Weise personal vollendet), exactly in that instant one is unfailingly «taken in by the skepsis which derives both from the complex view of history and from the inductive certainty of exactly what the general fate of philosophy is» (als sich seiner jener Skepsis aus dem Gesamtüberschau über die geschichte und der induktiven Gewissheit eben jenes allgemeine Schiksal der Philosophien bemächtigen will).42 But it is precisely at this point, when no new objective seems possible, that Husserl points out that “self-reflection” (mich besinnen) in itself is the much sought-after new beginning (das ist schon ein neuer Anfang): it shows itself to me as what “I” can do without abandoning the “philosophical” objective. In fact, «selfreflection, in this situation, is the primary “opportunity” to question philosophy and study according to its conditions» (sich in dieser Situation besinnen ist die prinzipielle “Möglichkeit”, die Philosophie in Frage zu stellen und nach ihren Bedingungen zu fragen).43

BEYOND THE VI CARTESIAN MEDITATION

At this point, discouragement might overtake even the most devoted follower of Husserl. It would seem, in fact, that the curse of Wilhelm Wundt had once

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again worked its harm, damning phenomenological research to revolve upon itself in a spiral of sterile self-referentiality.44 Hadn’t this same attention to Erlebnis – revived by Husserl in his philosophical testament as a place of subjective donation of sense earned with the practice of epochè – set into motion the phenomenological movement three decades before? Has no progress been made, then, beyond naturalism and idealism “toward the things themselves” (zu den Sachen Selbst)? After all, such an awareness of the failure to overcome the self-referentiality (Selbstbezogenheit) or circularity of phenomenology was precisely what induced Husserl to concede to that hitherto unknown “productive tension”45 that was being developed with Eugen Fink, the only student that the master had deemed a “co-worker”46 and upon whom he judged that “the future of phenomenology” depended.47 In the VI Meditation, consequently, Fink explored more deeply the issue of transcendental awareness. With the intention of establishing a “phenomenology of phenomenology”, he radicalized the “split” in phenomenology, already evident in the Husserlian II and V Meditations, into basic phenomenology (which, by its nature is still affected by apodictic naivete) and secondary phenomenology (as the original critique of phenomenological transcendental awareness),48 setting forth a further reduction of the worldly idea of being by introducing a distinction between the ontic sense of the world and an understanding of it in a transcendental or “meontic” sense.49 Fink felt it cogent to question «the methodological naivetè found throughout the Méditations Cartesiénnes», «a naiveté which consists in uncritically transferring the mode of cognition that relates to something existent (Seiendes) into the phenomenological cognition of the forming (constitution) of existent».50 Therefore, he sought not so much to reiterate philosophical reflection on the phenomenology of phenomenology, as to work on the aporetic threshold opened there – which Husserl himself ran into, as we can see from his philosophical testament – to verify, with the same method as Heidegger «whether and how the horizon from which “being” (Sein) is finally to be understood is itself “existent” (seiend), whether and how the being of temporalization of what is existent (das Sein der Zeitigung des Seienden) is determinable».51 For Guy van Kerckhoven as well, Fink’s reflection occupies the gap created between the project produced by the pure subiectivity and the being in general52 and should thus be considered a constructive phenomenology53 rather than descriptive or genetic. In fact, the liberation of the transcendental constituting life from its concealing in/conniving with the world should be constructed, provoking through «the performance of the phenomenological reduction» a “dividing” (Entzweiung) in the undifferentiated unity of natural and unreflected world-constituting activity, by which «transcendental life, in producing the “onlooker”, steps outside itself, splits itself, divides». «This dividing, however, is the condition of the possibility of

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coming to-itself for transcendental subjectivity»,54 because it gives way to a place for the transcendental spectator that thematizes the constituting transcendental life. Here we have the oxymoronic concept of the “onlooker who acts” (phänomenologisierender Zuschauer), which, as Natalie Depraz notes in the Schwarzblatt Manuscript at the Fink Archive in Freiburg i. Br., cited and annotated by Bruzina,55 shows to what degree Fink was philosophically intolerant of the descriptive seriousness used by Husserl who, seeking to keep to the methodological rigor of the sciences, held intuitive evidence as the only criterion for truth.56 On the other hand, Husserl himself dealt not only with objects and elementary acts of givenness, but also with formal acts of symbolic givenness and with phenomena, such as the existential events and situations of birth and death, or certain social interactions that set into motion a complex structure located beyond the power an individual can have over them. In §62 of the V Cartesian Meditation, Husserl identified these as boundary-problems that neither static nor genetic phenomenology, limited to the individual, can deal with, and which therefore call for a specific descriptive method57 that must take into account the latest phenomenological “discoveries” by means of which, on the one hand, being constitutes a practical idea, that of the infiniteness of a work of theoretical determination and on the other hand the transcendental sphere of being is presented as a monadic intersubjectivity. It was precisely this new methodological need, we believe, that led Husserl to entrust to the exercise of lively phenomenological intentionality of another, Eugen Fink, the progress of the «phenomenological system itself as architectonic of transcendental philosophy», given that, as Fink also recognized, it «cannot be drawn up ahead of time, but is only to be obtained from the “matters themselves” by passing through concrete phenomenological work».58 Notwithstanding the transcendental excavations and intersubjective stratagems put into play, however, the fact remains that phenomenological research never produced the systematic method, open to the metaphysical and religious-ethical dimension, that Husserl had envisioned in the 1930s.59 In the Finkian text as well, in fact, the progress of phenomenology is still judged to be limited to the draft phase: «What we have done first is to sketch out the Idea of constitutive clarification as the Idea of the analytical inquiry that moves back from the “phenomenology of the world” (from the acceptednessconstruct [Geltungsgebilde] in reductively disclosed transcendental life) into the construction of the acceptedness, into the process of world-actualization». But this “predelineation” does not itself go «beyond a quite preliminary and general characterization».60 Husserl and Fink thus seemed to agree that even using the synergy of their joint research, they had made no progress beyond the

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stage of “a working philosophy” or, Kantianly, that they had only developed a prolegomena for a science still to be constructed, rather than explanation of an already existent science.61 However, it is not convincing that this state of affairs in Husserlian phenomenology should exclusively depend, as Fink claims, on the fact that «there can be no adequate characterization of phenomenological cognitive actions before concrete analyses are carried out; the method and system of phenomenological cognitive actions cannot be anticipated nor can the essentially new kind of thing which in phenomenological cognition transcends the style of knowing found in worldly knowledge, be comprehended on the basis of “philosophical” tradition of world-bound philosophizing and cognising».62

Rather, one has the impression that something fundamental had been overlooked, neglecting the consideration of what in effect was already present in intuitive givenness; it would seem that this error promoted instead the speculative/idealistic drift that «breaks the anchorage to the immediate phenomenical».63

THE ONTOPOIESIS OF LIFE

In contrast, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka focuses her attention on the «late breakthrough to the plane of nature-life» that characterizes the final phase of Husserl’s journey of reflection; from here, she has applied her work to reactivating Phänomenologisieren, which had apparently run dry, in order to bring to light once again «the seminal virtualities engendered by [Husserlian] thought», which philosophically link the historical body of phenomenological learning and the horizons for future programs.64 Moving from the reflective unease, triggered by the dualistic result that had accompanied the attempt of the classic phenomenologists to discover, in the flow of experience, an adequate principle of intentioning grasp that leads all living experiences to consciousness, AnnaTeresa Tymieniecka pursues more deeply the intuition of the logos, intrinsic to phenomenological inquiry, and realizes a phenomenology of the ontopoietic logos of life.65 As early as the 1960s, she had intuited that there is a more originary talent/disposition of consciousness (Uranlage des Bewusstsein), beyond the absoluteness of the constituting transcendental dimension. The experience of the “conscious-corporeal” (das “Leiblich-bewusste”) shows that consciousness effectively is based in the “natural corporeal” and that an organic nexus unites consciousness with the entire contexture of nature, which remains nonetheless autonomous, as documented by the lived experiences of succession, intertwining, and motivation of the psychic processes in general. The essential “givenness” of the constitutive genesis of objectivity is rooted in an

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«intimate operating like the place from which eidos and fact simultaneously arise, which is to say that no longer constitutive intentionality, but the constructive march of life that sustains it can by itself reveal to us the principle of all things».66

The result of this intuitive descent to the most primitive level of being, that which precedes the very act of asking any philosophical or scientific questions, and in which, therefore, both philosophy and science find their authentic and common root, has been that Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka attained the pre-ontological position of being, that in which being generates itself and regenerates. From this point of view, she has been able to untangle the logos, which presides over the evolution of the life of being, indicating it, with a term of her own coinage, as “ontopoiesis”, that is, “production/creation of being.” Therefore, while in the past we traced the tracks of being, now we can follow the traces that beings, living and non, leave in their becoming: they pursue a road of progressive and growing individualization in existence, that is, in the environmental context of resources, strengths, and intergenerative energies; life itself, inasmuch as vis vitale, pushes them along this road, promoting their unfolding and controlling their course. Also from within the human condition, in fact, there radiates, grafted on the natural self-individualizing flow of life itself, a dynamic of creative vital expansion, upon which every intellectual dimension is based.67 For this, the cognitive act, which points to the structures of beings and things in order to give rise to static ontologies, must give way to the creative act, during which man manifests the same vis vitale at work in the becoming of beings: establishing ourselves on the level of creativity, it is possible to follow the poièin of those same essential structures that knowledge identifies, isolating them. A new symbolic complex is delineated in this way: it is the platform of the ontopoiesis of life, which is metaphysical but also ontic, inasmuch as it grasps the being of the moment in which, while “it generates itself” as being, it also manifests the logos in its continuous “making itself be”. This logos proceeds self-individualizing, and without changing nature traverses the entire inorganic, organic, and human universe. Following the leitmotiv of the ontopoiesis of life, an ontological teleology is thus manifested, by which the unfolding of natural life finds its telos in human life. On the basis of these philosophical discoveries, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka forges a new link with consolidated phenomenology. She no longer intends «to interpret phenomenology through its method» nor to pursue the vain effort, common to all phenomenologists from the founder on, «to justify its philosophizing procedure from all possible angles». She realizes, in fact, that such an effort would do nothing «to solve the quandary that puzzled Husserl, [that is] the impossible situation of the subject’s constituting the world and being

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simultaneously an objective element of it». In her opinion, what is needed, rather, is «to learn, from the strengths and the weaknesses of the specifically phenomenological rationalities, the nature of the universal rationality that is involved in the emergence and run of our reality that subtends its genesis – the logos reaching beyond it and yet essentially engaged in the constitution of ourselves within our lifeworld and its horizons».

The «Husserlian proposal of a self-critique of phenomenology upon its very transcendental/subjective assumptions»68 is thus understood in an enlarged and evolving sense, so to speak, following the tendency present in the late Husserl to break with «the early theoretic-methodological restrictions that his focus on intentionality [had] imposed on him».69 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka can now follow «the progress» implicit in the Husserlian method, which emerges by studying the «integral Husserl»,70 where «each stage of his thought seems to have been for him a springboard for inquiry in a more profound direction», even while proposing no speculative claim «to unify his various insights». Husserl, in fact, simply «follows an analysis to an obvious end and then takes up deeper questions», tracing an evolving sequence which only in appearance seems to lack nexuses among its phases, given that in it «Husserl adjusted his assumptions as he went without dismissing any set of them». In effect, Tymieniecka continues, Husserl «might call the regional ontologies ‘naive’ as they stand alone, but he never disclaimed the eidetic insight through which we distinguish objects. He tacitly included it in the ascending noetic steps in the process of originating and forming the ideal structures of beings as they are constituted in the subjective transcendental processes of the intellect. And then he immersed the singular mind with its set of constitutive procedures within the intersubjective lifeworld. The concatenation of the lifeworld opens yet another field of investigation, but the nature of the constituitive process in the singular individual mind remains valid, however much apprehension of the reality of the lifeworld modifies the appreciation of it».71

Notwithstanding the contradictory appearances and Husserl’s own awareness of them, therefore, the Husserlian phenomenological research seen from the new position set forth by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, proves neither rapsodic nor preliminary. Advancing his project «beyond a fixation on inner subjectivity», one may still trace there a constructive logos of iron-clad necessity, the same that presides over «the planes of the human reality», in which each effective carrying out of descriptive study, as phenomenology certainly is, involves that we finally find ourselves at the edge of the area that has just been investigated and from which we can lean out to grasp new dimensions now within reach. The remarkable euristic-poietic validity of such spontaneous human cognitive behavior, indeed, has guided the progress of scientific knowledge in

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the twentieth century!72 A similar evolving logos, human and phenomenological, preserves not only the validity of each phase of phenomenology, but also «the promise each offers».73 The future opportunities for investment, in fact, rest in the living, concrete, natural subjectivity of the philosopher at work: the ontopoietic acts of such an individual can bring new being to existence and construction, increasing being itself, as noted even by Husserl in his philosophical testament. As Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka comments: «Therefore, the elementary condition of man—the same one through which Husserl and Ingarden attempted in vain to open a breach, extending the expansion of its intentional nexuses and at the same time turning to ante-reduction scientific data—appears to be constituted by the blind element of nature, and yet at the same time this element shows itself to have virtualities for individualization on the vital level and, what is more important, for a specifically human individualization. The latter virtualities we could call ‘subliminal spontaneities’».74

From the vitality of this natural subjectivity, so rich as to sustain the entire phenomenological journey of interrogation and reduction, there rises, according to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, the Husserlian twofold philosophical approach, «with an intuitive grasp of the givens paralleling a cognitive constitutive scrutiny of the cognitive procedure, one that is meant to validate and legitimate them».75 In such a «unique» approach, «the system of consciousness that Husserl, in accord with the nature of subjective acts, calls “intentional” and “transcendental”» is rooted together with «the primordial givenness of the objective correlates of our intuitions».76 For this reason, while proceeding «in the exfoliation of the levels of authentic reality» by the successive stages of the reductive procedures, these reductions not only are performed «in the very depths of the progress of interrogative investigation, but concurrently in their consecutive phases they make up the body of phenomenological doctrine».77 Here, in fact, we find delineated the successive rational intuitive “platforms” of the very life of conscious being, as Tymieniecka calls them. The intentional platform, the multisphere platform of the lifeworld, the platform of the genetic perspective with the correlated sphere of the creative experience: each constitutes a step on the experiential ladder which effectively leads from one intentional intuitive step to the next, new ontopoietic platform, which in turn leads to a further and still unknown level of phenomenalization. These platforms may now be understood as arising from «two channels of self-generating forces – objective and subjective – [that] roll forward, one proceeding from the concatenation of constitution on the objective side and the other proceeding from the nature of the subjective intentionality at work in that constitution».78 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka emphasizes the sui generis nature of these dynamisms, for while they are proper to the life of consciousness, they

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also represent, to the extent that they realize something in being, «the specific dynamism of the constructive logos of the real as it deploys itself». In this natural onward flow of consciousness, in fact, the constructive acts of consciousness bring forth their very own inner dynamisms and forces in such a way that reason/logos is not a mere structuring line of construction, but simultaneously its prompting force.79 Husserl and Fink certainly were culpable of a grave oversight in underestimating to such an extent their own work, in which, instead, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka recognized the logos of life in action, as the sole and the original poietic flow that leads being and thinking, nature and consciousness, to existence and that therefore is the source/font or the grounding terrain of phenomenology. With such an evolutive source, still little known but certain in its effects, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka sought to re-establish conscious contact: she set in motion a new phenomenological “self-knowledge” (Selbstbesinnung) that, pushing the investigation beyond the realm of pure ideas, carried out the intuitive re-sowing through which her individual phenomenological initiative was grafted into the very stream of flowing life, bringing to fruit the quality of spontaneous autoproduction of life, which, in the 1970s, neurophysicists Maturana and Varela had discovered and defined as “autopoiesis”.80 Armed with only the Husserlian “principle of all principles” that recognizes «every originally offering intuition (Intuition)»81 as legitimate source of knowledge, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka dove into the sea of phenomenological experience searching for its sense and vital continuity, beyond the safe but asphyxiating limits set by the constituting consciousess and its givenness. Her endeavor was completely successful, not only because she attained the revitalization of consciousness without giving up its constituent function, producing a new line of inquiry in the phenomenology of life, but above all because in proceeding this way, for philosophy itself and for all the human sciences, including economics, she surprisingly opened wide a new horizon of sense and a new symbolic system calibrated on the vitality of being, discovered at the roots of constituting consciousness and contiguous with it. The nature and meaning of every development, including that of phenomenology, can thus be enclosed in this new philosophical platform of the ontopoiesis of life. Such a theoretical situation of solidarity between spirit and life had never been seen before on the contemporary philosophical scene. It emerged as a new horizon of sense when A-T. Tyminiecka decided to follow her intuition in practicing a «radical overturn of the phenomenological perspective» to gain a new “Archimedean point” on the basis of which «each thing finds its proper place».82

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University of Macerata, Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze Umane, MACERATA Revised by Sheila Beatty NOTES 1 2

R. Cristin, Invito al pensiero di Husserl, Mursia, Milano 2002, p. 13. E. Husserl, Letter to Paul Natorp dated February 1, 1922, in: Briefwechsel, ed. by K. Schuhmann and E. Schuhmann, «Husserliana Dokumente», Kluwer, Dordrecht 1994, V, pp. 151–152. 3 M. Heidegger, Edmund Husserl zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, in: «Akademische Mitteilungen» Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg i. Br., IX Sem., 3, 14/5/1929, p. 47. 4 E. Husserl, «Persönliche Aufzeichnungen», ed. by W. Biemel, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XVI, 3, 1956, p. 298. 5 Cristin, Invito al pensiero di Husserl, op. cit., p. 47. 6 J. Habermas, Nachmetaphysische Denken. Philosophische Aufsätze, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988. Engl. transl. by W. M. Hohengarten, Postmethaphysical Thinking. Philosophical Essays, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1993, p. 3. 7 Ibid., p. 4. 8 Ibid., p. 7. 9 Cf.: G. Lukács, Die Zörsterung der Vernunft, Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1953; engl. transl. by P. R. Palmer, Destruction of reason, Merlin Press, London 1980. Lukács is concerned with Husserl only indirectly because the irrationalistic tendencies, present from the start in Husserlian philosophic method, will become truly explicit only in the works of Scheler and particularly Heidegger. 10 Cf.: M. Calloni, Introduction to the italian edition of Habermas, Il pensiero post-metafisico, Laterza, Bari-Roma 1991, p. vii. 11 Habermas, Postmethaphysical Thinking, op. cit., pp. 16–17. 12 Ibid., pp. 17–18. 13 Text from cover K III 29 and from pp. 5 and 9 of cover K III 28; now included in volume XXIX of «Husserliana», Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937, ed. by R. N. Smid, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London 1993, n. 32, pp. 362–420. In the Anmerkungen des Herausgebers, it is R. N. Smid who defines the text in question as «Husserl’s last philosophical testament» (p. 362). Cfr.: N. Ghigi, Introduzione a «La teleologia nella storia della filosofia», in E. Husserl, La storia della filosofia e la sua finalità, it. trans. by N. Ghigi, Città Nuova, Roma 2004, pp. 11–55. 14 P. Volontè, «Husserl e la filosofia come professione. Note sul volume integrativo della Crisi delle scienze europee», in: Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica, 89 (1997), p. 143. 15 Husserl, Teleologie in der Philosophiegeschichte, op. cit., p. 363. M. Scheler as well, dealing with human labor, refers to the concept of «task » (Aufgabe), as «a goal purely and simply represented», which one works to achieve. Cf.: M. Scheler, Arbeit und Ethik, in: Gesammelte Werke, ed. by M. Scheler and M. Frings, Francke, Bern-Munich, I, «Frühe Schriften», 1971, pp. 167, 170. 16 Husserl , Teleologie in der Philosophiegeschichte, op. cit., p. 363. 17 Ibid., p. 364. 18 Ibid., p. 411. 19 Ibid., pp. 363–364. 20 Ibid., p. 405. 21 Ibid., p. 363.

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Cf., F. Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, in: Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. by G. Colli and M. Montinari, W. de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, VI1 , 1968. English trans. by W. Kaufmann, Thus Spake Zarathustra, New York: Penguin, 1978. Concerning the Scheler-Nietzsche relationship: D. Verducci, «Scheler-Nietzsche. Per una misura dell’Übermensch», in: F. Totaro (ed. by), Nietzsche tra eccesso e misura. La volontà di potenza a confronto, Carocci, Roma 2002, pp. 219–236. 23 M. Scheler, Zur Idee des Menschen, in: Gesammelte Werke, op. cit., III, «Vom Umsturz der Werte», 1955. Engl. trans. by C. Nabe, The Idea of Man, in: «Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology», 9, October 1978. 24 M. Scheler, Erkenntnis und Arbeit, in: Gesammelte Werke, op. cit., VIII, «Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft», 1960, pp. 360–362. 25 Husserl, Teleologie in der Philosophiegeschichte, op. cit., p. 373. 26 Ibid., p. 369. 27 Ibid., p. 370. 28 Ibid., p. 373. 29 Ibid., p. 370. 30 Ibid., p. 371. 31 Ibid., p. 374. 32 Ibid., p. 371. 33 Ibid., p. 369. 34 Ibid., p. 371. 35 Ibid., p. 369. 36 Ibidem. 37 Ibid., pp. 372–373. 38 Ibid., pp. 373–374. 39 Ibid., p. 376. 40 Ibid., p. 377. 41 Ibid., p. 379. 42 Ibid., p. 410. 43 Ibidem. 44 Cf.: W. Wundt, Psychologismus und Logicismus, in: Kleine Schriften, 1, Engelmann, Leipzig 1910, pp. 511–634. 45 Cf.: M. Mezzanzanica, «La discussione tra Husserl e Fink e l’idea di una fenomenologia della fenomenologia», in: Magazzino di Filosofia, 5 (2001), «La VI Meditazione cartesiana di E. Fink e E. Husserl», edited by A. Marini, p. 68. 46 Cf. Letter to Eugen Fink dated July 21, 1934, in: Husserl, Briefwchsel, op. cit., IV, p. 93. Engl. trans. in: R. Bruzina, Translator’s Introduction to: E. Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation, Indiana University Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis 1995, p. xxvi. 47 Cf. Letter to Gustav Albrecht dated October 7, 1934, in : Husserl, Briefwchsel, op. cit., IX, p. 105. Engl. trans. in: Bruzina, Translator’s Introduction, op. cit., p. xxvi. 48 Cf.: Husserliana, vol. I: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, hrsg. von S. Strasser, M. Nijhoff, Den Haag 1950, p. 68 e pp. 177–178. 49 E. Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation, T. 1, Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehere, ed. by H. Ebeling, J. Holl, G. van Kerckhoven, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht-BostonLondon 1988, p. 183. Translation with introduction ed. by R. Bruzina: E. Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method, with Textual Notations by Edmund Husserl, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995, p. 1. «Though mentioned only in the Foreword and nowhere in the text of the Sixth Meditation itself, the “meontic” is one of the notions

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most often and continually recurring in Fink’s personal notes during the period of his labors with Husserl», Bruzina, Translator’s Introduction, op. cit., pp. lv–lvi. 50 Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation, op. cit., p. 2. German text: p. 184. 51 Ibidem. 52 G. van Kerckhoven, Mondanisation et individuation, Msk. 1995, pp. 338–651. Tr. it. di M. Mezzanzanica, Mondanizzazione e individuazione. La posta in gioco della Sesta meditazione cartesiana di Husserl e Fink, il Melangolo, Genova 1998, p. 38. 53 Cf.: Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation, op. cit., §7, «Phenomenologizing in “constructive” phenomenology», pp. 54–66. German text: pp. 61–74. 54 Ibid., p. 26. 55 R. Bruzina, Edmund Husserl-Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology. 1928– 1938, Yale University Press, 2005. 56 Cf.: N. Depraz, «Il metodo pradossale di Fink nella VI Meditazione cartesiana: una pratica speculativa», in: Magazzino di Filosofia, 5 (2001), op. cit., p. 97. 57 Ibid., p. 101. 58 Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation, op. cit., §1, p. 8. German text: p. 8. 59 Cf. on Husserlian intent see the letter to Dorion Cairns dated September 23, 1930 (Husserl, Briefwechsel, op. cit., vol. IV, Die Freiburger Schüler, 1993, p. 25) and letter to Roman Ingarden dated December 21, 1930 (Husserl, Briefwechsel, op. cit., vol. III, Die Göttinger Schüler, 1993, pp. 269–270), in: Mezzanzanica, La discussione tra Husserl e Fink, op. cit., note 1, p. 64. 60 Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation, op. cit., §1, p. 4. German text: p. 3. 61 E. Fink, Die Spätphilosophie Husserls in der Freiburger Zeit, in: Id., Nähe und Distanz, Alber, Freiburg i. Br.-Munich 1976, p. 209. 62 Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation, op. cit., §1, p. 4. German text: p. 4. 63 Depraz, Il metodo pradossale di Fink, op. cit., p. 102. 64 A.-T. Tymieniecka, «A Note on Edmund Husserl’s late Breakthrough», in Tymieniecka (ed. by), Phenomenology world-wide. Foundations, expanding dynamics, life-engagements. A guide for research and study, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002, p. 685. 65 D. Verducci, «The ontopoiesis of life: a theory of solidarity between logos and life», in: Phenomenological Inquiry, 31 (2007), p. 23. 66 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Tractatus Brevis, Analecta Husserliana XXI, 1986, p. 3. 67 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Logos and Life. Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Book 1, Analecta Husserliana XXIV, 1988, p. 392. 68 A.-T. Tymieniecka, «The Logos of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Logos», in: Analecta Husserliana, LXXXVIII (2005), p. xv. 69 Tymieniecka, A Note on Edmund Husserl’s late Breakthrough, op. cit., p. 686. 70 A.-T. Tymieniecka, «Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times», in: Tymieniecka (ed. by), Phenomenology world-wide, op. cit., p. 2b. 71 Ibid., p. 3a. 72 Ibid., p. 2a. 73 Ibid., p. 3a. 74 Tymieniecka, Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, op. cit., p. 28. 75 Tymieniecka, The Logos of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Logos, op. cit., p. xvii. 76 Tymieniecka, Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times, op. cit., p. 3b. 77 Tymieniecka, The Logos of Phenomenology and the Phenomenology of Logos, op. cit., p. xviii. 78 Tymieniecka, Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times, op. cit., p. 4a. 79 Ibid., p. 4a. 80 D. Verducci, «La questione dello sviluppo in prospettiva ontopoietica», in: Etica ed Economia, I (2007), pp. 46–48.

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81 E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, I, Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, in: Husserliana III/I and III/2, ed. by K. Schuhmann, Martinus Nijoff, Den Haag 1976. 82 Tymieniecka, Logos and Life: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, op. cit., pp. 3–4.

RONALD BRUZINA

PHENOMENOLOGY IN A NEW CENTURY: WHAT STILL NEEDS TO BE DONE

ABSTRACT

My paper proposes to do two things. First I wish to sketch out some fundamental characteristics in what phenomenology actually was as an investigative program as its first 30 years, that is, as Husserl’s work came to a culmination. Then I shall argue for the way these pivotal issues had been in principle radically reframed in phenomenology’s achievements, even if this reframing was little recognized (with some exceptions) in the subsequent philosophic interpretation of Edmund Husserl’s writings. These issues are, then, the ones I shall suggest have to be recognized and taken up in their full scope if phenomenology is to continue at the depth and with the richness that it had developed by the time Husserl was facing his own death. I shall propose four themes as indices of the most probing analyses made in the final years of Husserl’s life), the full implications of which are yet to be drawn: 1. the radical sui generis status of sense (Sinn) in the investigation of phenomena; 2. the need for an uncompromising questioning and overcoming of the nature-spirit dichotomy; 3. careful assessment and realization of the lessons of the genetic analysis that lies in the phenomenology of ultimate temporalization (Zeitigung), for it is only with the reintegration of the results of this analysis in all previous studies that the full meaning of those studies and their findings can be realized; and finally 4. careful theoretical critique of the limits in phenomenology’s investigative program and adherence to the way that critique affects the comprehensive philosophical interpretations of phenomenology’s findings; for without realizing what phenomenological principles are in principle capable of reaching validly and adequately, one cannot deal philosophically with the ultimate understanding of phenomenology’s achievements. The investigation and interpretation of none of these has been fully carried out, either by Husserl or by those who came after him. It is still left to be done. 39 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 39–76. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_4, 

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All the pivotal thinkers involved in the creative work of the phenomenological program of the twentieth century – Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in the first line, Eugen Fink, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jan Patoˇcka in the next – have died. Yet scholarly study and publications in phenomenology continue to flourish, as the present conference certainly testifies. However, phenomenology is a philosophical program; it is anything but simply an historical sequence of literary productions each of which, when compared to any or all of the others, allows the astute scholar to bring out the unique features that make one or another thinker unique and distinct from all the rest. We are accustomed, for example, to compare Husserl and Heidegger on how they diverge on this or that major point and to argue for the superior achievement of one over the other. Yet any such distinctness of one thinker from the others and any superiority of reasoning or analysis that can be vigorously argued may be too much a matter of dividing thought according to persons and talents rather than attending to continuities that actually make their work genuinely philosophical – or, in our present instance, continuities that would make a thinker’s work truly phenomenological. Against any tendency to a certain “cult of personality,” what has to matter is the extent to which “the things themselves (die Sachen selbst)” matter,1 namely, in that what is found is a fundamental question about those “things themselves”, a problem that challenges established presuppositions that we may be unaware of but which all the same influence silently what we take to be unquestionably true. The insightfulness of this discovery of a problem and the way that problem gets addressed and explicated are a central part of what makes for the philosophical. And what makes such efforts phenomenological has do with the whole orientation in which insightful discovery arises and the manner of the rigor that is followed in investigating the problem. This is just what Husserl laid out in 1913 in the opening two parts of his first book of Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy: the “General Introduction to Phenomenology” and “Fundamental Phenomenological Considerations.” Those of you who participate in our present conference on phenomenology, however, do not need the basics of Ideas I laid out for you. What I must point out, however, is that the elaboration and refinement of the constitutive methodological principles for phenomenology continued in Husserl’s work after Ideas I right up into the last years of his life – just as they must also continue after his death. As Husserl conceived his program, it was neither his personal possession nor a body of work that he had fully accomplished; it was unfinished when he died and he was fully aware of that in his last months. Again, I cannot emphasize too much: phenomenology is an investigative and philosophic program, not either the possession or a constitutive feature of a person.

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So my question must be: In what way has phenomenology continued – or not? And if it is continuing, and is to go on further, what shows it to be still, and fully, “phenomenology”? What I propose to do here is to propose four primary points in terms of which to define the core issues that express both certain pivotal achievements and still deeply problematic conceptions whose further explication would make for fundamental transformations in phenomenological philosophy. Two of these are points primarily of substantive, positive insights, the other two meld similarly weighty, positive insights with the profound methodological recalibration of phenomenology’s integrative substance. The depth and richness that these four points possess lie at the heart of the thinking of the three thinkers mentioned who were heavily influenced by Husserl’s work: Eugen Fink, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jan Patoˇcka. The thinking, of each of them in turn has formed whole generations of intellectuals in the phenomenologicalphilosophical vein, though in vastly different ways, as you no doubt already know. The lessons they contributed continue to be touchstones of genuine phenomenological investigative and philosophical advance and are central to the ideas I wish to present here. Unfortunately, however, I shall not have time to get to Patoˇcka’s work, but I shall point out where certain ideas of his directly pertain to what I am developing here.

PART I: THE PROPOSED PRIME CONSTITUTIVE THEMES

Let me first simply state briefly the four points – or themes, or problematics – in question: 1. the radical sui generis status of sense (Sinn) in the investigation of phenomena; 2. the thrust toward the questioning and overcoming of the nature-spirit dichotomy, especially in view of the central significance of living being in the phenomenology of experience; 3. the ultimacy of genetic analysis, especially the phenomenology of ultimate temporalization (Zeitigung) the results of which, in integrating the findings of investigations at every preceding level and stage, more than anything else affect the interpretation of those findings; 4. the theoretical critique of the limits in phenomenology’s investigation into origins, determining what phenomenological principles are capable of reaching in proper phenomenological inquiry. Let me take up the four themes one by one.

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SENSE There is no more pervasive word in Husserl’s phenomenology than Sinn – “sense” – nor is there any word that, even while remaining undefined, is more at the heart of the problem of transcendental constitution, which in turn is the core of phenomenology. As to defining “sense,” there is good reason to think that “sense” cannot be defined; it is fundamental, in the sense that it is that by virtue of which everything else is defined, while it itself may in principle not permit of being defined in terms of other things.2 All the same, sense gets differentiated into different kinds and different functions from early on, most notably in Husserl’s first and fifth “Logical Investigations” where sense figures centrally in his first analyses of intentional experiential life. The distinctions he makes in these studies, especially in the “Fifth Investigation,” while never rejected subsequently, remain open to reformulation, most notably in Husserl’s Ideas I and in his second and third manuscript sets of investigations into temporality.3 Ideas I, however, offers the most detailed analysis of sense in Husserl’s phenomenology, and I wish to draw from that book the points that have to be made about sense, in the following ways. First I wish to review the multiple central role sense plays in the phenomenological analysis of intentional experience as such, and secondly I shall point out how that treatment, within the positive explication Husserl gives of sense in the intentionality of consciousness, discloses the deeply problematic and ambiguous character sense has right in this, his classic analysis. In the course of my discussion I certainly hope it becomes clear why Husserl repeatedly emphasizes that, despite the fact that these analyses are regularly taken to be his basic “doctrine” of intentionality, they have to be read as preparatory and introductory studies, for that, with good reason, is his understanding of their role and status.4 The portion of Ideas I in which I wish to show these points comprises three chapters in Part 3 (“Methods and Problems of Pure Phenomenology”). These points are made shortly after Husserl’s disclosure, in Part 2 (“The Considerations Fundamental to Phenomenology”), Chapter 3, of “pure consciousness.” “Pure consciousness” is “the All of absolute being” (§51, pp. [95–96]), as “a stream of absolute living experience [ein absoluter Erlebnisstrom] with its own essence” (§54, p. [105]).5 The specifics of how this “pure consciousness” intentionally structures the appearing of phenomena are what the four chapters of Part 3 (“Methods and Problems of Pure Phenomenology”) take up; and of these, I shall focus on Husserl’s analyses in Chapters 2, 3 and 4.6 My treatment will be governed by two central

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assertions that Husserl makes immediately after the disclosure just spoken of, again back in Chapter 3 of Part 2. The first is that “all real unities are ‘unities of sense’,” which presuppose “a sense-bestowing consciousness” that is “absolute” (§55, p. [106], Husserl’s emphasis and my boldface). What is remarkable here is the all-encompassing and utterly basic character in terms of which phenomenology pursues its analyses: “Reality and world [Realität und Welt] are titles here for certain unities of sense that hold [for experience]” in that “absolute, pure consciousness,” in its (a) endowing them with the sense which thus (b) holds [gilt],7 is functioning according to its essence in this constitutive act of double-effect (§55, p. [106]). “World itself,” then, “has its whole being as a certain ‘sense’ which presupposes absolute consciousness as the field of sense-giving” (§55, p. [107]; bold face mine). Together with the apparent primary status of sense, what is to be noted in the very same passage just cited is the second crucial point here, one that unfortunately is obscured by the overstated characterization of the absoluteness of “pure consciousness” in Chapters 2 and 3 of Part 2. In §55 that closes Chapter 3 Husserl makes clear the fundamental way phenomenological analysis works, namely, not by finding some kind of utterly alien new region of material for investigation, but by a transformation precisely of what is already familiar in everyday experience regarding what it means to say of something “It is really there.” The solid holding of what we find before us in full-blown experiential evidentness as precisely genuinely given and genuinely there is not negated in the least. What gets transformed in the epoché, and then in the “reduction”studies that phenomenology thereupon undertakes, is the character of what we find holding in our experience, in that this holding in experience is now taken in terms of the discovery of how this sense and this holding of the sense of real things comes about – namely, by virtue of the bond of all appearing to the intentionality of experiential consciousness.8 I shall have occasion to return to this point as we proceed. This said, we can finally turn to the chapters in Part 3 of Ideas I where the structures and functions in play in this bond are delineated. The pivotal issue, the central problematic of the analysis being conducted in Chapters 2 and 4 in this Part of Ideas I is, I believe, that of the doubleness, indeed the tripleness, of meaning and function that the word “sense” receives there – especially in the way this issue involves and affects the four prime constitutional themes I spoke of at the outset. One could as well say that “sense” is treated as three different elements, even though the analysis itself brings all three together as constituents of a rather peculiar unit in “consciousness,” a oneness made up of three quite different factors, each of which can be absent in what can result as different kinds or modes of consciousness. Therein is the problem. How does the unity in each case arise, such that each time a single

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integrated moment is constituted? The analysis simply describes differences, and the presence or absence of one or another factor would make for starkly different kinds of experience, namely, those that are actual engaging with “real actuality” – actual perception of the manifestly given – and those that recall having had some such engagement – memory or recollection – or can imagine it – imagination or fantasy.. Could a genetic analysis offer anything more to show how the crucial unity comes to be? – and we know that Husserl increasingly shifted to a genetic phenomenology during the 1920s and 1930s. We have to take these questions one by one, beginning with the “three factors” each named “sense” in the analysis of the noetic-noematic structure of conscious experience. The lowest “stratum” of sense is that of the element of the sensuous. This is characterized by Husserl (§85, p. [172]) as sheer color- or touch-givenness “contents” in consciousness that are in themselves wholly without intentional efficacity. They can be lumped together with sensations of pain or pleasure – with tickles as well – inasmuch as they are simply experienced, and hence can be called “‘sensuous’ [or ‘sense-laden’] experiences [‘sensuellen’ Erlebnisse]”; they convey nothing of anything beyond themselves.9 It is only by the unification of these “concrete experience-data [konkrete Erlebnisdaten]” into an integrative whole by virtue of a second “stratum” “animating” the purely “sensual moments” with an intentional thrust, that the resulting integrative whole becomes an intentional experience. This second stratum thus gives sense in a new way to the sheer non-intentional sense of the first stratum.10 We find, of course, further specification of the “new sense” that now “animates” with intentionality the otherwise sheer sensuousness of non-intentional “sensuous experience.” For one thing, Husserl begins to call the integrative unit of the two the unity of sheerly sensuous “stuff-data” with intentionalsense-conferring noesis, that is, a stuff-stratum and a noetic stratum (§85, pp. [173–175]). A little earlier in the same passages too (pp. [172–173] that Husserl calls the first factor sensuelle μoρϕ η´ and the second intentionale morfhv, a “duality and unity” that “plays a dominant role in the entire phenomenological region.” Yet the set of sense-factors is still not complete; there is a further “sense” that caps the intentionality of the stuff-noesis unit with its whole worth, namely, that this integrative sense-unit be of something else that in its fundamental standing is other than the unit of experiential consciousness that holds “sense-contents” of another sort within itself, that this something else be transcendent to conscious experience. Husserl turns to this in the next chapter in Part 3, Chapter 3 “Noesis and Noema.” Just as there is a certain ambiguous doubling-with-a-difference in the sensuous stuff-intentional noesis unit – namely, that the first-stratum sense of the

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“sensuous moment,” the “hyletic,” gets transmuted in the second stratum to become sense intentional of something other than itself – so also there is a doubling-that-makes-a-difference in relation to the intentional sense in the unit, and with a rather different kind of ambiguity.11 The intentional sense of the stuff-noesis unit now gets doubled by a sense that ultimately has to belong, not to this stuff-noesis double-sense-unit itself, but to the object-that-is-intended by this unit. This correlate sense is termed the noema – or, alternately, “noematic content.” The ambiguity, now, lies in the way this noematic sense has to be equally both in some way in the intending experience12 and genuinely distinct and separate from it, especially in the case of perceptual experience. Husserl insists on the noema’s “lying in” or “dwelling in”13 perceptual experience; noematic sense, is genuinely involved in the noetically endowed living experience itself. He also frankly acknowledges the “great difficulties” here. “[These] difficulties pertain to the understanding of the noema’s mode of being, the way it is supposed to ‘lie’ in, to be ‘consciously’ [bewußt] in living experience [Erlebnis]. Most especially they concern the clean separation [reinliche Scheidung] of (1) those things that, in the manner of genuine components [in der Weise reeller Bestandstücke], are materially of living experience itself [Sache des Erlebnisses selbst] from (2) those things that are materially of the noema [Sache des Noema].”14 To maintain both these structural features – (a) “dwelling in” or “lying in” and (b) “clean separation,” Husserl in Chapter 4, of Part 3 in Ideas I tries to make clear the basic distinction here, namely, to allow the qualitative sensuousness of the noema to be in play in noetically governed experience while at the same time to have the noema not belong genuinely, constitutively to perceptual intentional noetic experience itself. This would enable concrete actual appearing to be noematically of the object itself, in that object’s transcendencestatus, even though appearing is genuinely and constitutively “immanent” in noetic conscious experience. Specifically, in Husserl’s phrasings, the noematic sense – in its concreteness and in the full complexity of its “foreshadowings” and “aftershadowings” (e.g., the shifting color tones if a tree trunk as light and shade play on it) – while still “belonging to the essence of the living experience of perception,” nevertheless is not a “genuine [reell]” constituent of that perceptual experience, and is no more contained in that experience than is the actual tree itself. This is in contrast to the status of the sensequalitative factor, the sensuous “stuff”-component, of the two factors that we have already seen are “genuine [reell]” constituents of the perceptual experience: (a) the “hyletic moment” – e.g., non-intentional sensuous color – that in an actual perceptual experience, is (b) “animated” by the noesis to become the color-sense-of-a-something–intended.

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These differences, now, play a crucial constitutive role for the experience, namely, in the way a concrete correlation can take place between (a) the noematically concrete object itself and (b) noetic experience itself. Recall how the basic components function. The “concrete experience-data [konkrete Erlebnisdaten],” the concrete “sensuous hyle” of the “stuff-stratum” – examples of which were sheer color- or touch-givenness “contents” with no intentional efficacity of their own – enter into intentional worth by virtue of the noetic endowing that transforms that hyletic sense into the sense-of-somethingitself that is other and beyond the constituents of conscious experience. Husserl writes: “In view of this, here is what immediately follows: these hyletic moments (the sensed color, sounds, etc.) but also the animating apprehensional takes [beseelende Auffassungen, i.e., the noeses]15 – both together: the [very] appearing of the color, the sound, and thus of any quality whatever of the object – belong to the ‘genuine’ composition of the living experience [zum ‘reellen’ Bestande des Erlebnisses].” (§97, pp. [203–204], Husserl’s emphasis, my inserted word and emphasis in boldface). In a word, Husserl finds that the concrete material accord between these two sensuous elements – one a constituent of the noema, the other a constituent of the full unit of noetic experience – enable the intentional sense of the noesis to correlate with (one might like to say “coincide” with – or more forceful yet “become one with”) the noematic sense of the correlate, thus grounding the efficacity of noetic animating to achieve the appearing of the object itself with genuine, “in the flesh” evidentness. Notice the way Husserl put things here: the very appearing of the object itself – made possible by the accord between sensuous hyletic data and concrete, qualitative noematic sense – is a genuine constituent of living experience itself. The qualitatively sensuous element found right in the experience itself consecrates, as it were (to use an expression that is not Husserl’s), that appearing as concordant with the correlative qualitatively sensuous particulars in the noematic sense of the object. In effect, the sensuous element that is an intrinsic constituent of the noetic intentional experience is the material ground within noetic experience – right in the noetic “intentionalizing” transformation (if I may phrase it this way) of that sensuous element – for the correlative accord of noetic sense with the sense-constituent of the noematic. And this is how “something real is consciously gotten [bewußt] and, especially, is given in consciousness itself.” (§97, p. [204].)16 Here as much as anywhere we find how utterly basic it is that the region which the epoché and reduction begin to disclose, the region of phenomenological structures and processes, be termed the region of sense in general. Often enough in respect to this point the term “meaning” is used in

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English translations instead of “sense,” given the near equivalence of the two words. However, what Husserl has been dealing with in these noetic-noematic elaborations is not “meaning” in the quite usual connotation of some kind of purely “mental” kind of thing that one tends to assume for linguistic formulations. Husserl’s analyses here are working at a level prior to linguistic formulation with its manifold explicit, conceptual and often highly intellectual, differentiations and distinctions. He is focusing on experientially lived meaning, not meaning focused on in conceptual statements. He is delineating the role of sensuous qualities as being the very manifestness of the real around us. In a word, the sense of noetic-noematic appearing is not meaning in concepts or sentences, but sense at a level prior to concepts and sentences, and perhaps as an element underpinning all conceptual and grammatical articulations of meaning. While this issue is a larger question than we can pursue here, we should nevertheless take note: the sense of the sensuousness of the manifest appearing in which real objects in our surroundings are genuinely, experientially there for us has a density and concrete richness that robustly imposes itself, precisely in that sensuousness. In no other way can we be convinced of the real. It is the lineaments and quality of this sense of “sense” that I think Husserl is trying to capture in his analyses, for which the word “meaning” may a bit too thin or too indefinite or ethereal an expression.17 This brief reflection on the sense involved in Husserl’s complex, subtle, and technical analysis brings me now to the general issues stated at the beginning that I want to raise, all of which in fact center on the role of “sense.” At the risk of some tedium, I have gone as compactly as I could into these details of Husserl’s noetic-noematic analyses of “sense” in order to provide those issues with a pivot and a framework within which to show the kind of difficulties I think need addressing. Let me take up again the question of why it is that “sense,” despite its vivid integration on the one hand in noetically intentional experience and on the other in the noema of the transcendent object itself, cannot be fixed very precisely in terms either of the immanence of intentional experience or the transcendence of the object experienced. Noematic sense is asserted to be a genuine constituent in the “transcendent something” itself, and not in the experience of it18 ; and yet that sense has to be said to “lie” or “dwell in,” or even be “immanent” to, the intentional experience.19 This same sort of “immanence” of the nonimmanent transcendent is even more vigorously affirmed in Husserl’s remark in §97, pp. [203–204], quoted earlier,20 that the actual appearing of the object perceived consists of the “hyletic moments” and the “animating apprehensional intents,” the noeses, in their integration as the living perceptual experience. In other words, intentional experience is ipso facto genuine engagement with the

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noematic sense of the transcendent something – the actual appearing of it – but in a way other than in genuine compositional integration – even while this very engagement, precisely as the appearing of the transcendent something, is deemed a genuine constituent of intentional experiential side of the intentional “correlation.” One can only conclude that there is one conceptual framework governing the noetic-noematic analysis with its duality, while the status of integrative inclusion of both correlate factors as a single structure seems to require an alternate conceptual framework, one not brought into play in the analyses of Ideas I. Even more than that, another level of conceptual framing is dramatically mentioned in this book, and deliberately left aside, namely, the that of absolute that is truly ultimate in phenomenological investigation, in contrast to the seeming non-ultimacy of noetic-noematic structuring in the thematic explicit intending of transcendent somethings. This genuine absolute in question, now, is the proto-flow of temporality as it would be phenomenologically disclosed in analysis directed to it (§81 and §82). I shall shortly return to this lacuna in Ideas I, especially in regard to the radical transformation it would impose on the analytic description provided in Ideas I. At this point, however, we must determine the conceptual framing that is in force in the noetic-noematic analysis of Ideas I, precisely in view of the way in which the sense that is so central here functions only in being both divided and ambiguous just where the intentionality of consciousness is supposed to bring together “immanence” and “transcendence.” Husserl does not develop his phenomenology in a vacuum; he works in fact in the conjunction of two major philosophical influences. One of the factors in the intellectual milieu that led to Husserl’s Ideas is the impetus of Brentano’s introduction of “intentionality” into the nineteenth century by way of the revival of Thomism in Catholic theological circles – Neo-Thomism. Adapting this conception Brentano was a vigorous influence upon the development of psychology in new ways in the late nineteenth century. The other influence is the revival of Kant in reaction against Hegel under the impetus of extraordinary advances in such sciences as experimental psychology, physics and chemistry – NeoKantianism. In fact, Husserl’s position was both identified in some measure with NeoKantianism, and severely criticized for failures in following it. The details of this confrontation are nowhere better explicated than in Eugen Fink’s 1933 essay in Kantstudien where he laid out both how phenomenology differed fundamentally from “critical philosophy,” and how phenomenology had to correct its own failures by a self-critical understanding of its own radical program.21 In relation to the summary treatment I have offered of sense in Husserl’s noetic-noematic analysis, two points can be made about Fink’s essay, even if

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the essay’s exposition is far more complex than what I shall represent here. First of all, Fink makes clear that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is not meant to work within the framework of NeoKantianism. That is, Husserl’s phenomenology is not meant as an exercise that attempts to avoid positing transcendent being by instead having recourse to a pure a priori realm that is wholly antecedent to the being found in the world, that is wholly antecedent to any “reality” – despite the fact that it insists that antecedent factors of this sort condition all that human cognition could claim to reach of any “reality.” As Fink characterizes it, in the NeoKantian context this realm of antecedent purity to which one turns for the clarification of the conditions of possibility for rational knowledge is the realm of that pure “meaning [Sinn] which is prior to all being [der allem Seienden vorausliegt] and makes it into what it is.”22 So how does Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology not share this feature in NeoKantianism, even though it may seem to? Demonstrating this difference in its core factors is precisely the aim of Fink’s essay, and it comes down to this. Rather than recourse to a pure field of absoluteness – an absoluteness of meaning – antecedent to world-phenomena, Husserl formulates phenomenology’s basic problem as the question of how the world itself comes to be precisely as that all-encompassing ground and frame for both experience as such and all articulation of the sense that one finds in experience.23 Phenomenology’s “move of transcending [Transzensus]” thus has an orientation decidedly different from that of NeoKantianism. It moves beyond inner-worldly being but also beyond the world as such, not just beyond that which is “intra-worldly,” yet “not to an ‘absolute’ beyond the world.” Rather than “transcending the world [Transzensus über die Welt hinaus] . . . to an ‘absolute’ beyond the world,” phenomenology “explicitly brings the world cognitively back into the depth of the absolute in which it in itself lies hidden before the reduction.”24 Enabling this return of the world to its “origins” in the “transcendental absolute” is what the epoché prepares and the reduction is working towards.25 Yet this move in fact poses a further problem for phenomenology26 : if this “transcendental absolute” of origins is itself prior to and beyond the world, what is its status in being? This “absolute” certainly is neither spatially somewhere nor somewhere in time, because it is the very origin of these features of the world as the realm of spatio-temporal appearing and experiencing. At the same time, this “absolute’s” entire “originative” function is to bring about this very world of spatio-temporal temporal appearing and experiencing. Its whole identity lies in that origination. It has no “life” or “being” apart from that constituting moment. It is indeed a peculiar “absolute” in only being intelligible in terms of that which springs from it, namely, the world as experienceable.

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This consummate issue in transcendental phenomenology is a matter we shall see repeatedly arising, and I shall end my treatment with it. What I have to do now is get back to the noetic-noematic analysis of sense precisely (a) in regard to the contrast between sense in phenomenology and the status of “sense = meaning” in NeoKantianism, (b) the ambiguity in sense-function that this analysis exhibits, and (c) the framework that is in force in the conceptuality of this analysis. Considering these matters will finally enable us to us to move to the remaining three issues I proposed at the beginning. What is at issue here in the analysis in Ideas I is the way in which the obvious psychological character of its framing obscures what is the properly transcendental point that a constitutive phenomenological inquiry was to provide. This, too, is one of the central concerns in Fink’s 1933 Kanstudien essay, and is so as part of the comprehensive recasting of phenomenology, on the basis (1) of the level of analysis Husserl had reached as his retirement began in late 1928, and (2) of the critique of transcendental phenomenological method that Fink was preparing for Husserl.27 That a psychological description of intentionality governs the approach to the transcendental characterization of it, in Husserl’s noetic-noematic analysis, shows in the way the pivotal role of sense gets partitioned out in terms of the distinction, and separation, of noesis from noema. The overriding concern seems to be in accounting for how sense belongs to noetic experience [Erlebnis, i.e., living experience], on the one hand, given that experience, on the other hand, has to be differentiated from the object experienced as ontologically distinct. That is, as we see from the quote from Ideas I §96 (on p. 8 above), each has to be defined and mutually distinguished in terms of its “genuine constitutive components [in der Weise reeller Bestandstücke].” Again as we saw, Husserl underscores the point in the same passage by characterizing this distinction as a “clean separation [reinliche Scheidung].” This accords with the whole contrast of “immanence” with “transcendence,” of immanent noetic living experience on the one hand and, on the other, of the object that lies beyond this immanence, “outside” it, transcendent to experience. In sum, the psychological structural mechanism, as it were, that constitutes the experience as distinct from and against the object must have its own sense-constituent – the sensuous hyletic moment transformed by noesis into intentional sense content – while the object as well must have in turn its own sense-constituent, the noematic content correlate, the noematic sense (again, in all its temporal “foreand after-shadowing” complexity). Yet the true transcendental sense of the sense in play here is that what is actually reached in experience and what is given to it is given in that very sense, not as somehow hiding beneath or behind that sense (as one may

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conclude from the noematic, temporally integrated partiality and relativity of that sense). Moreover, this very situation of achieving givenness, in full evidentness [Evidenz], embraces integrally in its transcendental character both experience and the object. They are not divided by intending-and-appearing transcendentally considered, but bound together therein; the “two” are a single dynamic structure, not a summative joining of two in themselves “cleanly separable” factors.28 To put it another way, the transcendental structure involved here is not to be described or explained in terms of components delimited and defined as structures and processes that come about from transcendental origination (namely, psychological structure and processes, especially in contrast to the transcendent), but rather in its own terms, namely, as the integrative accomplishment of the ultimate absolute originative source itself. In a word, the structures and mechanisms of Husserl’s noetic-noematic analysis are meant to be transcendental, yet remain short of that aim in their analytic particulars. I shall have to return to the problem of an analysis of the properly transcendental “in its own terms” later. Several steps are still needed to provide enough material to grasp that issue.29 At this point one must not overlook the role that sense and the sensuous play here, and the problematic character that sense and sensuousness have come to have. On the one hand, as was seen in Husserl’s noetic-noematic analysis, sensuousness is the very element for achieving and assuring the manifest givenness of the noematically appearing object itself. It is the hyletically sensuous, the materially sensuous, prior to intentional transformation, that, as it were, anchors or grounds the noetic “grip” (if I may put it that way) on the noematic as of the object itself in its sensuously material manifestness – in its “in the flesh [leibhaft]” evident givenness.30 On the other hand, one could also argue as well that it is this hyletic sensuousness that, in compromising any supposed pure non-material, non-worldliness of meaning – sense – enables Husserl to avoid the “immanentism” typical of NeoKantianism. To put it another way, it is material sensuousness that mediates the noetic bond with the noematic, thus diminishing the latent “immanentism” of Husserl’s noetic-noematic analysis. More than that, as we shall soon see, sensuousness plays a fundamental role in Husserl’s analyses of genetic process, including those in his last effort to analyze temporalization. With this consideration of implications that tend to diminish difference and separation in the distinctions operative in Husserl’s noetic-noematic analysis, we finally reach the step that moves us to the second issue I had mentioned at the very beginning. For to the extent that the “stuff-data” of material sensuousness is a sub-layer for the “animating,” intentionality-conferring noetic top-layer in hierarchical combination so that materially sensuous sense only

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becomes sense proper when incorporated in noesis, a residue of the classic dualism of nature and spirit is in play. To put it another way, in this residue of a psycho-physical structural conception we find an example of a nature-spirit dualism. So, if we also find indications of the breakdown of the divisiveness, and therefore indication of the non-ultimacy of a hierarchical schematic of distinctions – even if it be cast as the way different “layers” come together in an operation that integrates them – we then find ourselves confronting the possible need to reconsider psycho-physical “layerism” and perhaps the whole nature-spirit duality. NATURE AND SPIRIT Put a little more fully, here again, now, is the second prime theme: 2. One of the most important openings in phenomenology is the serious questioning that might lead to overcoming the nature-spirit dichotomy, in view particularly of the central significance of living being in the phenomenology of experience; In the context of the long discussion just presented, the best way to move to the second issue is to comment on one phrase in the wording of the first issue, namely, my speaking of the “radically sui generis status” of sense (Sinn). I say “radical sui generis” because from the beginning in Husserl’s work, and in the texts that we have considered, sense becomes that by which something utterly fundamental is named, whereas nothing is offered as that in terms of which to define sense itself. This is certainly the case for the status of sense “in the investigation of phenomena,” again as I put my first issue, in the noeticnoematic investigation of phenomena. We shall see the fundamental role of sense highlighted in my third proposed issue as well. At the present point, however, Husserl’s analysis has also displayed a resistant ambiguity in “sense,” which I have proposed suggests an opening in phenomenology, precisely in phenomenology’s transcendental thrust, toward the radical questioning and possible overcoming of the nature-spirit dichotomy. Let us look first at some indications of considerations that might reinforce this reconsideration in the material we have been taking up from Ideas I. We can begin with the way the German term for experience, Erlebnis, connotes living being – lebendiges Sein. It is a connotation that Husserl explicitly keeps as he moves from mundane, pre-epoché and pre-reduction description into transcendental analysis.31 He makes the point quite simply: “Every I lives its experiences [Jedes Ich erlebt seine Erlebnisse].”32 There

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are other places where this same connotation is made explicit,33 but this one captures it succinctly. Now, along with of the way living experience embraces the whole range of conscious intentional “acts,”34 there is a second structural feature. Still within noetic-noematic analysis, Husserl finds in concrete experience – in Erlebnis: living experience – a “flow of becoming,” a “phase itself flowing of originarity [ein selbst fließende Originärität] in which the living Now of living experience, in its contrast with its ‘before’ and ‘after,’ comes into awareness.”35 Whatever further modifications and levels of experience come about, in perception as such “we are led back to certain proto-experiences [Urerlebnisse], to ‘impressions,’ that represent [darstellen] absolutely originary experiences in the phenomenological sense.”36 This feature, the temporality of the coming-about of experience precisely with the sensuous-sense element within it that anchors the ultimate worth of intentional sense as of something actually given, as we have seen, is something Husserl could not leave unmentioned in his analysis. This is what leads to his speaking of temporality as the “ultimately and truly absolute” absolute (§81, p. [163]), but it is also precisely what he turns to in his genetic analytic of consciousness – which we shall soon take up. Right now, however, there is still another consideration. We have just seen the sensuousness element acknowledged as having the status of originarity, and this very status will be probed and affirmed again and again in Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, and in his third and last investigation of temporalization [Zeitigung]. Again we face the implications of that base-level transcendental role for the way in which we need to reconsider the static hierarchical order in force in Ideas I by which a higher factor – the noetic, “animating” intentional sense-giving factor – rules with respect to the lower sensuousness factor – “impressions” and “experience-data.” In the present issue, however, it is not the contrast between static and genetic analysis that is at issue, but rather the terms of the static hierarchy itself that is in force throughout Ideas I. And it is not simply because it is in force there, but because it is also in force in Ideas II as well. The irony is, however, that in Ideas II reconsideration of the lower two “layers” (or strata) begins to undermine the rule of the layer immediately above them in the hierarchy. For in Ideas II a lower “layer” (stratum) in human being, the sensuous living level of a non-reflective consolidation of sense, is already a kind of structured awareness underlying and supporting more differentially articulated, and intentionally recast, meanings in deliberate focal engagement with things and doings in one’s world.37 It is not possible to do more than sample a small portion of the richness of Ideas II, weaving together those features that bear upon the issue of an implied thrust toward radical reconsideration of the static hierarchy that continues to

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function in the book; for the book’s treatment is arranged strictly in a series of “foundational” layers: material nature and the physical body, animal nature and the living body, psychic nature and the soul, personal being, and, finally, at the apex above them all, spiritual being.38 Let me begin with the way Ideas II shows that it is a bodily capacity that enables living experience to be the experience of spatiotemporal material being precisely as given. All materiality only appears and is experienced precisely as qualitative; and the materially qualitative is simply the sensuously qualitative. This means of course, obviously, that sensuous material in appearing is precisely correlative to the senses, with “correlative” meaning here constitutively “adjusted” to the sense modalities of vision, hearing, and touch. In a word, sense as sensuous – that is, in its originary status – is, by constitutive principle, of a living body in terms of which something real is (“noetically”) intended and (“noematically”) given manifestly as there, in the world. As in noetic-noematic analysis – but not clearly articulated there in the manner of its achieving this – sensuousness is constitutively fundamental; it is transcendentally the original element for ensuring that the experiencing (the sensing in a fuller sense) and the experienced (the sensed or the sensible) be brought together as one integrated going-on of experience. We must ask, then, what actually does noetic “animating” (Beseelung) do? The general conception of the different respective roles of non-intentional “sensations” on the one hand, and on the other the “animating” of them to become noetically intentional (in Ideas II Husserl resorts to the terms used in Logical Investigations: “constituting apprehensional takes, konstituierende Auffassungen”), basically repeats here, in a somewhat more refined way, what he asserted in Ideas I; but this general conception simply presupposes what is up for questioning. Moreover, this conception slides over the way the pre-noetic sensations, in particular kinesthetic sensations, inasmuch as they function in a pre-reflective, pragmatically operative rather than cognitive thematic mode, are more than merely “motivating” – i.e., “motivating” the “apprehensional takes.” They have a sense of their own already (along with differences of sense-modality – visual, audible, tactile, etc.), even if not with explicit intentional focus, but rather with operative sense value. 39 And, again, these modalities are the tactile, the visual, the audible, the kinesthetic, and the proprioceptive schematic. Two considerations have to be emphasized here. The first, following upon the point just raised, is that it may be too mechanical a procedure to suppose that all differentiation of sensuous sense requires an “animating” “apprehensional take” to give it that differentiation; nonetheless doing so does provide a reason for its distinction from sheer sensuousness. However, we have to ask: Must the sensuous sense of “impressional data” actually be so utterly formless,

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utterly without differentiation? Is this “stratum” actually utterly bereft of all pre-determination that may accrue to it from its live-bodily matrix – or is this exclusion asserted, at least in part, by virtue of naïvely accepted adherence to a particular dominant interpretive schema? In any case, in Ideas II (§§13, 14 and 15) Husserl treats the matter in accord with the general hierarchical schema; and this seems to be one of the major differences between his analysis and that of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. But I shall turn to that shortly. The second consideration to bring in here is of pivotal significance, and it is this. Material properties, in their very becoming both experientially lived in sensuous sense and noetically intended as of something else, are qualitized. It is in the mode of being qualitative, and not as applied causal physical force, that material properties are experienced. This is the meaning in Husserl’s use of Qualifizieren and Qualifiziertheit in Ideas II. These terms express the way what is normally in play as simply a sheer physically material, causal property is transformed into qualitative sense; and this fundamental, constitutive qualitativeness is what phenomenological analysis turns to and discloses in the given “Faktum” (if we may use here this special term “Faktum” that Husserl reserves for really primary ultimates) of sense qualitative manifestness. Sensuous, qualitative sense is precisely the comprehensive genus of experiential intending, appearing, and givenness. This sense in the terms Qualifizieren and Qualifiziertheit – “qualitization” – however, is unfortunately not quite exhibited in either the French or the English translations,40 but I think it is of fundamental importance. It is intrinsic to the case one would make for the antecedence of phenomenological investigation to that of the sciences (or even of non-phenomenological philosophies) with respect to establishing the validity of experience and cognition to reach the genuinely real (or the “ontologically actual”). To put it otherwise, sensuous qualitative sense is the mode of materiality for experiential efficacy, the prime example of which efficacy is – in addition to everyday life – perhaps the unquestioned status of the empirical for science. On this score Husserl and Merleau-Ponty are in accord. What we have reached, then, at this point in my presentation is the convergence of a series of indicators – and there are many more that could be assembled – for what is more than just a correction within an accepted methodological and conceptual schema, but a radical shift that questions, and perhaps relativizes, that very schema. This is the point of the issue I am raising – but let me pose it in another way, in the form of this question: What exactly is the life that characterizes experience as “living”? Is it precisely, and no more than, the pure “temporal current” of consciousness? This does not seem to be the case, given the role of sensuous sense in Husserl’s analysis of the noetic and the noematic on the one hand, and the role of the body in Ideas II on the

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other. And, indeed, we would see the central role of sensuous sense – even of feeling about which I have said nothing here yet, although Husserl does in Ideas II41 – in his last set of investigations into temporalization. (There will be a little more about that soon!) What we find in Ideas II, nonetheless, is the opening of a spectrum of “strata” precisely in living experience. As a result, one has to talk of bodily life, psychic life, personal life, spiritual life. Indeed, Husserl insists that the “animating” that is done on a “sensuous” perceptual stratum at a higher level, e.g., in conceptually informed perception, is one in which “the spiritual sense, by animating the sensuous appearances, is fused with them in a certain way instead of just being bound with them side by side.”42 Indeed, in the “apprehensional take that grasps the human [MenschenAuffassung],” the sense “human,” “completely penetrates the apprehensional take that grasps the body.”43 Obviously it would be unfair to push the “layering” of the strata to be a sequence of mutually impenetrable strata, and integrative unity is Husserl’s aim. Yet this conceptuality of layers does allow decided division, as §64 in Ideas II attests; for here the naturalizing of spirit is absolutely excluded, in the interest of the transcendental role that “spirit” must de jure possess. “Subjects cannot be taken as in the end simply nature [darin aufgehen, Natur zu sein], because then what gives nature sense would be gone.”44 Of course, it all depends upon what “nature” means. Here no doubt Husserl takes it to mean the natural sciences naturalistic nature, as is usual throughout the modern period. All the same, the integration Husserl proclaims is at least limited, and, in view the phenomena disclosed on the “lower” levels, ambiguous. Yet in the lectures Husserl gave on “Natur und Geist,” at least in the form they have in his written text from 1927, he entertained something far more creative than the sheer, and dogmatic, positing of a nature-spirit divide. For economy’s sake, let me simply state the proposals Husserl made in the “Introduction” to his lectures on “Nature and Spirit” in the summer semester of 1927. There is one “universe of being [Seinsuniversum],” he writes, the one universe “pregiven” to us in “the all-encompassing [or universal: universal] experience that runs through all life.”45 Because of that, both nature [Natur] and spirit [Geist], despite the world-embracing character of each concept, only make sense as non-independent in a binding relation with each another. “Nature is not conceivable without spirit, spirit not conceivable without nature,” Husserl writes; “Nature has also spirit-determinations, spirit has also nature-determinations. This means that any scientifically closed off conceptuality is an abstraction [abstraktiv].”46 Since, then, these two supreme conceptual science regions “link together essentially in the all-encompassing concept of the world,” Husserl will ultimately and radically clarify the sense of

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each by relating each back to the “all-encompassing concept of the world” in a “description of the world purely as the world of experience [Erfahrung].”47 Here we see Husserl envisaging a strictly transcendental phenomenological investigation that, embracing natural sciences within its economy, had to undertake a reconsideration of “nature” and “spirit” as far as that could be taken in terms of the transcendental inquiry into the origination of the world of the experientially sense-modal manifestness of actual being. How much Husserl achieved of this is a matter I must set aside, I would suggest that the texts he has left, while there are any number of contributions to the opening of this reconsideration, do not come close to being its achievement. However that may be, this questioning of the ultimate status and sense of the nature-spirit dichotomy is nevertheless very much at the heart of Merleau-Ponty’s research project. Now, in posing and addressing the questioning of the nature-spirit dichotomy, we shall in the end have to confront the most intractable issue in phenomenology, namely, the question of how the structure and character of human subjectivity, in its status as originated, can be legitimately taken up as the basis for conceptually delineating the structure and character of transcendental subjectivity in its status as originating. That will come soon, at the very end of my paper, although all along now we have been preparing for it one step at a time. Husserl himself provides the next step needed here. In Ideas II Husserl remarks that the human I48 “does not have its origin from experience [Erfahrung] – in the sense of associative apperceptions [Apperzeptionen] in which manifold contextual unities are constituted – but from life (life is not for the I, but is itself the I).”49 This is all in Chapter 2 of the Third and last part of the book; yet as Chapter 3 of Part 3 proceeds, and specifically in §64, the last unit in the book, “spirit” ends up being delineated in an “ontological priority” over nature that preserves its transcendental function, in the constitution of the human person, in opposition to nature.50 What we seem to have here, however, is not just a conflict between one region and another – between “spirit” and “nature” – but equally a conflict between (a) a static phenomenology yielding regions – as in the hierarchy in Ideas II as well as in the subservience of “sensuous sense” to “noetic sense” in Ideas I – and (b) a genetic phenomenology that traces the coming about of structures and strata of operation. Spirit comes into play “from the top of” the hierarchy down, endowing lower levels with a “spiritual” dimension, even where a stratum – in the present case, the operative human I of “I can” efficacity in the world – comes to be from life. Here hierarchical “top down” determination stamps “bottom up” originative initiatives with its own trans-natural character. With this we meet the central methodological difference between Husserl

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and Merleau-Ponty, even if it is Husserl whose genetic analysis is meant to have priority over static phenomenological determinations. I am suggesting that this effort on Merleau-Ponty’s part embodies the more sustained thrust in phenomenology toward a questioning and overcoming of the hierarchical nature-spirit dichotomy. In this, indeed, we find the convergence of my second prime theme beginning to converge with the third. To that we now turn. GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY Here, now, is the third prime theme spoken of at the beginning: 3. Central to transcendental phenomenology is the careful assessment and understanding of the lessons of the genetic analysis that lies in the phenomenology of ultimate temporalization (Zeitigung); for it is only with the reintegration of the results of this analysis in all previous stages and levels of studies that the full meaning of those studies and their findings can be realized. The proposal stated here is hardly debatable if one sees the way Husserl himself conceived of the distinction between static and genetic phenomenology. This distinction is not a matter of simply alternate methodologies of equal validity, but rather a step of fundamental progression to the final stage of investigation and to the ultimate level on which to discover not just how human life can be articulated in the many facets of its experience, but how the fundamental framing of that experiential life in all its facets as experiential of that which is comes about. In a word, origination has to be disclosed – and analytically described – not as divided in terms of each given level of the static layout of different structures, but in terms of factors of becoming whereby the structures and kinds of constituted unities ranged on those levels have themselves all developed. And the development of structures and unities in their differences and levels takes place precisely in temporalization: that is, temporality in its dynamic integrating of now, no-longer, and non-yet, all as the intrinsic meaning not only of everything that appears, but as well of all appearing and intending as such. Temporalization brings about the entire range of experiencing and the experienced; the world of sense-modal experience originates and is maintained in prototemporalization [Urzeitigung].51 It is crucial, of course, to realize that this phenomenology of temporalization is not a rival to the cosmological account of the evolution of the physical universe. What is at issue in genetic phenomenology – as in phenomenology as a whole – is the origination of the real of sense-sensuous manifestness and of the way sense-manifestness is for intentional experiencing. This is the

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nature of the world the origination of which is in question – the world of the experiential taking of the experientially given in the sense-manifold of that givenness. The character of the inquiry, then, is into that kind of sensuous-sense givenness which is the ground for all orders of sense that unfold subsequently, i.e., from pre-perceptual operative engagement in a milieu through perceptual experience of specific objects and events to the articulation of sense as conceptual meaning in orders of various sorts of differentiation, abstraction, and rank. All of this is taken up in Husserl’s manuscript work in genetic phenomenology, but here it can be only one issue on which I focus: the issue, namely, of the kind of sense that is in play at the level of proto-experiential sense-givenness. It is obvious in all this that we are following the terms of a hierarchy of levels. This is precisely indicative of the way static phenomenology provides conceptual direction and guidance to the work of analysis and description, leaving actual genetic analysis and description to correct both the conceptual characterizations that have been provisionally guiding the investigation and that, more importantly, have set the hierarchical levels as seemingly stable and fixed differentiations. In effect, what genetic investigation in principle is supposed to do is to put those conceptual concepts and schemata back into their originative dynamic so that we come to see that they in fact do not come down to the world from some a priori, ethereal everlasting region, but instead come about from the bottom up.52 That, of course, leads to the question of just what this “bottom” is. While this latter question is the final prime theme and problematic I wish to pose, the obvious thing one can say, and to say provisionally, is that this is what the transcendental is supposed to mean in phenomenology: the “originative source” of the world – again, world in the sense of the sense-experiential taking of the sense-experientially given.53 At the present point, then, while leaving aside more extended treatment of Husserl’s massive work of analysis here, I wish to emphasize one consistent central point about it, namely, the fundamental role of the sensuous in the “coming-about” that genetic analysis is to disclose. To illustrate this, a few passages in one of his C-Manuscripts will have to suffice, a passage having to do with “the living present [die lebendige Gegenwart].”54 To begin with, it is to be expected that Husserl would work back to genetic goings-on from the achieved perception of an actual, evidently given object. This is in accord with the way the hierarchical order of strata in consciousness offers guidance for genetic analysis. What this means is that many of the components familiar from noetic-noematic analysis are in play here as well. Thus, “the regress to the I for which the world holds [gilt] and which is the I that produces the holding [Geltung schaffendes], modifies holdings, yet always produces unitary holding – and does so on the basis of contents that are always antecedent – is

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thus regress to, as the I, the proto-source of all productions of holding and to what the active, performing I ultimately presupposes as content.”55 Two remarks that Husserl then makes bring us both to the core of genetic phenomenology and to the deepest problem confronting it. (NB: in what follows all bold emphasis in the text is mine.) The first remark: “We must first start looking around in the proto-modal present [in der urmodalen Gegenwart] and learn how to understand it in its double or multiple proto-modal transformation, [i.e.,] in proto-modal non-egoic [nichtichlichen] transformation, in the proto-temporalization in which an ego-alien hyletic quasi-world has its ‘pre-’being [‘Vor’-sein].”56 The second remark, now, has to do with what the “proto-modal hyletic” element amounts to at the ultimate level: “[H]yletic content affects the I in feeling [im Gefühl]”57 – a point which Husserl considers in some detail regarding what “affecting” may mean, and then he continues – “[T]he content is the ego-alien, the feeling is of course egoic [ichlich]. The ‘appeal’ of the content is not an appeal [Anruf] to something, but the I’s feeling of being-there-in-on-something [ein fühlendes Dabeisein], and not first as being-there-in-on-something by approaching and reaching. . . . To feel is the way the I has its basic character [die Zuständlichkeit des Ich]58 before any activity, and, if it is active, in the activity.” A bit later he adds this note: “To the streaming present, in the temporalizing-temporalized streaming of which all genesis is living genesis, there belongs, now, the constant hylé structure and the hylé in the characteristics that feeling has.”59 What we see here is a complex way of delineating the following features: 1. Husserl is trying to get to the uttermost proto-coming-about in which I have the beginnings of awareness both of my own living being and of that which is not my own living being. At the stage of sheer beginning, that distinction between self and not-self as thematic is not in force (even if operatively in biological terms, it is never absent in a living organism). All there is comprehensive integrative proto-modal hyletic feeling. 2. However, even if this is a close as one gets to sensuousness without defined sense, it is not formless sense. Hyletic sensuousness has the value of being intrinsic to a living moment, and in this way is prior to all definite activity and intrinsic to all such activity. 3. Hyletic sensuousness is also the seed-moment for all acquisition of definiteness in the coursing of the temporal dynamic. 4. Finally, the sensuous hyletic moment is essentially felt being carrying through the dynamic integration of temporal phases. The core of the having of oneself in living temporality, of the experiencing of one’s world as sensuousness, gets elaborated into modally diversified qualitative

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perceptual experience; and the experiencing of the structures of an I’s own living being as temporal experience proceeds makes both life and consciousness essentially pathic.60 However, these positive affirmations are problematized by the fact that they are all in terms of the kind of being that origination gives rise to, rather than being some kind of presumed directly given, fully concrete presentation of originative genesis as such. The little word “‘pre’-being” [“Vor”-sein],61 quoted a few paragraphs earlier, is the warning signal here. For if intuitional evidencing requires the process of appearing to be in play, how can that which originates appearing as such be the sort of something that can appear? How can a intuitional, evidencing phenomenology of the absolutely originative be done? Obviously there is something both correct and inevitable about the way Husserl is proceeding here, and something deeply problematic that undercuts its proposed genuine phenomenological disclosure of origins; and Husserl wrestles with it, in any number of places in the C-Manuscript texts.62 It is almost time to turn to that fourth of our prime themes, our four problematics. One more element is needed, however, that draws together much of what I have been laying out for you in the first three themes; and this is offered by taking up the way Merleau-Ponty’s studies push down (or back) towards origination. One might well argue that Merleau-Ponty in his entire phenomenological undertaking has been doing a genetic phenomenology. Even if one might want to claim that Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behavior is not yet really phenomenology, still the genetic direction for phenomenology is already announced in his “Introduction” to that book. Merleau-Ponty opens his preface by stating his aim “to understand the relations of consciousness and nature: organic, psychological or even social”; but then to address the specific questions he is primarily concerned with about these matters, he will come to them “by starting ‘from below’ and by an analysis of the notion of behavior.” He chooses behavior because “it is neutral with respect to the classical distinctions between the ‘mental [psychique]’ and the ‘physiological’ [physique] and thus can give us the opportunity of defining them anew.”63 Let me take two illustrations of the kind of findings Merleau-Ponty’s “bottom-up” approach offers. While this same approach can be exemplified in his Phenomenology of Perception, it is in his final research project that we find the more daring examples of this. Whereas in The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perceptionr Merleau-Ponty did his phenomenological analysis in concert with a close interpretive reading of then current psychology, in his lectures on “Nature” from

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1946 to 1960 his phenomenology is at work in a careful reading of then recent biology. To the extent that we may take the notes by unknown listeners that comprise the published text to be fairly accurate,64 these lectures are a remarkable effort at not only a reinterpretation of biology by way of insights in phenomenology, but a radicalization of phenomenology, in view of then currents of rethinking in biology, ultimately in order to overcome the mutual exclusion that reigning concepts and studies of nature on the one hand and of spirit/mind/soul on the other predominantly impose. For my purposes here, two ideas that Merleau-Ponty offers in these lectures converge most dramatically with openings we have seen in Husserl’s work. The first is this, occurring in its first formulation in a focus on “the notion of behavior”: By re-embodying sense, the notion of behavior remains something anchored in a body, but the body is no longer a machine; and if the organism is no longer a machine, from that point on behavior becomes a quasi-behavioral reality (Gesell).65 All of development is on the one hand maturation, bound to the weighted mass of the body, but on the other hand the body’s becoming has a direction and a meaning [un sens]: the mind and spirit [l’esprit] is not what descends into the body in order to organize it, but what emerges from it.66

In true genetic fashion, then, Merleau-Ponty has to find more suitable terms for the becoming of something that would radically challenge a long tradition of resistant categorical fixity and counter-genetic autonomy. This means he has to find new terms for the reinterpreted character he would see it to display, both in its emergent form and in its full-scale mature station. Of course any candidates for such new terms would have to be interpreted in accord with reinterpreted phenomenological terms; but this would be a mutually corrective effort. (Was this not perhaps always the case in Husserl’s work, up-to-date as he was with what was going on in various scientific sectors?) “Behavior,” then, already a candidate in Merleau-Ponty’s considerations in Structure of Behavior, now gets rethought further as another biologist suggests the kind of integrated whole of which behavior is one mode of manifestation: “Coghill . . . shows that the organism’s development to maturity and the emergence of its behavior are but a single something. In the axolotl, to exist from head to tail and to swim are one and the same thing.”67 “The animal must be considered as . . . both a physical being and a sense,” Merleau-Ponty writes, again interpreting Gesell.68 “By virtue of its endogenous initiative,” MerleauPonty adds as he proceeds, “the organism traces out what will be its future life; it designs its milieu (Umwelt); it contains a project in reference to its whole life.”69 In a word, behavior and structure are not two different things and this is not just naïve reference to the human observer. They are two ways of describing something, but they do not name separable components, but there is more to be said about this kind of sense inherent in animal life.

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Thus, in another kind of opening in this regard, Merleau-Ponty adverts to a feature of things in their integrative constitution as occurring in making sense of things precisely as manifest appearing in perceptual experience: “In the phenomenal milieu nothing prevents the whole from being something other than the sum of its parts, without for all that being a transcendent entity.”70 What this leads to here is something that Merleau-Ponty finds in the work of the renowned German biologist, Adolf Portmann, namely, his treatment of the proto-opening to the world that is richly in play in the realm of animals. For many higher animals identification by coloration and concealment by camouflage vitally matter. “The form of the animal is not the manifestation of a finality but of an existential value in manifestation, in presentation.”71 In the end, then, Merleau-Ponty writes, “[l]ife is not ‘the set of functions that resist death,’ to follow Bichat’s expression; it is the power to invent the visible. The identity of what sees with that which it sees seems an ingredient of animality.”72 A reading at considerable length is needed to take in all that Merleau-Ponty is developing in these lectures, but I must bring things to a close. What I hope is clear is that Merleau-Ponty is working out a phenomenology of origins by situating the inquiry not by simply assuming familiar ways of looking at things or by standard conceptions in philosophy, but by studying what is given in the careful investigation of living beings themselves that biological scientists, despite ignorance of phenomenology, are actually conducting. Pure reflective phenomenology may well be missing things if it foregoes attention to these discoveries. Again, it is not just human living being that needs to be looked at – the kind that thinks and speaks in conceptual sentences – but the kind that, long before humans and now all around them in incredible variety, began the whole business of living in the world. And it turns out that living being as such seems to provide a way of beginning beneath and before the emergence of the reflective consciousness of the philosopher in a way that at least complements Husserl’s insistence on there being a “fundament” of some kind that is precisely living sensuousness in the ultimate proto-“process” that one finds in one’s own conscious experience, the dynamic of temporality. In a word, Merleau-Ponty is renewing the inquiry into the origin of experiential being in the world by looking at nature where spirit is not opposite, but rather intrinsic to it. At the same time, nature comes to have to be understood and conceptualized more flexibly than in mechanical physicalist terms. Nature has to be recognized as not univocal, and the clearest proof of this is living nature, living organic being, as the biologist (and especially the developmental biologist), not the theoretical physicist sees it. This, however, does not mean Merleau-Ponty is simply inserting phenomenology into biology because human being emerges within the course

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of biological evolution. What his project does is something else. Just as human being as such must be subjected to the phenomenological epoché and reduction in order to disclose the “transcendental” about it – so that mundane, non-transcendental human features, and especially the human supposedly mental interior, do not get simply named transcendental with no real difference ensuing – so also now it is the natural living element in human being that Merleau-Ponty subjects to a phenomenological epoché and reduction. And now comes the really interesting point: if one can recognize that the sensuous is indeed a factor of nature in human being, if the sensuous precisely as felt in a way that is constitutive for human life holds such a fundamental role in the genetic account of how living human experience of the world comes about, then nature can indeed be analyzed for what of it might be disclosed as “transcendental” precisely in an “originative” function to be reinterpreted within the phenomenological economy.73 It turns out, moreover, that the very way the material world is experienced and disclosed, i.e., the very sense of materiality – the sense-qualitative ways that world is given in living kinesthetic sense: direction, force, configuration in motion, distance, extension, penetration, integration in action, weight, energy, inertia, mass, resistance, division, to name some features – is also the first way the sense of oneself is materially got – as oneself qualitatively material – in that same engagement with the material non-self other. We know materiality because we feel it and we live it, both together, in ourselves and in our milieu. What could be more of nature, especially since this kind of awareness begins with animals? And it is at the same time of spirit; for what is happening here is the concrete realization, the materialization of “spirit,” not by reducing it to energy interplay in physicalist-mechanical matter, but by finding that there are constitutive factors in “spirit” that are living-bodily, leiblich – if we relax the concept of spirit so as to be itself not ontologically and conceptually monolithic. Human being in its actual concreteness seems to demand this recasting of conceptions, beyond the kind of single-level abstractions that have nature on the one hand to be sheer mechanical physicality, and “spirit” on the other to be autonomous, purely immaterial intellect. Admittedly, the question of the autonomy of powers such as that of intellect – and of meanings for such powers, e.g., as in logic and mathematics, to bring in one of Husserl’s major themes – is a huge one, but I shall have to leave it aside here. Nonetheless, relevant to the present point are the considerations raised in my far too summary treatment of Husserl’s various works and manuscripts, for example, regarding the kinesthetic sense, the felt awareness, of what one is doing right in the going-on of one’s being and acting, the Vollzugsbewußtsein (“performance-consciousness”) that is deep within Husserl’s investigations

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even if he does not name it such.74 This is also the kind of “consciousness” operating in the fundamental dynamic of temporalization, again to be seen at various points in Husserl’s analyses of temporality75 ; but, I am afraid, that cannot be pursued further here. This brings me to the final prime theme and issue about which the indications already given at several points can be drawn together. LIMITATIONS TO THE DISCLOSURE OF ORIGINATION This issue was earlier formulated as follows: 4. One of the ultimate needs of phenomenology is careful theoretical critique of the limits in phenomenology’s investigation into origins, and adherence to the way that critique affects the comprehensive philosophical interpretations of phenomenology’s findings; for without realizing what phenomenological principles are capable of reaching validly and adequately, one cannot deal philosophically with the ultimate interpretation of phenomenology’s actual achievements. The limitations suggested here have already been introduced, with its most direct naming in Husserl’s speaking of the “pre-being” lying in temporalization as it itself stands prior to the determinations that build up to compose actual human temporal experience.76 For if what is at issue in the analysis of the genesis – the origination – of the whole deployment of intending and appearing in terms of which something is there for experience to take it as being there, how can that which gives rise to that deployment be itself something that genuinely appears (even if the showing here is cast as found in myself as temporalized)? And if there is no way in which, directly or indirectly, the originating can appear, how can it be found phenomenologically? If, indeed, all categories and terms, which one and all arise in natural human experiential settings, have to do, directly or derivatively, with the experiential precisely, how can they be taken to apply in any legitimate way to that which is antecedent to all human experiential situations?77 The answer to this question, which Husserl only came to realize needed to be addressed under the impetus of Fink’s focus on it during the latter’s years with him, is best summed up this way. Because the whole trajectory of phenomenological investigations takes its guidance from that which has already been “transcendentally originated,” has already been constituted – namely, our concrete experiential world and our concrete experience of it – the only way to know anything about origination will be the terms that we have for the

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originated. One way to put this – and it has to be Fink’s formulation because Husserl was just beginning to grasp what was at issue – is to say that “Absolute being” is, of course, not a being that would be met with on its own alongside or outside of that which is in being [das Seiende]. Rather it is only accessible at all from the ontical as a point of departure, It is in a certain sense the ontical itself, but inquired into so radically that it is the ontical, as it were, before its ειναι.78

Put another way, the antecedency of transcendental origination is not temporal antecedency in the world; it is an antecedency of what can only be found as of that which it gives rise to. “Regressively given antecedency is not to be confused with the antecedency of apriority.”79 It would be, in other words, a sense of antecedency wholly specific to phenomenology, and drawn from its specific methodology. There is a great deal more to be said methodologically about this whole issue,80 but in the end its effect on our consideration of the present prime themes, especially the second and third, is this. Given the always provisional character of positive characterizations – that is, given the need continually to correct hitherto accepted and affirmed concepts and categories as actual phenomenological investigation probes further and deeper into the constitution of human experiential life in the world – there is every legitimacy in principle, if genetically renewed investigation requires it,81 to reconsider both the meaning of sense and the ultimacy of the distinction between nature and spirit. It seems to me these investigations have not yet been done. Husserl did not carry them out, despite all he did accomplish, Heidegger never recognized the need to, and Merleau-Ponty’s effort was cut short by his death. It remains for us to take up this kind of work, in tandem with addressing the problematic of how to treat phenomenology’s ultimate issue, origination. University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky USA

NOTES 1

Françoise Dastur has made this point briefly in an essay of hers, “Pour une zoologie ‘privative’,” in Alter, Nr. 3, 1995, S. 283 n. 13. She makes the point that one’s reactions towards a thinker as a person is one thing, that towards the thought of that thinker quite another. 2 Husserl comes the closest (so far as I know) to making this point about defining the word “sense” when, in discussing another, closely related term, Bedeutung, in his second “Logical Investigation” (Logische Untersuchungen, II/1, Tübingen: Max Niemayer, 1928, p. 183), he writes: “What meaning [Bedeutung] is can only be given us as immediately as color and sound are. It allows of no further defining, it is descriptively ultimate. Every time we carry out an expression or

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understand one, it means something to us and right in that moment [aktuell] we are aware of its sense.” (My translation.) 3 These of course are respectively his “Bernau manuscripts” of 1917–1918 and the C-manuscripts of 1929–1934. The first is now published as Die Bernauer Manuskripte über das Zeitbewusstsein (1917/1918), Husserliana XXXIII, edited by Rudolf Bernet and Dieter Lohmar, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001; and the second as Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934): Die C-Manuskripte, Husserliana Materialien VIII, edited by Dieter Lohmar, Dordrecht: Springer, 2006. 4 The very title of Ideas I, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomentologischen Philosophie, (my bold face) indicates clearly that the book is a proposal and a working toward an achievement, not the definitive achievement itself. The title of the first book itself, Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, reinforces for the reader that Ideas I is an initial and introductory treatment, requiring the volumes to follow to elaborate the fuller sense of this introduction into “a pure phenomenology.” Within the portions from which I am drawing the points I make, the following remarks are clearly in the same vein. (1) “The indications just given make us sensitive to how far we are from understanding phenomenology” (p. [143], in the pagination of the 1913 edition, given here for all quotations from Ideas I). (2) “Here, in the context of our merely initiating meditations, [some] parts of phenomenology cannot be treated systematically” (p. [200]). Finally, speaking of the parallelism between noesis and noema, Husserl writes: (3) “The parallelisms obtaining here – and there are many of them that are all too easily confused with one another – are fraught with great difficulties that still need clarification” (p. [207]). My translations. Later I shall highlight the structure of the correcting process, viz.: “[I]t is to be noted that in phenomenology as it begins all concepts, all terms, have to remain in a certain way fluid, always ready to become differentiated in accord with the advances made in the analysis of consciousness and the recognition of new phenomenological strata within what is at first seen in undifferentiated unity” (p. [170]). 5 This disclosure is made right after the somewhat overstated characterizations made in Part 2, Chapters 2 and 3 (entitled respectively “Consciousness and Natural Actuality” and “The Region of Pure Consciousness”), where “absolute consciousness” is described as the “residuum” left standing after the “annihilation of the world” – as the title of §49 puts it. §49–§54 go with this emphasis to explain that the “residuum” in question in fact is not a “left-over,” but rather a new all-encompassing “absolute” wherein all that in any naturalistic dichotomy of “mind” and “nature” (or material “reality”) is “exterior” to the “interior” of “the mental” is found to lie now “within” the sphere of the intentional embrace of “pure consciousness.” Husserl’s own reservations about talk of a “residuum” can be seen in Erste Philosophie (1923/1924), Zweiter Teil, edited by Rudolf Boehm, Husserliana VIII (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959), Beilage XX, from 1924. 6 For my treatment here only §97 and §98 in Chapter 4 will be in play. The titles of these chapters are: Chapter 2 “General Structures of Pure Consciousness,” Chapter 3 “Noesis and Noema,” and Chapter 4 “On the Problems of Noetico-noematic Structures.” 7 I prefer to render gültig and gelten as “holding” and “to hold” rather than as is usually done, as “valid” and “to be valid,” because here it is not a case of validity in some sense of logical legitimacy on the level of concepts, but rather of the compelling fullness of manifestly being really “there” that occurs, i.e., experiential holding rather than conceptual coherence. 8 Here is one brief relevant excerpt from §55: “The countersensical interpretation [of real actuality] that contradicts its [real actuality’s] proper sense is done away with when clarified by insight. [This countersensical interpretation] stems from a philosophical absolutizing of the world that is alien to the natural way it is considered. This [natural way] is just that, natural; it lives naively in the achievement of what we have described as the ‘general thesis,’ and so it [this natural consideration]

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can never be countersensical. The contradiction [or: ‘countersense’] arises when someone philosophizes and, in the search for final information, does not notice that the world itself has its whole being as a certain ‘sense’ that presupposes absolute consciousness as the field of making sense ([or: of sense-giving, Sinngebung].” (Ideen I, [107]) One should notice that one of Husserl’s marginal notes to this passage in §55, reinforces this very point. The note in question – given in Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosohphie, Erstes Buch, Allgeneine EInführung in die reine Phänomenologie, 2. Halbband, Ergänzende Texte (1919–1929), edited by Karl Schuhman, Husserliana III, 2 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), p. 502 – and probably from 1929, is a marginal remark from Husserl’s so-called “copy D” of Ideen I to the text I have just quoted, and specifically to the term “Generalthesis [general thesis, or general positing]” on p. 120, line 35 of the 1976 Husserliana edition. Unfortunately the reference of this remark is wrongly identified in the English translation by Fred Kersten, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983), p. 129, note 106. The term Generalthesis (translated “general positing”) to which the remark refers occurs in the sentence preceding the one to which the translation’s footnote number has specified and hence comes before the note numbered 105. I have to draw to your attention as well that it is in this passage that Husserl writes in a footnote to the end of the passage just quoted: “Here, by the way, for the sake of drawing a more impressive contrast, I am allowing myself an extraordinary and yet in its own way allowable broadening of the concept ‘sense’.” For one implication of this, see at pp. 9–10, 17, 18 and 22 of my main text below. 9 In this same passage Husserl also includes in this category “sensuous moments in the sphere of ‘drives’.” 10 (a) It is most important to note that the “animating” of “sensuous data” is what “bestows sense” on them, making them into sense in the strong sense, i.e., sense of something. In other words, it makes (i.e., transforms; Husserl uses the term Umwandlung in §78, p. [148]) the sensuousness of “data” – i.e., “givens” purely immanent to experience – into the intentional sense as of that-whichis-to-be-found-as-given “beyond” the immanence of experience. Husserl writes in §85, p. [172]: “We find this kind of concrete experience-data as components in more comprehensive concrete living experiences that are intentional as integrata [als Ganze]. This is done such that over those sensuous moments there lies an, as it were, ‘animating [beseelende],’ sense-giving layer (or one that essentially implies sense-giving) by which, from the sensuous that of itself has nothing of intentionality, just that concrete intentional living experience comes about.” Husserl’s use of the term Daten here, instead of Gegebenheiten (each of which etymologically means “givens”), should be taken cautiously; owing to the connation Daten usually has. Unlike the strong sense of the intuitional “given” in Gegebenheiten, “data” connotes either simple, objective, basic, neutral elements of information, or basic, empirically observed facts or objects. It is not likely Husserl subscribes here to this sense of “data” in view of his warning against it, even if two and a half decades later, in his Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, translated by David Carr (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 30 [27], asterisk-marked footnote note. (b) The latter quoted phrasings in this paragraph are from §85 in its first two pages, pp. [172– 173]. Husserl does not take up here the issue if either of these two strata can function without the other – the first simply being non-intentional though it still experiential, the other being intentional and experiential, but without the sensuous underlyng it (p. [172]). Ideas II would have to be looked at to see if it has something to say about that. I cannot take that up at this time. Cf also Husserl’s brief comment on a page inserted at the end of Part 3, Chapter 2, i.e., between pp. [178] and [179] and given as Beilage 51 in Hua III, 2. Halbband, p. 606. 11 Some of the passages in which this “inclusion” is expressed are the following:

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(a) “In every instance the noematic correlate, which here (in a quite extended signification) is called ‘sense’ is to be taken such as to lie immanently in the living experience [Erlebnis] of perception, of judgment, of liking, etc. . . .” §88, p. [182], my emphasis. (b) “Now, what with plain evidentness lies in the entire ‘reduced’ phenomenon precisely in perception is again this, that it has its noematic sense, its ‘perceived as such,’ has its ‘blossoming tree there in space’ – understood with inverted commas – precisely the correlate that belongs to the essence of phenomenologically reduced perception.” §90, pp. [187–188], my emphasis in boldface. (c) “‘Dwelling in’ each of these living experiences [Erlebnisse] is a noematic sense; and, however this [noematic sense] may be related in different living experiences or, as the case may be, have an essentially similar core component, the noematic sense is still of a different kind in different kinds of living experiences . . ..” Husserl gives examples of these different kinds of experiences: “perception, fantasy, remembering etc.”§91 (p. [188]. 12 See the passage in §88 that begins p. [182] 13 See the third cited text in note 11 right above. 14 §96, p. [200], my emphases in boldface. To be noted are Husserl’s extended remarks here (pp. [200–201]) on the way continued and renewed investigation is required in the difficulties that arise here, especially in view of the need to have some kind of provisional definiteness in the description as constitutive phenomenology is given its first detailed albeit limited delineation. 15 Here Husserl uses a term that requires careful rendering. The ordinary sense of auffassen and its further lexical forms (auffassende, Auffassung, etc.) is that of a way in which something is taken in its meaning – apprehended, conceived, construed, etc. For Husserl, what is determinative here, however, is that Auffassung is the making specific of the sense in terms of which something is experienced (or, mutatatis mutandis, is thought) – in other words, it is the giving of intentional determinacy to the “lower-level,” “hyletic” sensuous-“data” so that that sensuous sense becomes of something, in the present case, perceived. The rendering I have found so far that least ineffectually conveys this meaning is the rendering I give here: “apprehensional take.” The word Auffassung is first used in this phenomenological sense in Logical Investigations, Investigatlon 5, e.g., §20. 16 See Ricoeur’s early highlighting this feature of Husserl’s analysis, in his Note 1 to p. [204] of Ideas I, the very passage I summarize here: Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie, translated by Paul Ricoeur (Paris: Gallimard, 1950), p. 339–40. See also his Note 1 to p. [203], on p. 338 of his translation, Idées I. 17 Actually Husserl touches upon this very contrast in §124 “The Noetic and Noematic Stratum of ‘Logos.’ Signifying and Signification,” Chapter 4 of Part 3, but it is done in a tangential way as regards the emphasis I am placing on the term here. In his Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), however, Husserl gives a richer statement of how noematic fullness is gained, namely, in conjunction with inseparably situational conditions assuring the fullness to be of something transcendent and actually there. See §15c–§16. 18 See the treatment on p. 45. 19 Cf. the texts cited above in Footnote 11. 20 Quoted on p. 46 above. 21 Eugen Fink, “Die phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik,” published in Kantstudien, 38 (1933), 319–383. Fink subsequently reprinted the essay in his Studien zur Phänomenolologie, 1930–1939, Phaenomenologica 21, den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966. The English translation this essay is by Roy Elveton, “The Phenomenological Philosophy

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of Edmund Husserl and Contemporary Criticism,” in The Phenomenology of Husserl: Selected Critical Readings, edited by Roy Elveton (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970 [reprint Seattle: Noesis Press, Ltd., 2000]), pp. 73–147. (Subsequent references will give the English pagination first and then that of the more accessible Studien reissue, thus: Fink, “The Phenomenological Philosophy of E. Husserl,” p. 000 [000].) It should be noted that Ricoeur’s “Introduction” and commentary in his translation of Ideen I, by its frequent reference to this essay, attests to the distinct authority Fink holds for interpreting the program of phenomenology. Fink’s Studien, by the way, put together in one volume Fink’s 1929 Freiburg Dissertation and three articles he published in the 1930s. The Kantstudien essay together with the other two, especially “Das Problem der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls,” appearing in the first volume of the Revue internationale de philosophie in 1939, were all that was available to represent his work with Husserl in phenomenology until he began contributing papers to conferences. These further papers are collected in Eugen Fink Nähe und Distanz, Phänomenologische Vorträge und Aufsätze, edited by Franz-Anton Schwarz, Freiburg/Munich: Verlag Karl Alber, 1976. 22 The overall treatment is found in Fink “The Phenomenological Philosophy . . .,” pp. 88–95 [93– 101], while this last quoted point is on p. 95 [100–101]) (translation modified). Fink also argues (p. 95 [101]).that, against this transcendence of in-the-world being, the whole way concepts in NeoKantian explanation are articulated in supposedly pure a priori antecedence depends upon and draws from in-the-world features, factors, and structures. 23 Op. cit., pp. 95–100 [95–106]. 24 The quoted material is from op. cit., p. 100 [106], Fink’s emphasis. 25 Op. cit., pp. 100–117 [106–123]. 26 The considerations here in the remainder of the paragraph are actually more implicit than explicit in Fink’s 1933 essay (see pp. 130–131 [139] and the very end, pp. 144–45 [155]. My explication at this point is drawn from Fink’s VI. Cartesianische Meditation, Teil I: Die Idee einer transzendentalen Methodenlehre, Husserliana Dokumente II/1, edited by Hans Ebeling, Jann Oll, and Guy van Kerckhoven, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), §11, especially subsection c. “Der Begriff der, Wissenschaft.” (English translation by Ronald Bruzina: Eugen Fink, Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of Method, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.) 27 Fink’s essay “The Phenomenological Philosophy . . .” was written after the Sixth Meditation. Fink adapted the principles formulated in the latter to the somewhat different orientation of the confrontation with NeoKantianism in the former. Even so, the basic points of the critique principles in both date back to the first years of Fink’s work with Husserl, 1928–1929, as his personal notes make clear. The publication of these notes is under way as Part 3 of the Complete Works of Eugen Fink. The title of this 4-volume set is Phänomenologische Werkstatt, Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe 3.1–4, edited by Ronald Bruzina, Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2006-. Volume 3.1 appeared in 2006 and 3.2 appeared in the fall of 2008. A comprehensive treatment of Fink’s work with Husserl, and its influence upon the development of Husserl’s final phenomenology, is provided in two books: Bruzina, Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928–1938, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004; and Guy van Kerckhoven, Mundanisierung und Individuation bei Husserl und Fink: Die VI. Cartesianische Meditation und ihr “Einsatz,” translated from the original French manuscript by Gerhard Hammerschmied and Arthur R. Boelderl, Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2003. Van Kerckhoven had brought out this book earlier in Italian: Mondanizzazione e individuazione: La posta in gioco nella Sesta Meditazione cartesiana di Husserl e Fink, translated by Massimo Mezzanzanica, Genova: il melangolo, 1998.

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28 Fink’s treatment of the issue I am focusing on here (“The Phenomenological Philosophy . . .,” pp. 122–126 [130–34]) is oriented somewhat differently, but with the same effect. He emphasizes the noema in its world-status, viz., that the noematic is not simply the sense of the object, but the manifestness of the very being [das Seiende selbst] that the object is, that is, the object precisely as appearing in spatio-temporal horizonalities. 29 Here, now, is where one ought to bring in Jan Patoˇcka’s thinking, and in regard to at least the following two points. For one Patoˇcka argues that ultimacy in phenomenology has to belong to appearing as such, on the phenomenalness of the phenomenon. He writes: “[M]anifesting in itself, in that which makes it manifesting, is not reducible, cannot be converted into anything that manifests itself in manifesting. Manifesting is, in itself, completely original.” (Jan Patoˇcka, Plato and Europe, translated by Petr Lom, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002, p. 24. See the whole treatment from pp. 22–25, in the chapter entitled “What is the Phenomenon?” In the French translation by Erika Abrams, Platon et l’Europe, Lagrasse: Verdier, 1983, pp. 30–34.) A second point is intrinsic to taking appearing as ultimate, and this is Patoˇcka’s arguing for an “a-subjective phenomenology,” not one that takes the structures of human subjectivity, whether thought or perception, as themselves the very bringing about of the appearing of phenomena. The appearing of phenomena, transcendentally taken, has to be “a-subjective.” For example, “the subject . . . can only exist on the basis of the plan of appearing.” Or again: “The sum is necessarily somewhere, in a place and at a time – it presupposes the world, but does not create it.” (From Ms. 6D/1, “Structures d’être – structures d’apparition,” in Jan Patoˇcka, Papiers phénoménologiques, edited and translated by Erika Abrams, Paris: Jérôme Million, 1995, pp. 261–266.) Consideration of these points properly and in depth would have to come after the rest of my considerations, and there will be no time to do that. The present remark will have to do for indicating further work to be done. 30 One need only search the texts identified in the index of the Husserliana III/1 edition Ideas I (principally the index by Gerda Walther in this 1976 edition) to see how pivotal this point is. 31 Recall, again, the point drawn from §55 in Ideas I (p. 6 above) that the reduction does not take us to another realm that is utterly alien to the one we live in normally, but transforms the sense we take for granted regarding what is already familiar in everyday experience, not only about the world around us and how we “take it in” perceptually, but also about our own “taking in” what we grasp of the world around us. See also Ideas I, §76 and §80. This is a principle that remains in phenomenology to the end as irremovably fundamental – and, as we shall see, profoundly problematic for disclosing the transcendental. 32 Ideas I, §77, p. [145]. The verb here could also be rendered “lives through” or “undergoes” or “experiences,” which would be the normal, non-philosophic usages. However, from the first translators on – into English by Boyce-Gibson in 1931, into French by Paul Ricoeur in 1950 – the rendering I give here shares in their emphasizing the root sense in both the noun and the verb: “life,” “to live.” 33 See the very beginning of Ideas I §80 (pp. 159–160]) for the following passage, for example: “Every ‘cogito,’ every act in a distinctive sense, is characterized as an act of the I, it [the act] ‘goes out from the I,’ it [the ‘cogito’]‘lives’ right now in it [the act] [Jedes ‘cogito’, jeder Akt in einem ausgezeichneten Sinne ist charkterisiert als Akt des Ich, er ‘geht aus dem Ich hervor’, es ‘lebt’ in ihm ‘aktuell’].” The meaning of “act, Akt” here coincides with that of “living experience,” Erlebnis, but further on, in his remark “On Terminology”) right after §83 (pp. [170–171]), Husserl explains how the virtual identity of meaning of Akt and Erlebnis as stated in the Logical Investigations (Investigation 5, §13) needs nuancing, even while being thus cautiously retained.

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See this implication in the text quoted in the immediately preceding footnote. Ideas I, §78, p. [149], the first emphasis (by italicizing) is mine, the second is Husserl’s own (by Sperrung) in the original. 36 Ibid., emphases Husserl’s. 37 See Ideas I §78 for some characterization of pre-reflective experience and the structural feature (viz., temporal flow) in which reflective modification shares. 38 The summary treatment that now follows draws from Ideas II, Part 1 “The Constitution of Material Nature,” Chapters 2 “The Ontic Sense Strata of the Intuitional Thing as Such,” and 3 “Aestheta in Relation to the Aesthetic Living Body [Leib]” (my translation). One should know that it was Edith Stein, Husserl’s assistant from October 1916 to February 1918, who, among other things, edited Husserl’s Ideas II manuscripts. The form the book has today is largely her work, not to mention that she developed material of her own for one of the chapters. For a detailing of her contributions to Husserl’s work, including Ideas II, see Marianne Sawicki, Body, Text, and Science: The Literacy of Investigative Practices and the Phenomenology of Edith Stein, Phaenomenologica 144 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 153–165. 39 Here is the place to mention the following considerations regarding my initial mention of Heidegger, without taking up his work thereafter in the present paper. The reason for setting aside a treatment of Heidegger here relates paradoxically to the recognizable relevance here in general of central elements in Heidegger’s emphasis on being-in-the-world. Thus, for example, Heidegger’s lectures already in Freiburg in the early 1920s had integrative being-in-the-world as the constitutive dynamic of human life, and in a way far more in focal and explicit import than it was for Husserl. For Husserl, despite the constitutively integral structure of being-in-the-world for human experience, the integrative comprehensiveness of being-in-theworld does not come into clear and emphatic focus until the last decade of his life and work. (See my Edmund and Eugen Fink, Chapter 4: Fundamental Thematics: The World.) Relevant too is Heidegger’s insistence, in this same early period, on recognizing that the way of being aware of one’s own constitutive being-in-the-world is utterly unlike reflective thematization, even if Heidegger struggled to characterize this non-reflective awareness adequately. (GA 58, Phänomenologie der Anschauung und des Ausdrucks, ed. by Claudius Strube, Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1993, in particular is a demonstration of Heidegger’s unfolding thinking on this. I must mention, too, on this score that the insightful work of Gilbert Lepadatu in his PhD dissertation (defended successfully in the spring, 2009), tracing the thinking of Heidegger’s on living being as being-in-the-world in its fascinating peregrination in relation to Being and Time.) For Heidegger, however, these realizations do not lead to recasting the analysis of the constitution of sense, but to the shift to an ontology of Dasein (however much the base-level role of sense is pivotal to the character of Heidegger’s methodology for the disclosure of the unique ontological structure of Dasein’s being-in-the-world). One can indeed find in Heidegger’s characterization of human being as being-in-the-world facets and features that help in my present project, but to bring Heidegger’s contributions into my present essay would require an extensive additional line of interpretive critique. In a word, any openings in Heidegger’s thinking to raising any of the four problematics that my essay sketches out have to be teased out of his work almost against the focal thrust of his own project. He is working not toward a critique-based recasting and continuation of phenomenology, but toward the move to a sharply different kind of thinking – even if this different thinking may well in the end run up against one or another of the issues involved in the four problematics I am describing. 40 The usual sense of “qualifying” and “qualification,” meaning “possessing the required properties for some task, assignment, or position,” is not what the word conveys in Husserl’s analysis. The only way to recognize this is to read various passages in which the terms occur (e.g., Ideas II, 35

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pp. 34 [31] and 40 [37]) in the sense I am suggesting, in comparison to the usual meaning, and to see the difference it makes. 41 See at least its function in at least §4, “Theoretical acts and ‘pre-giving’ intentional living experiences,” in particular pp. 9–12 [8–10]. Here it is not an instance of some specific emotional feeling or pleasure, but the “abandonment” of oneself to even the perceptual observation of an experiment, an abandonment that is felt as it is being lived without being reflectively attended to Ideas II, pp.[8–9]. 42 Ideen II, §56 h, p. 250 [238]. 43 Loc. cit., p. 252 [240]. In this passage Husserl is speaking of the way the “human” completely permeates the physically bodily – Körper – apprehending it thereby as living body – Leib – “full of soul,” seelenvoll. 44 Op. cit., §64, p. 311 [297], my translation. 45 Edmund Husserl, Nature und Geist, Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1927, Husserliana XXXII, edited by Michael Weiler (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), p. 14. 46 Op. cit., p. 16. 47 Op. cit., p. 16–17. The excerpts from two summaries of the lectures, one by Eugen Fink, the other by Johannes Pfeiffer, that the editor, Michael Weiler, has included in Hussserliana XXXII at the very end of the texts to represent the conclusion of Husserl’s lecture series, characterize his final thoughts in these very terms. Here, for example, is how each listener’s summary represents the end of the lecture-series. (a) Fink: “A mundanely oriented ontology such as that within the epoché [i.e., as in the text just quoted] only gives the transcendental clue to the genuine constitutive problematic. Only phenomenological reflection, that is, the understanding-guided thematization [verstehend Thematisierung] of the otherwise anonymous performing life, that reflection that can be ‘spirit’ in a much more original sense than any ‘enworlded’ spirit discovered in intentionally performing subjectivity, only this kind of reflection is capable of delivering a radical understanding of all ontic objectivity and thereby also the grounding all sciences that relate to the world.” (Hua XXXII, pp. 266–267.) (b) Weiler: “[T]he core philosophical problem is the ‘ambiguous meaning of spirit’: namely, that on the one hand spirit is ‘realized in-the-world [weltlich realisierter]’ (spirit as ‘human’), spirit as object of a science in-the-world [Weltwissenschaft] (science of the spirit – Geisteswissenschaft), whereas on the other hand as transcendental, as ‘absolute subjectivity,’ the sphere of origination found in reflecting on oneself in philosophical thinking [philosophischen Besinnung], spirit is for of the sense of being [Seinssinn] as such.” (Hua XXXII, p. 279 – emphasis by Sperrung in Pfeiffer’s text.) 48 One has to keep in mind that Husserl most of the time uses the personal pronoun, Ich, not the metaphysical-medical term Ego. Nonetheless, English translations tend to render Ich as “ego.” The personal involvement of myself as the actual living conscious someone doing the reading and thinking must be kept in mind, or the investigating critical analysis is blurred. 49 Ideas II, §58, p. 264 [252], emphasis Husserl’s. He makes this quite concrete in the first sentence of the next Part, §59 (p. 266 [253]): “The I as a unity is a system of the ‘I can’.” (Husserl’s emphasis.) 50 The title of the final chapter of the book, Chapter 3 of Part 3 is “The Ontological Priority of the Spiritual World over the Naturalistic.” It is in this third chapter of Part 3 that the text from Ideas II, quoted above on p. 22, occurs close to the end: “Subjects cannot be taken in the end as simply nature, because then what gives nature sense would be gone.”

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51 The materials on this whole issue are basically those published in Edmund Husserl, Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, Aus Vorlesungs und Forschungsmanuskripten 1918–1926, Husserliana XI, edited by Margot Fleischer, den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966, and Edmund Husserl, Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution (1929–1934), Die C-Manuscripte, Husserliana Materialian VIII, edited by Dieter Lohmar, Dordrecht: Springer, 2006. The first of these two volumes is translated by Steinbock in an excellent comprehensive edition entitled Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis: Lectures on Transcendental Logic, Edmund Husserl, Collected Works IX, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001. 52 A helpful introductory summary of the import of genetic analysis is given by Steinbock in his “Introduction” to two texts of Husserl, both from 1921 and both on the character and role of genetic analysis, published in Continental Philosophy Review, 31, No 2. (April 1998), 127– 134. The two manuscript texts of Husserl’s are short, with the first being more directly helpful in the present context: “Static and genetic phenomenological method,” pp. 135–142 (corresponding to Husserliana XI, pp. 336–345 and in Steinbock’s translation, Analyses concerning Passive and Active Synthesis, pp.624–634). The understanding formulated here of the ultimacy of genetic phenomenology, seated as it is in the analysis of temporalization, is also drawn from Fink’s understanding of phenomenological method. A compact statement of this can be found in §6 and §7 of the “Einleitung” to his “Vergegenwärtigung und Bild,” in Studien. It is a point to which he returns regularly in his notes. An even briefer, more focused statement is also expressed in the passage, parallel to these portions of the dissertation, in the study that led to the dissertation, Fink’s so-called “Preisschrift,” in Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe 3.1, p.113 (§2). 53 Again, this is the point Fink makes in his 1933 Kantstudien essay, to which Husserl gave explicit authorization (see his “Preface” to “The Phenomenological Philosophy of Edmund Husserl . . .,” p. 74 [VIII]). 54 The “the living present” is one of the principal topics of the C-Manuscripts. These have been published now in Husserlian Materialien VIII, although some are not included in this edition because they had already appeared in two other volumes in the main line of Husserliana critical editions: Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität, Texte aus dem Nachlass, Dritter Teil: 1929–1935, Husserliana XV, edited by Iso Kern, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973; and Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1926–1935), Husserliana XXXIV, edited by Sebastian Luft, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. 55 Husserliana Materialien VIII, p. 350. 56 Ibid. At this point in the text Husserl wrote the date “29.9.31.” 57 Op. cit., p. 351. 58 Zuständlichkeit is not an ordinary word in German usage. Zustand generally means state or condition – the way something is what it is. Zuständlich, then, means having to do with the way something is and stays what it is supposed to be. Husserl’s making a noun of the adjective suggests the fundamental constitutive state of something, its basic way of being and continuing to be itself. 59 Op. cit., pp. 351–352. 60 In his notes Fink from his work with Husserl characterizes life as essentially “pathic.” In ZXI II/1a-b, for example, he argues that, in contrast to Lebensphilosophie in which life is accepted in naturalistic terms and spirit is accorded mathematics-like rationality, life should not be thus “emptied” and “made desolate.” He writes: “Life is neither rational nor irrational, but pathic.” (His emphasis) See further his treatment in Z-XII (from 1933 to 1934), note-set VII, and 8a-b. (These texts are in Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe 3.2, published in 2008. See note 27 above.) “Pathic” is an early occurrence of an expression Fink uses thereafter on many occasions in his notes, “the pathic

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image of the world [das pathische Weltbild].” The felt dimension of human experiential life that figures so centrally in Husserl’s final analyses of temporalization is clearly being emphasized here. 61 Husserl does not give an explanation of the meaning of this rare term in his writings. However, while “‘pre’-being” is the way one might in a usual construe it – as if there might be a kind of being before temporal being – it might be better rendered, in transcendental-phenomenological methodological terms, as “that which one conceives as before being [as such.],” i.e., the transcendentally originative ultimate “before” being as experiential in the intentionality intrinsic to appearing. 62 For example, Husserliana Materialien VIII, p. 209 in Texte Nr. 62; as well as Texte Nr. 79 and Texte Nr. 80 63 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, La structure du comportement, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1942 (4th edition, 1960), translated by Fisher, The Structure of Behavior, Boston: Beacon Press, 1963. The first quoted passage is from this translation, p. 1 [La structure, p. 1], and the second from p. 4 [2]. 64 La Nature: Notes, Cours du Collège de France, edited by Dominique Séglard, Paris: Éditions Du Seuil, 1995. The English translation from Northwestern University Press (2003) is unfortunately so fraught with errors that it cannot be read as reliable. All translations here have to be my own. 65 Arnold Gesell, together with Amatruda, published The Emryology of Behavior in 1945 (New York: Harper); it was published in a French translation in 1953 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). 66 La Nature, p. 188, my translation. The point is repeated a little later in the same Part (p. 200): “Gesell refuses to allow the intervention of a superorganic or magical event, some sort of magic power that would play the strings of the organic harp, one might say. The organism is the seat of an endogenous animation. Behavior ‘does not descend’ into the organism ‘like a visitation from on high.’ It emerges from lower levels. The higher is something different from the lower, but does not come from a source external to the organism itself. The animal should be considered as a field, that is, that it is at once physical and sense.” 67 Op. cit., p. 193. The axolotl is a salamander found in Mexico that is remarkable for its generative plasticity and its regenerative powers. 68 Op. cit., p. 200 69 Op. cit., p. 202. 70 Op. cit., p. 204. 71 Op. cit., p. 246. This same consideration applies in no small measure, of course, also in the realm of insects. 72 Op. cit., p. 248. The reference is to Xavier Bichat, whose book Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort was published in Paris in 1822. 73 This is a profound and difficult interpretation that cannot be undertaken here. Merleau-Ponty launches into it in his third and last set of “Nature” lectures, those from 1959 to 1960. Here “nature” has to be not just the “nature” we know of in its description in biological science – as for example in the materials Merleau-Ponty draws from in his lectures – but “nature” precisely as “nature” opening itself up to being experienced. In the all-embracing framework of our being “materially” in the world, in the way we both live qualitatively our natural materiality and sensuously, experientially deal with natural material things around us in their qualitative materiality, we actualize and embody fundamental phenomenality by virtue of which that all-embracing framework that is “Nature” begins to be knowable. A kind of reversal occurs, which is perhaps better expressed as the “emergence” of a priority of a differently fundamental kind. The lessons of biology disclose the emergence of the visible (the sense so far mentioned here, but the visible cannot be separated from

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the other senses) as the manifestation of the natural world by which ultimately those biological lessons can be discovered. In that this manifestation occurs, however, in that nature now becomes able to be experienced, and eventually the empirical par excellence, the manifestness-situation – technically, the world in the phenomenological sense – has de jure priority over the scientific and conceptual elaborations of natural phenomena. It is fundamental to those elaborations in a different way from that in which biological discoveries have given rise to our tracing the genesis of vision in the realization of that same manifestness. This all, however, requires much more to be said, and Merleau-Ponty’s final “Nature” lectures are perhaps to most pronounced effort so far to think it through. 74 This is also one of the elements in Husserl’s work that Eugen Fink draws out for highlighting as a fundamental element, what he spoke of as eine ermöglichende Synusie von Seiendem und Wissen, one form of which is “ein alle Erkenntnisarten betreffenden Vollzugscharakter,” in his 1939 article, “Das Problem der Phänomenologie Husserls,” Revue internationale de philosophie, I, pp. 177–223, and reprinted in Fink’s Studien zur Phänomenologie (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 179–223; the specific quoted phrases here are on p. 209. Pertaining to this as well there is his first notice of the fungierende Intentionalität in Husserl’s work (Studien, p. 222). Here is where, too, the felt kinesthetic sense spoken of earlier could be termed, in a generalized way, “pathic.” (See footnote 60 above.) This would be in contrast on the one hand to the way “feeling” is generally used and meant as emotion, especially in the plural as “feelings,” and on the other to explicit reflection, generally assumed to be distinctly and separately “intellectual” in character – a construal obviously worth taking up for reassessment. 75 Some of the most significant contributions Fink made to Husserl’s time-studies are on this very point, but unfortunately they are only indicated in Fink’s notes from the Husserl years. Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe 3.2 presents many of these contributions in the form of his personal notes. 76 See above, p. 49, with “Vor”-sein in the text quoted on there. 77 This is the point – not mentioned before in the present paper – that Fink takes up in §10 of his “Sixth Cartesian Meditation.” 78 From Fink’s notes in 1928–1929, Z-IV, 112b, Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe 3.1, p. 269. 79 Again from1928 to 1929, Z-V VII/6a, Eugen Fink Gesamtausgabe 3.1, p. 319; and Fink underlined the entire sentence for emphasis. This is the reason too, by the way, that Husserl’s analyses of temporality are in the guise of the temporality of my living experience – as if that living experiencing were ipso facto the transcendental in its very self-realization, as if my living being were “transcendental being” itself in is actual efficacity. It is another question whether Husserl himself realized this paradoxical and enigmatic character of his analyses of temporalization. He certainly recognizes the principle operative there at least in the analogous case treated by Fink in his “Sixth Meditation.” See Fink, Sixth Meditation, §10 B and Husserl’s remarks in footnotes 370–378 there. 80 More indeed is given on this in my treatment in my Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink, both at various points throughout the book and in Chapter 7 “Critical-Systematic Core: The Meontic – in Methodology and in the Recasting of Metaphysics.” 81 And one can use as a guide to what kinds of structures are relevant here in the very primacy that sense and the sensuous exercises in the origination of the experiential and all it takes in.

KATHLEEN HANEY

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ABSTRACT

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s philosophic output has been prodigious, but only lately has she turned to the topic of first philosophy specifically. This paper presents an exegesis of her summary document, “THE GREAT METAMORPHOSIS OF THE LOGOS OF LIFE IN ONTOPOIETIC TIMING.” Her study is more than a précis, although it does recall her previous inquiries. My review necessarily rehearses some of this material, but focuses on her latest reflections. Tymieniecka explores the force of the Logos of Life through its two dimensions of temporality, as it informs all life forms. The telos of the Logos finds appropriate instruments in embodied beings which work out the vital significance of life in creative, moral and interpersonal dimensions. In Tymieniecka’s system, we can see the interconnected nexus of life forms, which, nonetheless, forms a hierarchy. All life times its operations, but human timing persists through various stages of the journey inspired by the Logos. In its timings, the Logos discloses itself. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s most recent work is her most comprehensive as well as most revealing work to date. Though Tymieniecka remains within the confines of speculative philosophy, her pursuit of Truth follows what she refers to as the “Logos of Life.” “Logos” has a long history in philosophy. We can trace its career back to Heraclites, Plato, the Stoics, Augustine, Plotinus and through Medieval Philosophy. Recently, many of the so-called post-modern thinkers have taken the Western tradition to task for its Logocentricism. Tymieniecka does not number among them. Instead, her quest follows the Logos back to the All and beyond. The purpose of the meditation that follows is to seek to understand the sense that logos carries in Tymieniecka’s philosophy in order to later interrogate the meaning of the fulfillment of the Logos. This Logos can be glimpsed in human creativity, which Tymieniecka refers to as ontopoietic activity, the making that makes the maker. Intuition provides the insight that reveals the pathway through time to surmises that concern the “great philosophical issues.” Our experience of our being in itself – being alive–provides the starting point for Tymieniecka’s philosophy. She argues that we can learn about life 77 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 77–97. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_5, 

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essentially through exploring the human sense of being alive, since the human condition is the culmination of the less sophisticated life forms to which human life is related. Species have their remarkable differentia, but only the fulfillment of logos in the human condition crowns more primitive life, however. Cognition cannot be the engine that powers the search for answers to life’s eternal questions, rather life itself must be prior to reflection upon it. Tymieniecka writes, I submit that the living being recognizes itself as “himself” or “herself,” not by a cognitive act but by “being alive”—by experiencing oneself within one’s milieu of beingness, directing one’s instincts and appetites, recognizing the elements of the circumambient world in their vital relatedness to oneself, and lastly, but foremostly, by recognizing oneself as the acting center of the universe of existence . . . who, finally, endows . . . moral and aesthetic values . . . carrying within a thoroughly felt self-aware conviction that to be is to be alive.1

Tymieniecka’s description of living as becoming-towards-being, as engaged in ontopoesis, in processes of self-making, and of changing, provides her with the clue to her analysis. These processes, as we see when we survey the landscape of the living, are destructive as well as constructive. “Our being is becoming.”2 Not only our being, but all being is becoming in her view. All being engages in ontopoesis – in making itself through the process of making its world, though this making cannot be construed as creating. The logos of life “prompts” the onward course of becoming in beings as well as in itself. Its own unfolding that brings it into time insofar as it intimates an answer to that ontological and personal “ultimate metaphysical question – THE GREAT METAPHORPHOSIS.”3 The quest for truth, the quest to answer ultimate questions, directs the paths of this philosophy. The philosophical passion for wisdom, for understanding ourselves and our world in its others, embodies the desire for the meaning of it all. Where can such a journey begin? Here Tymieniecka harkens back to the introspective tradition in philosophy that sought for an indubitable starting point, though she does not espouse one. For St. Augustine, awareness of doubting led him to surety about his own existence. Thinking served this function for Rene Descartes, though his philosophy resulted in difficulties that several hundreds of years have not yet resolved. Edmund Husserl contributed the most recent addition to the history of this idea. He located the grounds for fundamental philosophy within intentional consciousness. “Squeezing” (if you will) consciousness by inquiring into its necessary conditions returns a world where embodiment provides the necessary condition for awareness. Tymieniecka argues that living must be more basic than any of this thinking, since life is the necessary condition for all activity, including thought. Certitude lies only in the living being’s awareness of itself as living. This starting point

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moves her thinking underneath epistemology into a metaphysics that arises from reflection on the human creative act which supplies the initial revelation of the Logos. This must be the starting point for philosophy, she argues, since living is the pre-condition for living wisely or acquiring wisdom through living. Her perspective on fundamental philosophy sees timing (note her emphasis on the process rather than its objectification) as the common denominator of all that we humans can know. Time, temporalizing, temporality saturate both “the known and the knower.” Humans swim in the sea of time that all existence bathes in unceasingly. Nevertheless, in this philosophy, time, even though it serves as the medium for human knowledge, is not absolute. The Alpha and the Omega are not to be identified with the All, but only all that can be known in the strong sense that Plato uses “knowledge,” as that which cannot be false. After all, that which is known must be the case; “false knowledge” is an oxymoronic expression that must refer to wrong opinion. With this foray into the realm of phenomenological epistemology as means to move beyond ontology into wisdom, Tymieniecka prepares to do phenomenology after her fashion, through revising the starting point of philosophy. After all, traditional ontology with its claims to insight into the essence of the beingness around us can give us only an “ossified” view of existence. And, epistemology, even though it has been practiced by the Moderns as if it were synonymous with philosophy, did not move beyond modalities of certainty, probability and so forth. Religion, if its supernatural aspirations are indulged without the efforts of reason to give weight to it, leads to the personal and the cultural, only. The realm which religion seeks, truth, cannot be “free from all contingent certitude.”4 The being that Tymieniecka analyses is the being whose self-evidence is embedded in the statement “to be means to be alive.” Since her philosophical project is a foundational one, we must turn first to the “spark of life.” The dance of the atoms is not choreographed; the dance of living, however, aims towards “dynamic consolidation in self-individualization.”5 The power of the logos drives life towards ever more complexity until it reaches its peak in the individual human. The logos gathers up early instances of living being to incorporate them into the being that reflects on its being. This human life continuously opens itself to the world by means of its body. It grows in awareness of its world so that it is “from the inside out oriented toward close integration with the world’s life’s process.” This awareness of being alive, participating by acting and being acted upon, is the only certain starting point for the existential affirmation that philosophy requires. Tymieniecka is quick to point out, nevertheless, that this awareness results from much living that prepares for it. Human creative experience reflects the logos of life, nevertheless, and therefore functions as the starting point for the analysis of its logos, as if the logos

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thrusts towards its understanding. As for the nature of the reflection that human experience can provide, this question must await further development of the analysis. The human creative act, not cognition, is the view from the reflective stance that can discern the logos. This very rich notion is necessary not only because human creativity is the evolutionarily first to be able to inculcate a reflection of the logos in its acts, but also to register its awareness of its image-making. The next move in Tymieniecka’s metaphysics involves an intuitive leap in order to lay open the “entire field of the becoming of life.” So doing lays open speculative paths that lead “toward the great enigmas of the Universal Logos.”6 The timing of life in the vital sphere emerges to unfold the specifically moral and intellective spheres which themselves lead to the spheres of the sacred. Human life potentially includes all of this as well as a glimpse of what Tymieniecka refers to as the All. Tymieniecka holds that the logos of life reveals itself in “reality” and conjectures that its course leads beyond it. This line of thinking is made available through the self-individualizing involved in full human development. Though the logos of life includes aspects available on each of the spheres of life’s plenitude, not the intellective, nor the vital, or even the sacral composes the entire expansion of the sentient person. The unveiling of the process that the course of individualization travels is itself the reward of the ascent of the soul’s itinerary. This last stage of the journey is not its end, according to Tymieniecka, as we shall see. The range of the logos of life covers its expansion into Imaginatio Creatix, which accounts first of all for the great transformation of sense in the Human Condition as well as, secondly, for its refinement into the Sacral Imagination, which through its works of conjectural inference inspires and informs the Great Passage leading onward to and beyond the Great Sacral Metamorphosis.7

With this much of an overview, now we turn to Tymieniecka’s gathering from prior works so that her new contributions can become available for thought and study.

FEATURES OF THE LOGOS OF LIFE

Tymieniecka begins her exposition by gathering together what she refers to as “features” of the logos of life that she had previously described in other works. As she envisions it, the logos, “the originator and promoter of life,” is force. Its effusion shapes itself in its performance, which can be intuited “from the inside, as it were.”

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Life, as the ontopoietic progress of the logos’ drive in the self-individualization of beingness, emerges then as a manifestation of the ontopoietic process. It appears sua sponte but not from ‘nowhere’. It surges in an effusion from itself; it has no beginning and no end. ‘Beginning’ and ‘end’ are in time. But it is from the unfolding of the logos of life that ‘time’ emerges. The logos is a primogenital force striving without end, surging in its impetus and seeking equipoise.8

This passage calls to my mind St. Augustine’s famous discussion of time in Chapter 11 of his Confessions. We remember his quip that he knows what time is, until he is asked what time is. In the same chapter, the saint reproves those who ask what God did “before” creation by recalling that “if before heaven and earth there was no time, why is it demanded, what Thou then didst? For there was no ‘then,’ when there was no time.”9 We must wonder if “the unfolding of the logos of life” is equivalent to the Logos as the Divine Word, “In this beginning, O God, hast Thou made heaven and earth, in Thy Word, in Thy Son, in Thy Power, in Thy Wisdom, in Thy Truth; wondrously speaking, and wondrously making.”10 St. Augustine’s Logos, the second member of the Blessed Trinity, has no beginning and end and is that which unfolds when life emerges in time. Although its life fuels created life, they do not share one substance. Does Tymieniecka’s? Do the categories of substance or matter have meaning in this philosophy? We will return to this question in the concluding section that will consider Tymieniecka, as phenomenologist, exploring the fulfillment of the Logos. What Tymieniecka does tell us is that force is the “prompting of the logos of life.” We may wonder how the dinosaur, if the scientists are correct in their evolutionary speculations, became the bird. How did beings recognize that their lives and their species would be better off with wings? How did the birds initially learn to fly? How do babies learn to talk, imitating in the midst of the jumbled, discordant sounds around them? Tymieniecka says that the logos includes the means for its own advance, which means fulfilling various steps towards transformation. The logos of life causes “transubstantial” changes – “substances” become new meanings. The force itself undergoes a transformation at this advanced stage. The logoic force reveals its purpose in the individualizing life “so that Imaginatio Creatrix emerges as an autonomous modality of force with its own motor, the human will, which will enable it to achieve significance creatively, spiritually and sacrally. This description of the logos of life cannot be thought of as blind energy that explodes without reason. Rather, the logos moves from what it has already achieved to what it already suggests, within the parameters of its circumstances. It proceeds by questioning its achievements in order to ask how they will support its further unfolding. Can individualization move to language? Can it move beyond language to metaphor? Tymieniecka writes, “Life is, then,

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a dynamic flux, but is far from a wild Heraclitean flux, for it articulates itself. First of all, it ‘times’ itself.”11 As it transverses the stages of human life, the human condition lives its time in its development. Even though this process is generated and inspired by the logos of life, it is the living life’s movements which bring about its fulfillment. We recognize a sense in which life is always “ahead” of itself, for living implies motion towards an end. The logos of life must also include a sentient dimension. We are unaccustomed to associating feelings and logos because we assume the latter’s etymological relation to logical activity, while the former moves us to passivity. Yet, both exhibit the shaping force of the logos. The logos is not, then, merely recognized intellectually; it is felt and its feeling motivates life’s articulation in the human condition. This tenet is itself reasonable; else what would inflame the will to pursue its creative fulfillment? The separation of reason and feeling is of modern origin in the history of philosophy. As many modern ideas, this artificial schism does not provide a helpful means for reaching the folly of truth. After all, we primarily distinguish life by its incarnation into sentience. Tymieniecka goes so far as to say that the essence of life is sentience. Affectivity links together all the elements of the human condition. Logos would not permit a sprawling, unassociated mass of meanings without interconnections that order them. Tymieniecka’s sense is that the logos is more reasonable than that. Moments do not come virgin born to the fore. They possess connections and derivations, so that there are no unconnected pieces, only unfathomed bonds. It follows from the above that to be means to be sentient, “that is, to emit and evoke sense-imbued response.”12 Life’s essential responsiveness integrates it into a world that is intergenerative and intra-communal. The mutual sharing goes on at all levels of life’s complexity, so that the ordinary presuppositions about nature, say, as “outside of” the human condition no longer make sense. As we see with climate change, human activities may impact the speed of the cycles of nature and the ascendance and decline of species, as well. Integration is too slight a word for the strength and necessity of the connections within nature. Here we would do well to imagine a tapestry whose meaning is in its intertwining. Not to err as did the Romantics, feelings tend toward cognitive expressions and their own intelligibility. Tymieniecka refers to this telos as a “dianoiac thread that runs through the entire spread of life’s differentiated functions and which at the cognitive level of sentience makes us aware of and feel deeply a basic existential solidarity with all creation.”13 This solidarity cannot efface the individuating nature of the ontopoietic sequence. The logos of life moves “inwardly” before its results manifest themselves “outwardly.” First, the logos takes some step, one which depends upon

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the stage of the development of the organism. Always this step involves the transformation of its status quo. In the human condition, interrogation may lead to “advancing on the path of the sacral logos within the human soul . . ..”14 The movement towards the sacral logos is one of the milestones of transformation, but significant metamorphosis must precede it. Vital life required redirection of the simpler life forms, vital life must engage in social networks leading to historical destiny which acts as the possibility for further fulfillment in sacral life and beyond even this into a “Great Metamorphosis” that has been incipient in life from its germinal beginnings. The final move unfolds our destiny.

THE FORCE OF THE LOGOS IN SHAPING THE TIMING O F L I F E ’S B E C O M I N G

Ontopoietic processes in life are double-rayed. They are the becoming of the individual and also, equally, the making of its world. These processes are simultaneous or, better, they are as two sides of a coin, necessarily together in “reality,” but only one at a time can display itself in intentional focus. Tymieniecka refers to these two aspects as “individual evolution” and “symbiosis” “within its sustaining and limiting world.”15 The idea of symbiosis is particularly apt here since the individuating becoming needs the world that its acts contribute to building. The relation is not a parasitic one – the world need not devour its host – indeed the world is host to the individuating life within it. Individual life contributes to the timing and spacing of life that make the world possible as real, spaced and timed. All living becoming is embodied, thus sentient and besouled. We do well initially to recall the Greek notion of the soul as the principle of self-motion. “Soul” carries more weight within Tymieniecka’s system, however. To be besouled means for her to surge into life with an individuation to be fulfilled, with specific projects to be accomplished. The progression in becoming entails a concomitant effect on embodiment. Human infants incorporate their bodies; they discover their noses and their toes; they learn to use their speech apparatus; some learn to become athletes or singers. Most grow to a prime of physical life that recedes in advanced age. Some develop human maturity. All of these examples point to changes in embodiment, as we gain or lose a few inches in height. The physical changes are part of the changes in the world, as well, but they are not the most significant, perhaps, though the body must be the vehicle for the logos of life. The incorporation or incarnation of the body requires spacing and timing. Yet, we must proceed with caution here. It is easy to fall into

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pre-phenomenological ways of thinking such that we envision the body now taking up some space or other, as if space and time were primary ontological realities. Likewise, embodiment does not find its foundation in inert matter. Most important to Tymieniecka’s thought is the primacy of processes which can interact with “the effusion of the logos and its launching as the logos of life.”16 Corporeality in its necessary motility, which proceeds from its core (hence the need for a central nervous system in self-conscious life forms), interacts with the world and shares in various spheres of life, including in the simple and in the most complex associations. This process originates the “external” world for the being who lives it, as well as reveals the fleshy, corporeal possibilities of the individual becomingness. All “prelife physical and organic operations of the ontopoietic origination of life are primed” for the existentially momentous purpose of felt possession of the body to be put to service of the logos of life. This is the link which leads to the establishment of the world within the purposes of life so that the world becomes “its nest and womb . . ..”17 The human condition is the crown of the processes and regresses of life and the takeoff point for further transformation. Clearly, the flux is not self-contained as it orders a world. All the living are in symbiotic relationships with the whole that they compose. Not only do all living beings enjoy sentience, but they all contribute to the communality of the living. In the processes of individuation, each is mutually involved with others in relations of interdependence. Note again, there is no priority of one “side” or the other. Both occur together. Neither could occur without the other. The intentional linkage that is aware of binding all together results with the intellection only to be found in the human condition. Yet, knowledge and intentionality do not change the state of affairs by conceptualizing it. Tymieniecka next turns to a closer analysis of the ontopoietic sequence, which surely includes an intentional dimension insofar as it serves to direct, adjust and coordinate the axis of the human condition, as it fulfills the logos of life. With life deployed, she turns to topics of its creative orchestration. In the self-differentiation involved in becoming, potential being individuates itself by means of adapting to the conditions through which the life force directs the core. All of its virtualities are conditioned by its circumstances, although they are not determined by them. The ontopoietic project is the telos that serves to attract and direct the growth in individualizing being to its completion. In this way, among others, the logos of life provides a glimpse of the path to be taken. The possibilities contain the phases for the development of an individual, given also its unique symbiotic conditions. The ontopoietic sequence does, however, permit the radical transmutation of type that would deny meanings for “types” as species of living becoming.

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Types, as well as individuals, find consistency through continually reassessing the conditions that surround their identity in “perpetual transforming adjustments.”18 Inner transformations lead to “transmutations of type, accounting for the evolution of the ‘types’ of beingness.”19 The timing of the phases is not optional, but lawful. Their sequence is a kind of an a priori necessity for advance. Here again we see universal structure embodied differently depending upon virtualities and surrounding conditions. This is another figure of same and difference – insofar as a single structure provides a blueprint to be filled in with multifarious differences. In this regard, Tymieniecka speaks of life’s “vital timing,” which she calls Kronos. Kronos is not the only sense of time operative in her system. Kairos time is that of human creative experience. This is the time that controls the emergence of the individual through acts, not stages. After all, these creative acts may follow the single sequence of Kronos, but each in its own way through its own circumstances. Kairos time determines the process of differentiation in the individual by encouraging its constancy and consistency, by integrating its immersion in the rush and retreats of life, by ordering the motivations towards individuation and symbiosis and by maintaining the reliability of the identity that undergoes change. Tymieniecka sees no evidence that movement times itself, without the imposition of the dramatic time of the human condition. Abstract, “clock” time and mechanical motion must derive from the structure of living time, but such notions of time only enact the “skeleton” of the sequence of humanly experienced time.

THE PENULTIMATE QUESTION

“What is the metaphysical standing of the logos of life?”20 How does the Logos of Life relate to pre-life? Is the evolution of types the purpose of the creative advance to the Imaginatio Creatrix? Note here that Tymieniecka moves into the area of metaphysics, a locus difficult for thought to achieve. Nevertheless, Tymieniecka provides a pathway other than the poetic one that she has so often studied. So, a brief mention of method may be in order. Tymieniecka begins with the phenomenon of life as sentience, through a discussion that we might liken to a theory of emergent forms,21 on its way to the human creative condition. Next, she turns her attention to the necessary conditions for their accomplishment. The description freed from traditional realist or idealist assumptions, leads her to recognize as the first condition, the second or moral birth of the human being.

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Tymieniecka calls again on types to account for the evolution of systems, usually advanced “in complexity of functions, forms, life-manifestations, etc.” The ontopoietic sequence maintains given types, yet “all are nevertheless subject to their own inner transformations” which explains the “mutation of types and the surging of forms of beingness different from preceding ones.” She adds that this provides grounds for theories of evolution insofar as ontic life expresses its dynamism in “ontopoietic unfolding.”22 The highest phase, from our perspective, the mature human being emerges from life into its own life. The first birth of the human is from nature, but the real birth of the person is “within the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive.” The Human Condition is a human condition as a member of the community of all that is alive. Rooted in Nature, the mature human subject experiences its own human life as one of many lives and forms of life. This is of course is a great phenomenological insight. Paul Ricoeur makes much of the transcendental essence of human being: We are each one among others. Brilliantly, Tymieniecka extends our equality to the whole of Nature, the network of symbiotic connections in which we share Life. Yet, we must ask about the significance of the Human Condition and the role that it plays in the whole. “Paradoxically the human being appears to be integrally part and parcel of nature yet reaches to levels ‘beyond nature,’ levels of life that endow the human being with special unique significance that is no longer simply vital but is also spiritual.”23 Though the human being stands in the functional nexus of the operations of life, developing complex bodily organs have laid open another, undreamed of possibility. The human condition can admit the entrance of the Imaginato Creatrix into the play of life. The sentience of the logos of life that underlays and permeates the motion of unfolding life maintains the continuity, despite the extent of the significance of gratuitous human development. Significance itself comes into the world, which becomes a spiritual world of meaning with the Imaginatio Creatrix. Imagination opens doors to bestow meanings and incarnate the spiritual. Without it, there can be no escape from merely vital significance. The stage that follows is according to Tymieniecka, “the most surprising, if not enigmatic turn of the logos of life.”24 A force enters to shape being into a literally hitherto unimagined realm that now can be conceived of and willed. This force pushes on, shifting in its temporality, opening to the three new “sense giving factors”: the intellective, the aesthetic and the moral senses. In particular, the emergent moral sense “lies at the center of the metamorphosis of the life situation into the Human Condition . . .. It is the engine of the human project and carries within itself the germinal propulsions of the sacral quest.”25 The new factors move beyond survival into moral meaning.

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Within the creative modus of human functioning in its specifically creative orchestration there occurs a metamorphosis of the vital system of ontopoiesis and consequently the timing of ontopoiesis is transformed too. But to reach the point of addressing the question of temporality, we have first to cover the ground of the transition from the vital to the human significance of life on the way to the Great Metamorphosis.26

The intellective sense allows for the objectification of the world “aroundand-in us in representation,” brings principles to its assessment and finally introduces value judgments about good/evil and true/false. These later can expand into aesthetic valuation, awaking the human capacity for admiration of beauty in its many forms. Tymieniecka refers to the dynamic process as “orchestrated” in a fashion that initiates a new sense of temporality. The works of imagination, of human making, baptize a new world of meaning explored, projected and aimed at by these new powers that imagination provides. The Human Condition features a new temporality along the path that leads to the sacral logos. Life lives vital time; in the Human Condition, life lives an individuated dramatic time. To say that humans are tool-using to distinguish the species is to lack the appropriate emphasis: we live (in our technological age, now more than ever) through the instruments we have drug into being such as language, medicine, politics, religion, and so forth. When we whittle on sticks, we humans do it for fun. When we are serious we may perhaps project ourselves into weapons of mass destruction, made with great sophistication at enormous cost. If we continue on the path of human maturation, the moral sense emerges as an intuition that alters the value of life. The Human Condition makes possible an altered significance that values life first. Then goods having to do with vital existence lose their status as ultimate value. Tymieniecka interprets the episode in the garden as the awakening of the moral sense of the Human Condition. And, usually the uncertainty, the finitude, the suffering, the conflict of the human condition is what we usually mean by the phrase in ordinary speech. For Tymieniecka, however, it is awareness of good and evil that marks a specifically human consciousness. “It is most significant that in Genesis the awakening of this consciousness was seen as involving awareness of the human body.”27 Logos of life embodied in a sentient core acts as an intersubjective drive, straining towards a universal teleology. Each human being requires others in order for him to come to awareness of himself or others, to fulfill its human nature. The human is born with others, though, so this linkage in the chain of the telos of the Logos of Life is the habitat for the Human Condition. Sentience naturally includes uncomfortable or unhappy feelings; our pains, losses, despair easily acquaint us with this phenomenon. We know too that

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sentient life seems to be finite. Is there nothing more than ultimate extinction? All is vain? What answers to such questions can the logos of life lead us to? Can life call forth the meaning of life? To solicit response, Tymieniecka returns to Kronos and Kairos ways in which life times itself. The phenomenal experience of time reveals much about life’s timing. The Kronos time devours individual life, as it enables it. The biosphere times itself, as we see in our gardens and in our own bodies. The vital order is not the effect of time; it manifests itself in time. Movements that begin innerly fulfill themselves in their temporal manifestations. “There is no need for intelligence, nor for any other observer, to register the lapse of time. Life proceeds and temporalizes itself without it.”28 In this time, embodied life begins processes that lead to its selfindividuation. The constructive principle, Life, wants to move towards its entelechy according to “an intrinsic ontopoietic ‘agency’ of life directives,”29 its own self development of its unique individual kernel. As in her earlier discussion of evolution, types as instantiated in individuals may project themselves according to their actual possibility, their internally motivated and freely chosen, innermost possibility. We have entered the realm of Kairos time, but we cannot travel without Kronos. We rumble along the track of life, swaying side to side or, as Tymieniecka puts it, “human self-individualizing progress defines itself by striving for accomplishment.”30 Here Kairos leads the way, yet Kronos remains the backdrop on the stage of dramatic time. The inner life of consciousness has its own timing, yet the relationship between Kairos and Kronos must continue to unfold. The acts of inner timing, “the creatively radiating inwardness of consciousness” are “essentially kairic.”31 Human intentionality acts towards its creative fulfillment (tantamount to its self realization or concomitant with it). It measures time as it crystallizes in the strivings and steps towards its freely chosen goals. All the ordering of one’s life reveals the will and the choice of the human in the creative mode. All the doubts and passions reveal the course of the intentionality flowing beneath. So, by now we have gathered that the logos of life “arranges the advance of human existence.”32 The incarnate soul acts in the body of its experiences, but this body is a finite one that carries its death within it. And, as the existentialists are fond of pointing out, death gives meaning to life in the sense that death is the measure of the Logos of Life’s progress towards transformation. Tymieniecka, true to her method of interrogating the logos, next asks about the meaning of this drama. Could such a question force the logos into the open a bit?

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Just as the imagination opens new opportunities for human being and for the logos of life, the timing of the sacral logos that runs through all the dimensions of vital, creative and life-transcending life, provides a new door to human ontopoietic fulfillment. “Advancing through its various constructive phases the logos of life finally opens its sacral fount as the innermost sense of its inquiring progress.”33 The sacral logos interferes with the logos of life’s self-constituting accomplishments. The other beckons and the I as another calls. The human condition is “in-between.” The possible meaninglessness of a finite human soul drives us to seek for redemption, some way to baptize the meaning of the human condition. The soul is launched on its spiritual quest. This is the result of the first paradox of the Human Creative Condition. The second paradox makes the above more acute. Humans are free; not merely “living agents,” they are “personal” agents. Freedom strengthens the autonomy of the existential and encourages it. On the other hand, human life lives itself out in networks of connectivity. The intersubjective provides ballast for the self-individuating principle. Yet, the intersubjective conceals its own perils. Yearning for all of life and knowledge of it all initiates greater desire for the Other, indicative of the great need to be understood in self-expression of our inwardness. We may be reminded here of Karl Jaspers’ call to loneliness as the authentic way of being without the other, devoid of opportunity to engage in loving struggle for authentic being for both involved. When the desire for the other, for the loved one is humanly fulfilled, we experience new agony. This desire, forever unquenchable in the realm of our fellow beings, causes the suffering that is the human plight. Passion not action begins the commerce with the world. Or, does suffering motivate our actions in the world? In the tremendous pain of suffering for another, we are alone. Yet, we still crave someone to share our suffering. After all, “We have not simply a symbiotic picture of the other’s pain and torment but feel his or her feelings transposed into our system and hitting us full in the heart . . .. We experience excruciating pain in our innermost being with and for the other whom we love, feeling for him or her as closely as if he or she were ourselves. We are as if paralyzed inside.34 Since the I can never immediately own the pain of the other that stops at the existential boundary of our flesh the I cannot know how to alleviate it. Even knowledge of the other’s pain would not provide the ability to heal it. Then the I must be passive when it partakes of the other’s suffering. The flesh links humans in the drama of transformations which is a virtuality, only enacted individually as a distinctly human possibility. Like all good dramas, human life has a moral dimension of indecision, conflict and confusion as well as courage, love and clarity. Together these compose our ontopoietic coexistence

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in both its social and private dimensions. The human drama leads inexorably to its telos, which is always its focus. At the heart of the drama the desire for communicative self-expression remains. The disillusion with the world of accomplishment foregrounds the world of others-in-community. To open to the other, to provide him with space within one’s own consciousness, extends the kingdom of moral feelings. Then, “the human being undergoes an inner transformation.”35 THE SACRED

The topic that follows concerns the “movements of the soul” in the unfolding of the sacral logos as it seeks the sense of all. The sacral phenomenon unveils itself in epiphanies. Thus, the human person sees for him or herself the world of life, and his place in the matrix moving from the person’s inner core through the earth to the cosmos. In dramatic time, the soul moves through stages that include upcoming virtualities until it reaches a sense of accomplishment that takes place in the context of Life. From these kairic accomplishments, kept within the soul, comes about another level of experience for the soul in its development as well as in the development of the shared world of meaning. These kairic interventions seem like disruptions to the ordinary course of events, but later the soul discovers that they are the road to the sacral, as a resonance within itself. Their telos has to do not with physical survival, but with the survival of human communications which transcends death. Tymieniecka stresses that the two strands of time, intertwined though they be, move along different routes to different destinations: human history and salvation history. In the second, human beings strive for doing the will of the Divine Providence. As we have seen, the quest originated by the logos of life in the dimensions that the human condition opened up for it. The sacral logos, however, takes hold in the needs of the others. Egoic striving that becomes ordered to the other as a beloved, other self transmutes the striving into love, “the other takes on an ever more significant role in our interior unfolding and growth.”36 This idea may remind us of another student of Ingarten’s, Edith Stein, who holds that the I’s fulfillment is necessarily implicated in its efforts to help others reach fulfillment. This journey takes place at the pace of the spirit, which has its own melody and harmony of questioning, in an unrepeatable series that enacts a sequence. Suddenly, a moment erupts into the subjective acts that transforms them by involving their meanings in a process of sacrifice to the other, “working toward the self’s complete dedication to the Other.”37 For clarity’s sake, following the path of moral sentiment (rather than her earlier mysticism), Tymieniecka moves along the path that leads to deepening

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one’s connections with others. The sacral logos springs from the logos of life, in its symbiotic, vital existence, moving towards the freedom that can redeem contingency. But, there must be a witness. None of our neighbors can be intimate enough with us to possess the understanding that we crave. And this for so many reasons – religion, gender, culture or type are a few of the obvious ones. In the desire for transparency with an other, we see a misplaced desire for the sacral witness who can see us from the timeless perspective of the divine. This sacral witness personifies its logos.38 This witness can know the singular context of our virtualities and understand all. The sacral quest has led to a point where the moral quest has been suspended in favor of another dimension of temporality which breaks in. Does the logos of life disappear in the vortex between life and death? Does it go into hiding? We recall that the human creative condition unfolded a moral sense in its acts, “the vital solidarity of the drove or pack is raised to the plane of a moral responsibility to care for the other, to show solidarity, sympathy, love.”39 These effects flow from the flux that the singular individual shares in human interaction. They lift humanness to a position beyond the practical to one that tries to initiate the pilgrim on his trek toward the sacral. When “the timing of the vital ontopoietic unfolding is transformed” into kairic timing, the real measure of progress can only be in the growth of the individual in community, so that the logos of life [travels] on its plurisignificant course, “sharing-in-life expressions of communal life.”40 BACK TO LIFE

Tymieniecka’s itinerary is nearly completed. At the end she turns again to the question of life. Life begins in a self-enacted sequence of self-individuation. It ends with extinction. Yet, there are no radical discontinuities “such as beginning of life nor an end.” “The logos of life, who times itself in its very essence, is an absolute temporality which has no ‘beginning’ or ‘end.’”41 The logos of life times itself in its diminution; the future recedes until its final closing signals death. Or, does it? The kairic logos has been removing itself from accomplishments of this life to move further along on the sacral path leading to a great metaphorosis. Throughout the human journey, the logos has consistently been seeking its ultimate sense. Through its peak in the creative Human Condition, the logos has turned downwards to the stream underneath, almost causing its demise. Its real destiny was always the sacral vocation of the soul, however. “Thus the first and last role of the logos of life is accomplished, as it reaches its absolute sense.”42 But, does the logos of life end with death?

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Since no living being lives by itself, the logos of life operates “with an entire network that is centered on the self-individualization of beings.”43 Though it channels its promptings to one constructive interrogation, the logos of life is always ahead of itself, following the lead entailed by the first. So, the maturation or individuation of a human being has effects and consequences within the nexus of Life. Just as the process of the logos prompts the development of complex organs that in turn urge on further unintended consequences, the journey of one carves out a path in the reality that manifests it, but “at the subjacent ontopoietic prelife level” it contributes to the future when “the spark of life” may burst forth “in a novel ontopoietic sequence.”44 So much for the onward thrusting forward of the logos of life, but what conjectures might we make concerning the outcome of the Great Metamorphosis? Tymieniecka’s claim, throughout her work, is that her philosophy rests on direct intuition. She remains within the phenomenological tradition in certain important respects, despite her criticism of Edmund Husserl’s grounding in consciousness. Consciousness must be predicated on life, thus life must be prior. The guiding thread, the transcendental clue for her preceding analysis of the incarnation of the logos of life in a maturing human being, has been life. What have we learned about life? The logos of life has provided its own evidence for its inner nature. It has done this by its continually harmonious behavior. We can see the logos of life at work in our own lives and in our recognition that our lives are not ours alone. The Great Metamorphosis is our segue into the sacral rays of the logos of life. We move through another opening that supplies restitution for the defects and deficiencies of our vital lives. This newly won completion opens us to the quiet, joyful peace of sacral life. Yet, “an inner core of intent” remains in the logos of life. This makes communication among the persons in heaven and earth possible. Or, the communicative drive towards all soul is never extinguished until the “salvation of the sense of life is complete and all is dissolved within the Fullness of the logos.”45 In the meantime, the soul which has undergone the Great Metamorphosis has made a transition from “temporal life to a-temporality, or better hypertemporality.”46 If it is of the essence of life to endure through the vicissitudes of its course, death must be a transition from one mode of temporality to another, if life is to follow its pattern. We have seen the temporality of vital life supplemented by kronos time. Kronos time carries within itself its virtuality in Kairos time. Kairos time leads us to the sacral, the time of eternity. We can have some confidence about making analogies according to this pattern because it is ubiquitous in our experience. We see birth and death, construction and destruction, the temporal expression of the life force and its passing away. But the

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logos of life enacts a pattern that is the logos of life itself. This pattern with its indeterminate variations is itself invariant, essential. Thus, the pattern cannot be violated without doing violence to thinking itself. If the essence of the logos of life were to develop a new pattern, it would be another essence, a different essence. To say, then, that human persons die is to deny the entire analysis. Life then, in its essence, moves by prompting a pattern that leads to selfindividuation in community with all Others; life moves towards its fulfillment in Fullness. Death must be a stage to fulfillment; it is the final accomplishment. The soul, now sacral through its growing identification with the Witness, responds to its promptings to the realm Beyond where the soul takes its place within a network of sacral bonds which mold the interhuman organization into kaleidoscopic sublimations of the logos of life. The zenith of the Great Metamorphosis approaches: the Fullness approaches. As Tymieniecka sums up her study and its evidence, “In brief, it is in its timing, that the logos of life reveals its ultimate sense.”47

EPILOGUE

Tymieniecka appends an epilogue to spell out the results that her study may further suggest. The deepest human need for communication that can only find its fulfillment in the discovery of the Witness leads to questions about others within the fullness of life. But, as she reminds us, “Nothing ‘happens’ at once.”48 The logos of life is constantly on the move, preparing the details for events that will coalesce into advancing through phases along the sacral path. Its completion is in the perfect marriage of “reason” and “faith.” The Witness we sought out of our deep needs, driving desires and inviolate loneliness, fulfills our faith and trust. Through various byways, He leads us to Himself, the reason of all reasons. Along the way, the soul crosses bridges itself or meets a messenger crossing over. The interrogation solicits response. Earth and Heaven join in dialogue. Tymieniecka writes, “we may distinguish the following essential streamlets that in its progress enter a common pool in the two-way communicative move of the logos of life, which gathers all of its work on its way to the Fullness and sends waves lapping back.” This powerful metaphor evokes images of the sea, the sea of life, now, with its natural lawfulness and its unnatural source. The sacral logos has been present from the start, as the virtuality of virtualities to be found only in the human condition. The logos of life, the spirit guide, has inspired the journey through the creative imagination into the moral

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sense and to its telos. The Witness mediates, “a divine instance as our own measure, as it is circumscribed by the logos of life.”49 He is the way to the Celestial sphere. He awakens us to salvation through a life of service to others. Only a life of love cracks the shell of narcissism so that we can enjoy “our sacral transmuted authentic self launched upon a further sublimating course inspired by the sacral logos of life.” Tymieniecka reminds us that St. Catherine of Sienna said that the way to Heaven was Heaven. The divine calls to our viscera before we are yet sentient life, but we can begin to hear his echo in our own accomplishments. When we abandon things for persons, we are exalted by the glory beyond the pain; we see the truth of the logos of life. “A transformation sublimates ‘outward’ existence into an inward vision. Existence reborn in grace exults in praise.” We recognize that the life of the divine is real life now. Its reasons are being worked out. Souls are shucking off the husks of ordinary everyday life, much more the stems of a life of survival. The soul, now a wise virgin, awaits the coming of the Bridegroom, who brings wonders and delights beyond all imaginings. We conclude by returning to the marriage of faith and reason. Reason alone cannot achieve the goal of the unthinkable God. The logos of life must reveal itself to us. When reason participates in the promptings of the spirit and when reason participates in the spirit of questioning, it comes to the heart of faith. The Christian God, as unlikely as he is for so many reasons, is the truth of faith. When reason seeks the truth, it seeks God. This exegesis has provided little commentary on Tymieniecka’s systematic thought. It has pointed out the unity of the system and its completeness. Surely, there is much to be said, but that remains for another time. Suffice it to say now that life is its own reason d’etre, the good gift of the Good God who calls all back to Himself.

NOTES 1

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “THE GREAT METAMORPHOSIS OF THE LOGOS OF LIFE IN ONTOPOIETIC TIMING”, IPOP 3, p. 8. 2 Ibid. p. 5. This reflection finds resonance in the works of many contemporary thinkers who distinguish between the Being beyond existence and the beings whose being is becoming. 3 p. 6. 4 p. 7. 5 p. 8. 6 p. 10. 7 p. 11. 8 p. 12.

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Saint Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Tr Edward B. Pusey, (New York: Washington Square Press, 1960), p. 223. 10 Ibid., p. 221. 11 Tymieniecka, p. 13. 12 p. 16. 13 p. 16. 14 p. 18. 15 p. 19. 16 p. 19. 17 p. 20. 18 p. 22. 19 p. 23. 20 p. 25. 21 See Appendix. 22 Tymieniecka, p. 26. 23 p. 26. 24 p. 27. 25 p. 29. 26 p. 29. 27 p. 32. 28 p. 37. 29 p. 37. 30 p. 38. 31 p. 42. 32 p. 43. 33 p. 44. 34 p. 48. 35 p. 51. 36 p. 56. 37 p. 57. 38 Edith Stein writes in Knowledge and Faith, Tr Walter Redmond. (Washington DC: ICS Publications), p. 71. “Of Truth we are to speak when a knowing mind has known a being. In the case of the absolute and infinite Mind, wherein being, knowing and knowledge are one, being and truth are also one. (For this reason the Logos {Word} can say: ‘I am the truth.’)”. 39 Tymieniecka, p. 62. 40 p. 64. 41 p. 65. 42 p. 67. 43 p. 69. 44 p. 71. 45 p. 71. 46 p. 71. 47 p. 72. 48 p. 72. 49 p. 73.

ANGÈLE KREMER-MARIETTI

JEAN WAHL AND THE RENEWAL OF METAPHYSICS

ABSTRACT

Jean Wahl studied the question of the possibility of a renewal of metaphysics. All his philosophical and poetic works are turning around a renewal of metaphysics. But, by «renewal» should be understood a new establishment of metaphysics, in a new state and spirit. The metaphysician in scene must be delivered from the principle that the metaphysical experiment must be different from the ordinary experiment. Jean Wahl liked to think of the idea of «getting back home» or «to the origins»; and he evoked Nietzsche’s title The Birth of tragedy, which indicated Nietzsches’s project to go back to the deep sources of human reality, now covered by numerous historical times anf forgotten by the present culture. Within the meaning of recognition and even the new discovery of a lost birth and at the same time of an occulted past, Wahl still added the idea of «reform». But compared to what would be the renewal to be produced? Certainly, it would be done in a setting in a real distance from the old metaphysics. Let us note that Jean Wahl followed Carnap’s remark: «Existence is not a predicate»1 ; and this was also Kant’s conclusion in connection with the ontological argument. But because Carnap had gone much too far, Jean Wahl included in the metaphysical experiment the ordinary experiment. His argumentation, based on the faculty to say or not to say, did not concern only metaphysics: “If something is beyond any possible experiment, this thing cannot be said as it might be; perhaps one can affirm, however, there exists something like this thing, like Plato says it for the Good, and so even it cannot be fully thought, we can nevertheless think that this thing is”.2 Wahl granted nevertheless to Carnap that it is, indeed, vain to look for the essence of life or causality – moreover, he saw in the development of contemporary sciences the notion of causality replaced by the ideas of function or relation.3 Carnap, who accepted the metaphysician as poet or musician, recognized explicitly for Nietzsche the right for metaphysics, but understood as an art. Jean Wahl admitted partially Carnap’s position. He added that 97 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 97–107. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_6, 

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metaphysicians and philosophers are often powerless to destroy the arguments which are set against them. He went so in the sense of Nietzsche’s thought according to which refutation can always be refuted.4 But was this a reason as such to free of metaphysics? Certainly no, because Jean Wahl respected very much the metaphysical experience unknown behind the image proper to philosophical mediation. The question of Philosophia perennis then had to arise. Indeed, at once to take or to throw back the included philosophy as eternal would not be an easy thing with the rigorous involvements, which would pull acceptance or refutation of what was maybe never more than an abstraction. Because, asked Wahl, in this alleged consensual place which would be philosophia perennis, did not one see not a ceaseless fight of systems ones against others? He underlined very exactly the strength of support which a system often finds in the weakness of the opposite system. Thus – to examine the traditional opposition between rationalism and empiricism –, does not rationalism pull its main argument of the impossibility to explain the a priori, which characterizes empiricism? Conversely, do not take empiricists their strength in the vain character which they lend to the thoughts of rationalist? Hence, it was necessary to notice a ruinous philosophic fight of systems, appropriate to endanger the reality of a philosophia perennis reduced to be only an ideal. Let us say that Wahl’s anxiety in this respect was not without joining an argument which is one of the reasons of a rejection of metaphysics used by analytical philosophy. The British philosopher Joseph Wayne Smith once again raised the question by wondering about the fact that he calls the «Problem of Perennial Philosophical Disagreements» (PPPD),5 and that he tries to eliminate at risk, it seems to us, to eliminate philosophy itself. Jean Wahl opted rather for an existential dialectic near of a cogitation on Nietzsche and Kierkegaard: I should say “would have opted”, because always Jean Wahl offered his resolutions only as very modified hypotheses, and used conditional mode in statements often starting with the terms: “we could see”, or else “we would be led to search”. Wahl pushed the idea of a dialectic until seeing it dialectized by another dialectic, until supposing something which was able to return reason of the dialectical one: it is at this precise point that it was appearing to him necessary to conceive a connection between an indefinite dialectic and a kind of empiricism. That’s why, paradoxically, he underlined the necessity to use empiricism in order to develop metaphysics. Metaphysical difficulty appears distinctly in the Treatise of Metaphysics. The passage displaying «trial and error of human mind» is suitable for the definition of his research:

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“It is because human mind wants to seize reality, and that reality is not easily labelled under concepts, or explained by theories, that human mind goes from a theory often to a contradictory theory, and returns then to the first, with undoubtedly often progress and deepenings, there is something like a play with comings and goings from an idea to the another”.6 But something had to precede dialectic and to justify it: it was the metaphysical experience. The respect for metaphysical experience inspired Wahl in his reconstitution of philosophical problems. Jean Wahl acknowledged, indeed, with each problem tackled in the current of the history of philosophy, a singular authentic movement. Thus, the problem of the absolute related to the separate one as much as the including one. The same opposition was noted in the problem inherent to the idea of being: being is at the same time what resists to our thought and what is united with it in the completion. He found a dialectic of ideas in the history of philosophy because he acknowledged there the movement of mind. Indeed, Jean Wahl always, in field of general philosophy, gave priority to the history of philosophy and the word to philosophers. In order to inventory and know them until their most intimate springs, he dismounted and went up the ideas while teaching, for example, pluralism. He indicated that to idealistic philosophies like those of Bradley and Royce, who affirmed the impossibility of thinking the independence of terms compared to their relations, had succeeded James and Russell’s realistic philosophies, for which the relations are as real as the terms and terms themselves independent of the relations. Wahl raised the question, by the same Husserl, first that essences were put between brackets, and that then they were simply lived. A renewal of metaphysics implicated therefore new positions in what concerned first of all the discipline named “metaphysics”. Jean Wahl liked to remind – argument which raises the legend – that Aristote has put metaphysical considerations méta-physical appearances after considerations on physics, because probably so he had wanted to point out the overtaking by mind of physis, that is to say of nature.7 As well Jean Wahl made a fate to the term itself of “nature”, either it would mean the essence of a thing, that is to say of what it can be said and thus exceeds the simple datum, or what the infinite power of renewal which operates in the same things, and which makes that what is phusis is always puts has as a nature is this power of perpetual self-overtaking. In one case as in the other one, the one meaning overtaking in the otherness generally, and the other overtaking in the identity of the nature as such, it was always a question for him of an overtaking: either of the overtaking carried out by the thought and the language with regard to the given, or of the

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“auto-overtaking of the deletion by itself and that it would be necessary nevertheless to the metaphysician, sooner or later, to seize and to describe by thought and language. The question of a renewal of metaphysics would even also have implied for Wahl that there was something as metaphysics, a domain in which generally develop various sights on the world, but which were never able to be unified, unlike those who constitute the physics. And Jean Wahl could assert: “if there are metaphysicians, there is no thing which would be metaphysics”.8 But why could we not imagine that systems could be renewed: as well rationalism as empiricism? And how to know as possible such a renewal? Reality has preeminence on a possible one, and determines the possbility itself. For Wahl, neither any question could not be treated apart from the history of metaphysics, nor especially apart from the consideration of the beginning of philosophy. Two initial ideas allowed Jean Wahl to engage his investigation. First, was the idea that there is always something like reflexive, and that, if essence must appear, it is there that the essence must appear – but he drew aside the “pre-reflexive cogito” supposed by Sartre, because the pre-reflexion that Wahl proposed was not comparable to the cogito. The another idea of Jean Wahl was that there is always a becoming. And the two ideas met: because, for him, the road of becoming lets go in concert essence with appearance. At the beginning of his inquiry, was thus excluded the base of operations on the Cartesian Cogito, as was excluded the substantialism which it supports. What Wahl wanted to render obvious was “something hardly expressible”, but anyway expressible, which does not explain but precedes all cogitationes: it is by what precisely he wanted to start. Was banished the analyzis of representations, at least insofar as it would have pretended to break up reality in its ultimate elements. What is given, and such as it is given, was the first object of his research: not the result of a decomposition, and no more the result of a recombining. If the immediate was to be the object of his first research of a metaphysics renewed by Jean Wahl, it would be neither the immediate of analytic philosophies, nor the immediate of philosophies of the representation. However the immediate was to be required, because generally, as Wahl liked to underline it, this is not the immediate one which presents itself to the mind, but, on the contrary, the mediate one. In what, metaphysical research would go away in the same way as science which begins in the similarly as it is given to the common sense. Wahl considered possible various levels of observation of reality. At the same time, the same table can be reduced to nothing more than vibrations discerned by the physicist, and also be for me an object of perception at the level of common sense. But can the scientist say that the table that I see is “false”? Although he invented the «true table» which resolves to

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vibrations, and even finally dissolves in scope. However, in order to introduce the «true table», he would have necessarily begun with the «false table» of the common sense, about which Wahl said that, for us, it is not falser than the «true table».9 As for the instrument capable of registering vibrations that affect the “true table”, it is a technical extension created by man, and different from humans. Through the structure of mind, science seeks the substructure of things, which presents differently depending on the specific movement of each science. Also one cannot say that one science nor even that all the sciences together could reconstitute reality in its entirety. Jean Wahl shared this position with philosophers such as Nietzsche, Bergson, and Jaspers. The latter refused to see the real dissolve, as he said, in «algebraic smoke». Jean Wahl joined all those for which reality is more and another thing than a whole of quantitative relations that science gives itself for exclusive mission to notice. Therefore let us speak of a pre-reflexive state, i.e. (as the language remains permanently on the horizon of Jean Wahl’s thought) a pre-prédicative, and at the same time a sub-memory and a pre-perception, Jean Wahl was referring to a “something” which should be as the Husserlian pre- given or even the “World of Life” called by Husserl Lebenswelt. Wahl’s predilection went to the infraconscient region where he had assumed that the more abstract structures came from, i.e., in fact, a reality that falls between the sub-subjet and sub-object, and making subject and object indistinguishable to the point of confusing them. Thus had made William James in his own orientation towards a world of images, or Bergson while letting us guess a world without dichotomies nor forks, from which never reach us but fragments of images. It is why, in the return to metaphysics, we could not satisfy us to begin the reflexion with feelings, as begin empirist philosophies from Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, which Wahl quoted abondantly. For Wahl, feeling was not prior, but posterior to reflexion. Moreover, he saw people and things presenting in confusion before any distinction. After Nietzsche, Wahl said it was necessary to see in the originating cause, and at the true beginning of thought, not a “temporal cause”, but well rather an “accusation”: in other words, a personal relation. Things which we believe to see at once appear at first to us as persons: in any case, we lend intentions with regard to us. The apprehension which we have of them can depend from various points of view: sometimes a thing is for itself, sometimes it is for another one, or else for us. As well as Husserl and Heidegger underlined it very exactly, things appear on a background of world. Wahl liked saying: “who says world”, still says with Husserl “foundation of faith”. He continued: “who says world”, still says with Kant an idea, and even maybe also a real understandable

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idea from the background of which all our sensations and all our perceptions get loose. Doubtless Jean Wahl was aware of practising in his way an analysis of ordinary language which had curiously to concern this experience, not ordinary at all, which was in fact the metaphysical experience. But, contrary to the philosophy of language, which already began to develop in the Anglo-Saxon countries, Jean Wahl recognized that any analysis of the language presupposes a pro-language inherent to the pre-predicative world, and then from there would have been born the possibility of language as a preeminence of the possible one. Strangely, from this idea of pro-language, Jean Wahl crossed in the idea of the earth. This chain of ideas contains however its own logic. Thus turning to the fourth element that the old metaphysicians had thus deliberately drawn aside for the benefit of the three others, water, air and fire, Wahl insisted on this ground of opacity, of stability and of solidity, which is the moving ground which supports the things in the swirl of becoming. Therefore, the same thing was to count on a pro-language which would be the soil of the language. It was, elsewhere, from what, for Wahl, the world fragmentation could take place in between the images, As the fragmentation and the explosion of being are themselves at the origin of becoming. Certainly, through the evocation of the three other elements, the Former’s concern had been to underline the reality of becoming. And, from a certain point of view, the pre-predicative is itself, mostly, just like becoming, as fire, air and water. With Heraclite, Anaximen, and Thales, Wahl saw the main part of the world in the becoming of things. Moreover, through the conceptions of the world which offered the new physics, for Wahl the partisans of movement had just triumphed on the partisans of rest. As regards the local movement – to which the reductionnist attempt reduces any movement, including the qualitative change –, Jean Wahl wanted however that would be reconsidered reality of the change of the quantities as well the alteration of the qualities. He thus refused to reduce the ideas of movement and change to the other ideas either simpler or easier to be used by abstract thought. All these ideas had to remain what they were for him in their intrinsic reality, that is inflexible ideas. In it Wahl joined totally Bergson, set on principle against any transcription of the movement in understandable terms. Certain unitarian offices were nevertheless also acceptable according to Wahl, and they were also by Bergson who tracked down units of movement, or, for example, the course of an arrow, the walking of a man. Thus, Jean Wahl did not exclude the possibility of totalities, persons and things, which he considered locatable as stability; certainly, they could be changeable in the zone of the pre-predicative themselves, the unstable zone by excellence. In this prospect, Bergson was indeed the “first

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philosopher” according to Alexander’s remark, which Jean Wahl completed by placing Bergson next to Heraclite. As to Bergson, he had taken time seriously. From then on, said Jean Wahl, the changes are not only simultanities and consequences, but also thicknesses of duration, as melodies which would remain for ever undecomposable. Nevertheless, asked Wahl “is not the idea of becoming an abstract idea? ”10 And he asked the same question about the idea of being. – I cannot, here, refrain from pointing out the usual effect of the lawsuit of questioning appropriate for Jean Wahl: according to an existential and fine intuition, but also according to a critical perspicacity, skillful to question what would have been able to seem to be obvious, Jean Wahl refused a simple or too immediate vision of the universal becoming. He preferred to arouse the interrogation intended to make put off always farther the glimpsed solution. He accepted to say: «one can see there are “beings” with Heidegger, and even also there are “becomings”. There are everywhere things and which become. But, about being itself, can one say it is made of different “beings”? And about becoming, can one say it is made of different “becomings”? Becoming, which is the most general quality, like time, which is something relatively abstract: such were dominant philosophical concerns of the first half of the twentieth century, with Bergson and Whitehead as with Husserl. And that was Wahl’s track. For Hartmann and, according to Wahl really also for Hegel, future was not in opposition with reality, it was no what is more a category of the reality. So meditating and walking on from essential to essential to the heart of philosophies, and from a philosopher to the other, Wahl retained from Heraclite that becoming is not the way from the non-being to the being, but really the way from a being to another being. Universal fluidity, which was how the Old ones were seizing time, such could be the becoming. Another design of becoming was to understand it like a varied time, the opposite of monotonous – Wahl said: polytone”– and not the “homogeneous medium similar to leer space”,11 which prevailed in the European thought from our Kant’s reading. Hesiod had presented, on the contrary, in Of works and of days, a varied time, made of winds and tides, But also a time suitable for action – Would it be understood today like the time of Pragmatic, or like Heidegger’s «time-for». From the concrete mythical time to the Aristotelician time designed like number of the movement, the (eternal) philosophy has cut itself a path through which led to the Newtonian design of time, to which Bergson opposed his intuition of the duration. Jean Wahl developed an original analysis of the idea of “becoming” as descent of time, insistence on the past, while he felt the English term “becoming” like an efflorescence of time, an insistence of one present towards one

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future. Our idea of time is, he said, at first closely emotional: regret, remorse, hope, fear. But what is before and what is after do not exclude what is during, if not for the physicist, at least for the poet, the metaphysician and the monk who make even of it an «eternity». The abstract idea of becoming would be then what is emerging from all lived different, and it would allow that we considered future as predictable. Also Wahl criticized Kant on benefit of Hume, about this permanence or of this substance of which Kant made the condition of change, while Hume thought, more precisely according to Wahl, that the idea of change did not require that we had as a preliminary idea the idea of the permanent one. It was enough to allow that would be considered any speed of changes entering in account: slower changes, slower than others would be enough to make us seize faster changes. Furthermore, if for Hegel and for Heraclite the war was the heart of things, can we say that it is really so? Jean Wahl raised doubts on the explanation of becoming by reference to opposite. Leibniz seemed to him closer to what really takes place: between opposite ones, it does not remain any more than gradual differences: idea which we also find by Nietzsche in Beyond good and evil. Night is only an infinitely decreased day, quite as peace is only an infinitely decreased war. With Leibniz and Bergson, Wahl did not connect becoming to a certain imperfection or even to a non-being, as made it Platon and Aristote. Furthermore, to think a passage from state to state was a false way to think. In its intimate constitution, a state was itself but a passage offered to the perception of change. In a fine perception thus boring beyond and on this side of daily life, Jean Wahl developed what he called the discrepancies of becoming. There was, at first, a paradoxical aspect between becoming that we do not see and becomings that we see; but, these becomings, we seize them perhaps only because, in the last resort, there exist becoming. There was too a discrepancy between subjective and objective, inherent to becoming; but becoming is not necessarily something interior, on the contrary, in order to think of becoming as objective we must at first internalize it. Let us note that here “internalize” may apply to “subjectivize”. The tendency to subjectivize becoming was represented by the book of Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenology of perception,12 but, added Wahl, many passages of it would also tend to show all the opposite, that is to say the objectivity of becoming. Wahl also located a discrepancy between the private individual and the general, that is to say a particular thinkable becoming in reference only to a general becoming, the last being seized but through particular becomings. Jean Wahl then continued studying the discrepancies of becoming by raising some Kantian and Sartrien aspects through a critic of some Merleau-Ponty’s lines of his Phenomenology of perception. A first feature of the Merleau-pontienne theory of temporality was summarized in this quotation

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of the p. 483: “It is necessary to understand time as the subject and the subject as time”. The second feature was no more subjectivity and the characteristic of the time lived as internality, but also objectivity and generality of external time. Such were thus combined by Jean Wahl both terms of an antinomy which he insisted to underline. And Wahl liked calling back the becoming of mind, which he tracked down as having already been noted by Hegel at the beginning of his Logic. Another antinomy of becoming is that of time which appears through the question of continuity and discontinuity. Jean Wahl put then the question of the continuist thesis of becoming such as Bergson had developed in opposition to Kant and Renouvier: for Bergson, time or becomining is not what it is for Kant, neither a datum of experiment nor a form of intuition, and no more what it is for Renouvier, a succession of separate moments from each other. Even this opposition to Kant and Renouvier was however not totally satisfactory for Wahl. Indeed, his more moderate thought required another thing than to affirm purely and simply the continuity of becoming. Inter alia, the allegedly concrete character of Bergsonian becoming could not satisfy either the requirement of Wahl’s certainty. Indeed, if the discontinuous one is excluded from becoming, becoming cannot be concrete, and for being concrete we need necessarily to introduce into becoming a discountinuing element. Like William James, Jean Wahl recognized to becoming a concrete constitution to which were necessarily taking part the discountinuing elements. Nor the perfekt continuity presented by Bergson nor discontinuous units that offers science to us could not give to Jean Wahl a complete and concrete vision of becoming. The steps of a walk like the sentences of a speech deserve also our interest, not only the walk and the speech: there was for Wahl “continuous elements separated by discontinuing intervals”.13 Admittedly, we can give us the global sight on walk or speech; but, in the progression of the actions of walking or discoursing, Jean Wahl still placed an intermediate state between the moments of the scientist and the Bergsonian duration: from these intermediaries we can go then towards condensation or dispersion, towards continuity or discontinuity. For Wahl imposed itself the Cartesian idea according to which we can seize things in the moment or through a speech. Even the simple nature seized by only one act of conscience “in a way can extend in time”.14 Cogito can be seized either in one act of intuition or become a course and a speech. Through an exposition of what is brought back to three discrepancies of becoming, Wahl indeed proposed the expression of becoming in contrary terms such as continuity and discontinuity, interiority and externality, individuality and generality; by doing this, he refused to join completely Heraclite on his definition of becoming by the only contrariety of terms. Also Wahl put

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the question either of exceeding these discrepancies, or maintaining them. And he was forwarded to the idea that becoming reserves something rebel to any explanation, as the Heideggerian phusis or the “copresence” recognized by Whitehead. The modes of explanation met in the history of philosophy could not satisfy Jean Wahl. On this ground, non completely explainable, Jean Wahl advanced however towards other ideas: (1) that of the complication of becoming, (2) that of the structure and (3) that of the rhythm of psychic and cosmic becoming. Wahl conceived the road of becoming directed towards its solidification in the being, or also, and even rather, as «human work». Also Jean Wahl estimated the experiment of the current of thought by James realler than that of the current of the Bergsonian conscience: perching itself here and there, and flying during other moments, the bird represented best to him movements and course of the thought. And if becoming aspires to take form, neither the being nor the non-being are true departure of philosophy, nor the becoming being born of bursted being, but well the particular being, objects and works. Thus went on the infinite task, because always started again, of the ontologico-logic of Jean Wahl’s analyzis. Groupe d’Études et de Recherches Épistémologiques, Paris

NOTES Carnap, La science et la métaphysique devant l analyse du langage, Paris, 1934, traduction de: « Ueberwindung der Metaphysick durch logische Analyse der Sprache », Erkenntnis 2, 1932. Quoted by Jean Wahl, in L expérience métaphysique, Nouvelle Bibliothèque Scientifique, Flammarion., Paris, 1965, p. 81. 2 Translation of Jean Wahl, L expérience métaphysique, op. cit., p. 81. 3 It was also Auguste Comte’s position. 4 Cf. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1, §18. 5 Cf. John Wayne Smith, The Progress and Rationality of Philosophy as a Cognitive Enterprise. An Essay in Metaphilosophy, Gower Publications Company Limited, Aldershot (England), Brookfield (E.U.), 1987. 6 Jean Wahl, Traité de Métaphysique, Payot, Paris, 1953, p. 693. 7 Un renouvellement de la métaphysique est-il possible? Centre de Documentation Universitaire, Paris, 1957, p. 5. 8 Ibid. 9 Op. cit., p. 12. 10 Cf op. cit., p. 25: “Thus becoming can be an abstract idea and a seconde idea”. Cf Traité de Métaphysique, (Treatise on Metaphysics), op. cit., p. 42: “The idea of becoming appears to be extremely concrete; and yet, it is needed to see that it is, also, the product of an abstraction; a thing becomes hotter or colder, undergoes such or such transformation. We are always in front of such or such becoming. And, although we allowe us to seize things in their concrete character, 1

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the idea of becoming seems to us be produced from an abstraction”. Cf Un renouvelle ment de la métaphysique, op. cit., p. 29: “It is with all these elements that in us our idea will be built abstracted from the becoming”. 11 See Un renouvellement de la métaphysique, op. cit., p. 25. 12 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Gallimard, Paris, 1945. 13 See Un renouvellement de la métaphysique, op. cit., p. 39. 14 Op. cit., p. 40.

SECTION II

JAN SZMYD

P O S T - M O D E R N I S M A N D T H E ETHICS O F C O N S C I E N C E : V A R I O U S “I N T E R P R E T A T I O N S ” OF THE MORALITY OF THE POST-MODERN W O R L D . R O L E O F A . T . T Y M I E N I E C K A ’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE

ABSTRACT

It can be said that some concept and theories of anthropological philosophy of a given age usually are a specifical reflection of moral reality of this age. They express, more or less successful, some sort reaction to the main manifestations of moral life and moral culture of relevant age. In aur times, in post-modern world or “liquid modernity” such role is created, among others, by the philosophy of post-modernism, neopragmatism, existencialism and, in some measure, by phenomenology of life of A.T. Tymieniecka. In this original part of philosophical reflections by A.T. Tymieniecka two statements seems to be most important: (1) We are living in the age of serious cultural crisis, especially the crisis od spirituality and the world of values. In consecvence the moral life and the moral culture are also impacted by the crisis. (2) But the conteporary crisis of morality is not a total crisis, deep and durable, but incomplete and temporary one. In other words – this is not the crisis of morality as such, but a certain “crisis – in – morality” and this is not crisis of ethics as science dealing with morality, but a specific “crisis – in ethics”. It is because that main source of morality is still certain factor embedded in human nature, called as “moral sense” or “moral self” expressed in the activity of moral conscience. 1. Certain philosophy historians claim that philosophy is the “mirror of the age” or its intellectual reflection.1 On the other hand, others claim that “philosophy reflects culture”, by means of which they most probably wish to say that the character and the quality of the culture of a given age is exemplified best by the character and the quality of philosophy developed during this time.2 This idea, rather disputable yet not devoid of certain reason, may be, to a certain extent, referred to as the relation taking place between the ethic thought and the moral reality of a given age, its character, general status, social, cultural 111 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 111–122. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_7, 

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and existential role, etc. Therefore, it can be said that ethical concepts and theories of a given age are, to a certain extent, a reflection of the moral reality of this age. In any case, they constitute some sort of (more or less successful) reaction to the specific manifestations of the collective and individual moral life of the relevant age. Therefore, one can ascertain that “the age’s ethics influence the moral culture of this period”; this ascertainment constitutes a slight simplification, which is not, however, unjustified. Nevertheless, a critical remark has to be made with respect to the aforementioned thesis about the “mirror-like” function of philosophy and ethics in relation to their respective ages, in particular to their spiritual and moral cultures. Not all trends of philosophical and ethical thought which are deemed representative for a given age perform the above-mentioned “mirror-like” function with respect to it, i.e. not all of them provide a “reflection” of the dominant culture and moral reality of a given age. It happens that this function, with respect to a given age, is assumed by these philosophical and ethical directions and orientations that are not apparently representative or even characteristic with respect to it, and in their origin, they are “not from this age”, but from earlier times, sometimes even historically very distant. A telling example with respect to the “reflection” of the status and transformations of moral reality of our age, the “post-modern age” or “liquid modernity”,3 can be provided by post-modernism on the one hand (mainly in its philosophical and axiological layer) and on the other by certain directions of philosophy and ethics historically preceding the period of post-modernity and deriving from closer or further “modernity”, as well as, inter alia, existentialism, certain varieties of phenomenology, among them the phenomenology of life by Anna Teresa Tymieniecka, the ethics of conscience and reliable patron by Tadeusz Kotarbi´nski, the philosophy and life ethics of Albert Schweitzer, the philosophy of technical civilisation and pure-minded ethics of Józef Ba´nka, the concept of social and global ethics of Erich Fromm, Hans Jonas, Peter Singer, Zygmunt Bauman or the eco-ethics of Henryk Skolimowski. The first orientation in the above list of intellectual structures, i.e. postmodernism, definitely insufficiently “reflects” the status and the dynamics of the moral reality of the “post-modern” world, which is quite unexpected and probably against its intentions; on the other hand, the other orientations perform this “reflection” unexpectedly well – in various manners characterised by different levels of success. 2. In order to justify this hypothesis, let us perform an abbreviated confrontation of the ethical thought and intentionality of these directions with the practice and moral reality to which they refer. Let us start with post-modernism. This intellectual trend, initiated in American literature in the 1950s and 1960s,

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soon developed as one of the most influential representative intellectual trends at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. Its famous representatives came not only from the United States (Howe, Hasson, Rorty and others), but also from certain European countries, mainly Germany and France (Adarno, Habermas, Lyotard, Derrida, Gehlen, Foucault, Eco and others).4 Its main tendency is, as is known, radical criticism of European cultural tradition, i.e. tradition crystallised in the so-called “Athenian mentality” (generally speaking, in the intellectual paradigm of ancient Greece) and destruction of the so-called “modernist heritage” (in general: rejection of rationalism, cognitive and practical optimism, inclination towards excessive generalisations and construction of huge intellectual systems, absolutisation of truths and standards, fascination by modernity and perfection, simple faith in progress, creation of programmes and projects for a “better world” (totalitarian systems) and trusting in the “self-salvation” of man). In this critical and destructive tendency, post-modernism is justified by certain arguments and has some legitimacy (there is no place in this study to discuss this in detail). It is only possible to mention a justified criticism of simplified versions of rationalism and scientism, cognitive “conceit” of various (both classical and more recent) metaphysical systems, criticism of epistemological, axiological and ethical absolutism or a number of correct conclusions that were drawn from the so-called “modernist crash.” However, in this arch-critical tendency and orientation of post-modernism, one can notice a number of weaker sides, and even clearly incorrect “endeavours”, which include far-fetched criticism of tradition, together with a clearly faulty thesis that traditional ideas and values cease to perform their cultureproducing function; providing truths and norms not only with total relativity, but also with locality; confusing the enfeebled mind (logos) with the privileged myth (mythos), narration and argumentation, term and metaphor, etc.; diminishing philosophy (every philosophy) and ethics (every ethics) to a rhetorical formula. In relation with this ambivalent role of post-modernism in modern Western culture, one has to agree with the following general statement formulated with respect to this influential intellectual trend, which is nowadays fashionable: “(. . .) the struggle of post-modernism with modernism is in reality the struggle of opinions on the world which were philosophically expressed a long time ago. This struggle undoubtedly means a failure of totalitarian recipes for man’s ‘salvation.’ Their post-modernist criticism is justified and instructive, and the ‘treatment’ related with it is useful for contemporary culture. However, this does not mean that (. . .) this movement is the only alternative for Western philosophy and culture”.5

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In particular, examination and interpretation of the status and transformations of moral reality and ethic thought in the “post-modern” world by post-modernism are definitely incorrect. In defiance of nihilist and catastrophic opinions of the leading representatives of this intellectual direction, the state of affairs in this area is quite different, i.e. more constructive and positive. Here, a reference is made to the recognition of this state of affairs by certain modern social sciences. 3. In the light of a number of social sciences, as well as a general observation, it is possible to state that the age of “post-modernity” with such characteristic features as globalisation, technical and IT progress, consumerism and pragmatisation of life, growing influence of mass media and mass culture, constant acceleration of “everybody and everything”, etc. causes deep and quickly occurring changes in the sphere of consciousness and man’s existence, including the ethical consciousness and moral life. This last type of changes is described in different ways. Starting with determinations, whose meaning is blurred, such as “dilution of moral climate” in contemporary man’s life, “thinning out of the moral content” in his life, “weakening of the moral condition” of people, decreasing their sensitivity and moral imagination, enfeebling the conscience and moral involvement, etc. and ending with determinations which are more explicit, such as “morality crisis”, “crisis of ethics”, “fall of morality”, “destruction of ethics”, etc. However, a number of cognitive data and scientific analyses and even commonplace experiences and observations seem to indicate that the current moral reality of our civilisation and cultural circle is something that requires determinations that are connotatively balanced and less extreme. The moral reality of our civilisation does not entail either weak and insignificant changes or a fundamental transformation with a decisive meaning for the humanity. In other words, it is not a light and insignificant shaking or enfeebling of morality, but is also not a total and structural crisis of this phenomenon in the contemporary world or its catastrophic irreversible crash. It is something in-between these two possibilities, i.e. it is a “crisis in morality” and at the same time a “crisis in ethics” requiring highest attention and serious care. These terms are used in order to determine the state of affairs when, on the one hand, traditional ethical systems become more and more dysfunctional and socially and practically inefficient. On the other hand, these terms are used to determine a status when modern creative consciousness and ethic imagination are left more and more behind in their development with respect to the rate of civilisational, social, technical and cultural changes. This delay is also often accompanied by a quite clear weakening of sensitivity and moral emotionality, a certain dullness or numbness of human consciences and moral dilemmas. In short:

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moral progress does not keep up with the civilisational progress – with all unsuccessful consequences of this state of affairs. Post-modernism does not make the understanding of this state of affairs easier; however, on a certain level this understanding is permitted by the results of psychological research on personality and conscience-related behaviour of an individual, as well as cognitive achievements of modern philosophical anthropology and philosophy of morality (philosophical ethical theory) in this respect. Both significant scientific research and philosophical investigations jointly confirm the existence and the functioning of a certain motivating mechanism and internal dynamism in the psychical structure of man, which may be treated as a natural predisposition or “moral power”, manifesting itself in the ability to distinguish between good and evil and to make a choice between them, in positive or negative approach to these issues, in the need of their personal affirmation or negation, in readiness or unwillingness to act for them, etc. Depending on the type of scientific specialisation or philosophical orientation, this constitutive ingredient of human nature and personality is determined differently. Some determine it as “moral ego”, “axiological self”, “moral sense”, “moral intuition”, “moral sense”, etc.; other use terms with wider meanings, such as “being moral”, “immanent ethics”, etc. All these terms communicate more or less clearly the basic anthropological and ethical message of these standpoints (their common denominator), i.e. a jointly adopted assumption that the man in his nature is a moral existence, in his nature he is homo moralis, that there is something like natural morality. In other words, the existence of a moral factor, phylogenetically and ontogenetically shaped and integrally connected with psychical constitution of man and his morality, can be confirmed. Prior to indicating philosophical clarification of this thesis by the contemporary philosophers and ethicists who oppose post-modernism, let us refer to the opinions of some representatives of contemporary science. Let us start with the comment of a sociologist and social anthropologist: “(. . .) people are moral ‘by nature’ and their ‘being moral’ is a constitutive attribute of humanity, a special feature which differentiates human existence among all other types of existence in the world”.6 This scientist adds “(. . .) being moral distinguishes the man’s existence as its attributive feature from other types of existence in the world and it denotes consciousness that things and acts may be good or bad and even earlier that they may be different than they are. There is also the option of choosing, without ‘this possibility, there is no morality’”.7 The author’s conclusion is a statement that “(. . .) we are burdened with moral consciences”.8

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A similar opinion is voiced by one eminent contemporary psychologist who states that: “(. . .) constituent elements of the structure of personality are, in my opinion: outlook on the world, life plans, passions, implementation activities, skills, character, self-knowledge, self-criticism, conscience”.9 It is manifested in “conscience behaviour” which the researcher believes to be one of the important self-regulatory functions of personality, whose objective is to “(. . .) lead the individual from a specific moral situation of conflict, restore its internal balance allowing for moral actions”.10 In this place, it is also possible to quote an opinion of a famous bioethicist and theoretician of global ethics, who includes a major part of natural reactions and moral intuitions of the man under “a certain type of universal behaviour” and species-specific “intuitive reactions” which are as characteristic for the species of humans as relations between parents and children, especially between mothers and children. We owe them both to our “evolutionary history” and to “cultural history.” These are, obviously, bio-psychical qualities which are historically variable, evolving and culturally diverse, but they are “inscribed” in the human nature in a relatively durable manner.11 4. Let us proceed to philosophical and ethical “interpretation” of the modern moral reality. This function is performed best by concepts deriving from non-hetoronomic and outonomic tradition of ethical thought (mainly from Kant, Leibnitz, Schopenhauer and other moral philosophers), representing the so-called “ethics of conscience” and expressing the idea that the main, and for some the only, source of morality is a certain factor embedded in human nature, called, as it was previously mentioned, “moral sense”, “moral self”, “moral feeling” etc. which is expressed mainly in the activity of conscience, its choices, the concepts of rejecting or diminishing external factors (transcendental, social, political) as the main sources and conditions of this phenomenon. A modern example of this ethics is, on the one hand, the ethical concept of the secular trend in existentialism (mainly Sartre and Camus); on the other hand, the above-mentioned “ethics of conscience” of Kotarbi´nski, Ingarden, Fromm, Ba´nka, Bauman and especially the ethics of A. T. Tymieniecka. These two trends in the contemporary ethics of conscience (let us call it by this name), differently “interpret” and “reflect” the contemporary moral reality. They also provide varied interpretations of the core of morality and in doing so, they follow a different path than the path followed helplessly by the postmodernism, which is paradoxical and ironic. The road selected by the leading representatives of French existentialism (who are, nota bene, the inspirers of a number of philosophical and literary concepts of post-modernism) and the road followed by the main representatives

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of French and American post-modernism provides a meaningful example for the fact that the “ethics of conscience” and the totally nihilistic and destructive intellectual orientation in post-modernism are on different roads with respect to the modern ethical thought. Let us look at this issue briefly. Existentialism and post-modernism, in spite of belonging to different epoch (the first one to the end phase of the so-called “modernity” and the second one to the beginnings of “post-modernity), have a clearly marked presence in the European and American culture of the second half of the twentieth century. Strictly speaking, they co-exist in diverse roles at the historically breakthrough moment of transition from the past age into the present age. These two different, yet in a certain degree related, intellectual formations (some people think that the “father” of post-modernity was existentialism) perceived a number of features and properties of this “age of transition” (between the “modernity” and “post-modernity”) in an identical manner, yet in general they confronted them in contrasting manners, reacting to them in different ways, explaining and interpreting them differently and primarily leading to divergent conclusions. For example, the features and characteristics of jointly experienced and jointly interpreted “age of transition”, such as the significant shaking of the traditional orders of value; radical relativisation of all the existing values (especially social, moral and aesthetic values); lowering of the rank of auto-telic values with an increase in the significance of utilitarian values; sudden contributions to activation of repressive world of anti-values (violence, aggression, intolerance, egoism, phobias, hostility, etc.; in general, the growth of “moral disarray”, “spiritual mess”, regression of humanism and deeper spirituality, etc. lead these two intellectual orientations (deriving from a common civilisational and cultural core) to differing philosophical and ethical positions. Existentialism positioned itself ingeniously on the level of creating the philosophy of human subjectivity and personal existence, with the main problems of freedom, responsibility and self-fulfilment. On the ethical level, it undertook a heroic attempt of constructing radically autonomous ethics of subjective existence and self-creation of an individual and transcending it beyond the subjective existence. In other words, existentialism undertook the building of subjective freedom ethics and responsibility for autonomous choice and conscience. On the other hand, post-modernism negated the entire existing constructive philosophical and ethical thought, perceiving it solely as an area of rhetorical and cognitively fictional (and practically useless) discussion, proposing “anti-philosophy” with “anti-ethics” understood as a certain linguistic game. Yet the extremely individualistic and subjective existentialist ethics also has numerous and overly drastic restrictions. For example, it ignores the validity of

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objective and rational ethics and does not create possibilities for practising this type of ethics; “(. . .) existentialists,” according to Anzembacher, “are dealing with the specific ‘self.’ On the other hand, objective reflection is devalued by them”.12 “In this subjective reflection, we are dealing with (. . .) a specific self, with a personal, individual and subjective existence, with a ‘self’ that is called existence. This is radical freedom, consisting in the fact that the man perceives himself as a possibility and designs himself”.13 One of the consequences of this standpoint in existentialist ethics is renouncement of practising of any social ethics, yet without turning away from the other man (the issue of responsibility for oneself and for others, responsibility for good understood in subjective terms, identified each time and with respect to a given situation). Expressing the standpoint of existentialists with respect to this issue in an abbreviated manner, Russell notes: “(. . .) our moral life takes place on the level of personal existence. This is where we can understand others; this is where we experience freedom”.14 Despite the above-mentioned and a number of other limitations of existentialist ethics and in spite of limiting it solely to the subjective level, this ethics has significant values which are worth recommending. In contrast to the “anti-ethics” of post-modernism, it has fulfilled, and it may fulfil useful and required functions in the life of an individual. It may perform such a role primarily thanks to the fact that it recognises certain values as universal and non-disposable in the pluralism of relative values of the antisocial world; these values include human existence and subjectivity, autonomy and independence of the personal “self”, freedom in the sphere of choices and decisions, dignity and the right to be oneself, responsibility, “living on one’s own account”, self-fulfilment and permanent projection of one’s own existence. This role may be performed by existentialist ethics due to the fact that it constantly increases the requirement of exceeding oneself and becoming something more; strictly speaking, exceeding the actuality and the casualness of existence and one’s own fate and making the difficult effort of transgression; undertaking it despite the lack of support from any non-subjective axiology or normative ethics. This reduction of the ethical issue in the secular existentialism to the relation “self” vs. “self” and only partially to “self” vs. “you” and omitting such relations as “self” vs. “them” is undoubtedly a far-fetched minimisation of the ethical issue and its extreme subjectivisation. Yet in this reduction and subjectivisation of the modern ethical reflection and intentionality, it is possible to perceive a deeper and (to a certain extent) desperate intention relying on the attempt to “lead away” the ethical issue and the expression of moral experience

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towards the area which, in the conditions of contemporary civilisation, is still sensible and offers potential for ethical creativity. This hypothesis may be supported by the fact that other “ethics of conscience” follow a similar path, let us call it a “path through subjectivity of modern morality”, including the ethics of A. T. Tymieniecka.15 These ethics differ fundamentally among themselves. All of them are different from existentialist ethics. However, they have a certain common denominator, both within their own group and in reference to the tradition of existentialist “ethical experiment.” First of all, they are connected by the confirmation of differently understood natural morality, i.e. a certain “moral power” rooted in the human nature; power so “strong” and autonomous that it cannot exist without standards, rules and ethical codes, which are external with respect to it, which are losing their significance in the moral reality of the post-modern world. On the other hand, they are connected with existentialism by a certain affirmation of human subjectivity and uniqueness, freedom and responsibility, self-fulfilment and self-transcendence, humanism and humanity, and in particular by affirmation of ingenuous and morally creative human conscience; conscience that is currently becoming the main, if not the only one, mainstay of morality, a factor supporting man – despite numerous contemporary “crises in morality” and “crises in ethics” and, despite the extreme axiological and ethical nihilism of post-modernism – remaining in the honourable ancient condition of homo moralis. 5. The “phenomenology of life” of A. T. Tymieniecka also provides relevant theoretical context, content support and justification for this paper’s theses regarding moral problems and ethical issues, i.e., strictly speaking, the problem of moral crisis of the “post-modern world”; its character, manifestations, consequences and the fundamental problem, i.e. the issue of the so-called “natural morality” (the concept that allows for obtaining an answer to the question on the primary sources of morality and its location in the structure of human subjectivity, and in consequence an answer to the question whether human beings may be defined as moral creatures [homo moralis]). A. T. Tymieniecka does not deal with the moral crisis in the contemporary world in a direct manner; however, she clarifies her stance on this issue. I can state with satisfaction that this stance is close to the stance of the author of this text. It complies with an establishment that we are living in the age of a serious cultural crisis, especially the crisis of spirituality and the world of values of the societies from our cultural circles. The moral life and the moral culture of these societies is also impacted by the crisis.

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The “phenomenology of life” of A. T. Tymieniecka clearly confirms a further thesis of this paper, i.e. the statement that the contemporary crisis of morality is not a total crisis, deep and durable, but an incomplete and temporary one; it is a provisional decrease in the standard and the quality of moral culture. Using the terminology quoted in this discussion, this is not the crisis of morality as such, but a certain “crisis – in – morality” and this is not the crisis of ethics (as a generally understood science dealing with morality), but a specific “crisis – in – ethics.” Apart from numerous empirical data, this is also confirmed by main assumptions and concepts of the phenomenology of life and moral philosophy of A. T. Tymieniecka. Here are most important among them: A human being is, in its nature, a moral agent. At the same time, a human being is also a creative agent and a cognising subject. An integral component of moral subjectivity of human beings is the so-called “moral sense of human condition” which is fulfilled in the so-called “source experience”. It is related on multiple levels and in an active manner with the “intelligible sense”, “the aesthetic sense” and the “sacral sense”. All of them are a manifestation of the logos of life. The above-mentioned “senses” are the basis for original experiences of a subject (moral, cognitive, aesthetic and religious) bearing fruit in the form of subjective morality, science and philosophy, art and artistic creativity and religious beliefs. The logos of life, where all potential original sources of all moralities are embedded, is a manifestation of the cosmic logos, whereas the cosmic logos manifests the eternal logos (nature). Therefore, morality, just like other so-called virtualities of the human soul (cognitive, aesthetic, religious), appears at a specific stage of evolution of the Universal Being, in the process of its constant being-ness, i.e. in the course of the so-called Ontopoiesis. A human being is pervaded by the rights of the Cosmos. In its nature, in its existence and in its actions – also in moral actions and behaviour – it constitutes a specific microcosm. Morality, rooted in the moral sense, has social nature. Strengthened by the social logos, it is manifested in relations with others, in relations “self” vs. “you”, “self” vs. “them”, fulfilling various “modalities” of life, such as, e.g. solidarity, intimacy, belonging to, guilt and others. It does not need any universal principles and rules of conduct, specific standards or ethical codes. They are not needed by it mainly due to their abstractness, stiffness and an inclination to unify human choices, decisions and stances. The moral sense, autonomous with respect to all normative ethics and social rules, the sense that is constantly evolving and that is not completely shaped, a sense that is subconscious and spontaneous, in its activity makes uses of the intelligible sense and the aesthetic sense, by means of which it obtains certain rationality and sensibility, “beauty” and purposefulness.

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The moral sense may impact the meaning and the quality of individual and collective life, open the human being onto other human beings, discern interhuman relations, introduce kindness and fairness into human stances. However, first of all, it may show the significance of moral conduct, stimulate ethical assessment and valuation, i.e. open the platform for the functioning of human moral conscience. According to Tymieniecka, this “deliberating and justifying factor” expresses care for other people, reflects on what others can expect from us, taking into account the welfare of individual people, as well as the welfare of collective life, the individual and the general welfare. In this last attitude, we are dealing with motivating of individuals to social life and establishment of institutions of social support and assistance, inter-human fairness and solidarity. Let us take heed of one more thesis of moral philosophy of A. T. Tymieniecka, i.e. the statement that in this philosophy the moral sense is strictly related with the issue of natural human rights, i.e. rights vested with every person on account of their ontic status. Final remark. It seems that philosophical thought with such original cognitive option and such inventive reflectivity on the world and the man, with such daring and creative intellectual and humanistic creativity, may be better suited for philosophical “interpretation” of modernity than other philosophical trends of “post-modernity”, even though, obviously, it is not perfect and indisputable. It can “interpret” modernity not only in the cultural, anthropological and existential dimension, but also in a specific metaphysical and cosmological dimension.16 In the context of this extensive and multifaceted “interpretation” of the world and the man, “interpretation” that is unfinished and constantly “in progress” and which takes place in the inexhaustible tension and cognitive search, the concept of “moral sense” and the interpretation of natural morality is being deepened and enriched. The foundations of modern ethics of subjectivity and ethics of conscience are being built; this ethics is individual and subjective, personal and autonomous; it does not follow any codes, but its character is definitely interpersonal, social, in a certain sense also environmental and global. A project of constructive (but not normative) ethics is being created. This ethics not only “reflects” the character and the transformations of the modern moral reality in a substantial degree, but at the same time shows the capacity of successful “incorporation” into main trends and tendencies of these transformations. By means of that it is the ethics of “here and now”, which is functionally vital. It is able to build strong support for ethical optimism (which is so much needed nowadays) and for sustaining the conviction on durable relation of ethical character with human nature and with the humanity, which is currently under threat.

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1

W. Tatarkiewicz, Historia filozofii, vol. III, (Warsaw 1950). Cf. H. Kiere´s, “Postmodernizm” in: Filozofowa´c dzi´s. Z bada´n nad filozofia najnowsza. (A. Bronk Lublin, TN KUL, 1995), pp. 263–273. 3 Cf. Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Polish title: Płynna nowoczesno´sc´ ) Translated into Polish by T. Tunz, (Wydawnictwo Literackie, Cracow 2006). 4 Cf. Leksykon filozofów współczesnych, ed. Jan Szmyd (Oficyna Wydawnicza Branta, Bydgoszcz – Cracow 2004). 5 H. Kiere´s, Postmodernizm. Op. cit. p. 271. 6 Z. Bauman, K. Tester, Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman (Polish title: O po˙zytkach z watpliwo´sci. Rozmowy z Zygmuntem Baumanem). Translated by E. Krasi´nska, (Wydawnictwo Sic, 1st edition, Warsaw 2003), p. 6. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 83 9 W. Szewczuk, Sumienie. Studium psychologiczne, (Ksia˙zka i Wiedza, Warsaw 1988), p. 21. 10 Ibid., p. 213. 11 Cf. P. Singer, One World. The Ethics of Globalisation. Translated from English by C. Celi´nski, (Ksia˙zka i Wiedza, Warsaw 2006), pp. 174–177. 12 A. Anzembacher, Introduction to Philosophy. Translated by Juliusz Zychowicz (Polskie Towarzystwo Teologiczne, Cracow1987), p. 62. 13 Ibid. 14 B. Russell, Wisdom of the West Translated from English by Witold Jacórzy´nski and Marek Wichrowski. Scientific study Teresa Hołówka (Wydawnictwo Penta, Warsaw 1995), p. 303. 15 Cf. inter alia T. Kotarbi´nski, Sprawy sumienia, (Warsaw 1956); P. Singer, The Expanding Circles, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1981); by the same author: O z˙yciu i s´mierci. Upadek etyki tradycyjnej Translated by A. Alichniewicz and A. Szcze˛sna, (PIW, Warsaw 1997); by the same author, One World. The Ethics of Globalisation. Translated from English by C. Cie´sli´nski, (Ksia˙ ˛zka i Wiedza, Warsaw 2006); R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels and Point, (Clardendon Press, Oxford 1981); E. Fromm, Man for Himself. An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (Warsaw 1996); Z. Bauman: Razem – osobno, (Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2003); J. Ba´nka, “Sumienie jako poreczenie moralne wyboru najlepszego” in Etyka wobec problemów współczes´ askiego, nego s´wiata, ed. H. Promie´nska, (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Sl ˛ Katowice 2003); A. T. Tymieniecka, The Moral Sense. A Discourse on the Phenomenologiae “Foundation of the Social World and Ethics”, Analecta Husserliana, 1883, XV, pp. 3–78; The Moral Sense and the Human Person within the Fabric of Communal Life. The Human Condition of the Interaction of Philosophy, Social Practice and Psychiatric Therapeutics. A Monographic Study, Analecta Husserliana 1986, XX, pp. 3–100; Logos and Life: the Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Book 1, Analecta Husserliana 1988, XXIV; Logos and Life: The Persons of the Soul and the Element of the Ontopoiesis of Culture. The Life Significance of Literature, Book 2, Analecta Husserliana 1990, XXVIII. 16 Cf. A. T. Tymieniecka, “Czy s´wiat istnieje? Nowe spojrzenie na podstawy sporu Husserl – Ingarden – rozwa˙zania ontopojetyczne” in: Roman Ingarden i da˙zenia fenomenologów. W 110 rocznice˛ urodzin Profesora. Materiały pokonferencyjne przygotowane pod redakcja Czesława˛ Głombika (Wydawnictwo Gnobe, Katowice 2006, pp. 36–46); Jan Szmyd, “Filozofowanie antropologiczne Anny Teresy Tymienieckiej. Droga przez filozofie˛, nauke i sztuke˛” in: Jan Szmyd Filozofowanie u˙zyteczne. Studia z filozofii praktycznej (Oficyna Wydawnicza BRANTA, Cracow – Bydgoszcz 2003, pp. 165–179). 2

CARMEN COZMA

O N T H E M E A N I N G F U L N E S S O F M A N ’S EXISTENCE: FROM THE EXISTENTIALIST THINKING TO PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE

ABSTRACT

Considering the question of meaningfulness of man in the world – an obsessive philosophical issue in Karl Jaspers’ existentialism – in this essay we try to emphasize some of the very own manner in which Phenomenology of Life offers new concepts and it opens a novel perspective in tackling the grave problem of human beingness in nowadays; by unfolding a different trajectory, beyond the existentialist doubtful approaches that remain somehow under the sign of pessimism. The reliance on the “creative virtualities” of man in a positive/constructive direction – that is permanently featured by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka – could be a very good model of following in a better selfunderstanding, social communication and, finally, in making our life a worthy one to be lived. After World War II, one of the founders of the German Existentialism, namely Karl Jaspers has tarried on the profound restlessness marking the human beingness in its attempt to transcend a chaotic situation of “revolting and hatred”, of “contempt face all there is exist”, of “boring, ... fearing or despairing”, and to look for its escape by the way of a “humanism of the future”. Some basic questions concerning “man”, the “effective conditions of contemporary human beingness” and the “route of humanism” highlighted by Jaspers in his effort to find the free rise of a spiritual reality for man as “self experience” within his ”moral force” come through phenomenological philosophy of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, too. As vectors of an original meditation and lucid assessment of the real potential of human being, such inquiries not merely traverse Phenomenology of Life, but they are accompanied by vigorous responses enlightening the main chance for man to inscribe his existence at its highest significance in “the great plan of life”. According to the phenomenologist of life, the meaningfulness of man’s living has to be revealed from the investigation of the “creative act” of human being which is “the Archimedean point” in the “ontopoietical design of the logos of life” – speaking in the original Tymienieckan philosophical language. 123 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 123–130. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_8, 

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“What is the man? What are the effective conditions of the contemporary human beingness? Which is the possible way of our humanism?” These are the three major interrogations that Karl Jaspers has putted in his writing upon “Conditions and Opportunities of a New Humanism”.1 Focusing on the human’s destiny under the auspices of rapid scientific and technical evolution and, at the same time, those of dramatic social and political changes after World War II, Karl Jaspers offers us a trajectory of “philosophizing” (“das Philosophieren”) as chance for a spiritual and moral rebirth of individual. That could be an opportunity of man’s escape from “Dasein” and of accessing into “Selbstsein” – as the authentic self-beingness. The life’s formula: “die philosophische Lebensweise” engages a profound subjective experience in the flux of a perpetual search of “Sein”/Being, by configuring the “enlightening” and “transcending” that defines philosophy itself with the purpose of a new arrangement of humanity on the route of the eternal values. Karl Jaspers tried to make comprehended the human beingness in its “orientation in the world” (“Weltorientierung”) looking for the “being” and “self-awareness”, in its attempt to find its existential personality; eventually, the self-fulfillment. Therefore, as a prime dimension is emphasized the morality of man, viewed through the “unconditional acts” of ‘love’, ‘solidarity’, and ‘sacrifice’.2 The Jaspersian term of existenz/existence sends to “a beyond of” any immediate beingness, that is conceived like a possibility which does assume its freedom in revealing itself as a doubtful existence able to transcend exceptional situations in life; and to accomplish itself through communication, implying both ‘existential enlightening mediated by a dialogue of love’, and ‘presence of transcendence’ to be perceived in the core of the existence with the mysterious experience of the “gift” from transcendence; respectively, the “fact of beinggiven-itself” (“das Sichselbstgeschenktwerden”). ‘Reason’ and ‘love’ are in a mutual potentialization in the endeavor of man to reveal an integrator existence; and thus, to open the perspective of a supreme spiritual community of a more elevated self-awareness and moral conduct, engaging also the significance of “historicity”. Karl Jaspers trusted the functioning of a new “philosophy of humanity” that could activate, on a high level, the existence from the point of view of historicity, by understanding the value of an ethics of spiritual intimacy. The becoming of existence in its access to the human historicity supposes the interaction ‘temporal’ and ‘eternal’ as concerns the comprehension of the encounter of ‘self-beingness’ and ‘transcendence’.

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Scrutinizing the subjective existence, Jaspers looked for catching the act of philosophizing as the path for man’s strain to reach the authentic mode of beingness and to appropriate a part, at least, of its existential meaningfulness; all having relevance in the framework of humanism. Precisely, a “new humanism” deserves to be articulated, starting even from some questionable polarities: tradition and innovation, exceptional individuals and large populations, established human reality and endless chance for human beingness’ potentialization; finally, to consider the plural meanings moving between an educational ideal and a realized humanity as manifested value of dignity. According to the existentialist philosopher, the examination of a “humanism of the future emerges exactly from the care for ourselves, the care for contemporary human being”, in the context of a frightful modality of “living in the absolute present moment, in the given situation and occurrence. . . . by advancing to the nothing, . . . by despondence or destructive impetus”.3 “What is the man?” involves a lucid conscience – beyond any definitions that limit our understanding – regarding the entire space of approaching man as ensemble of possibilities of accomplishment in the horizon of the peculiar human values such freedom and self-creation, putting in act the “certitude of being something else than merely a product of nature and of history. The man is much more than he is able to know about himself” – features Jaspers.4 Somehow, encountering the phenomenological issue of ‘object-subject’, Karl Jaspers tries to reveal the basic distinction between the knowledge of man as ‘object’/the man in its objective becoming, and the comprehensiveness that man is able to become on the route of an infinite freedom. The first way maintains us in terms of a sort of “hominism”, loosing the way of “humanism”; only the last giving the perspective of man’s understanding in ‘freedom’ and ‘dignity’, looking for the dialogue with transcendence. And, as the German philosopher states, this is the way to be found thanks to the process of philosophizing. “Man is . . . always opened to the future. . . . as a result of which that is achieved and lived coming from freedom. . . . Our conscience is always on the way”.5 To catch the human beingness in its possibilities – here we have a chance “to not be desperately as regards the destiny of man”.6 Going on, the existentialist thinker is asking himself about the “effective conditions of the contemporary human beingness”. And he names: technology, politics, and disintegration of Western spirituality. Jaspers proves a realistic attitude by tackling the problem of new technology as double trajectory of rescue and no less of destruction. “A future humanism is possible provided that man will exercise an uninterrupted effort aiming the

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appropriation and domination of technology; which means a vast battle field for man”.7 This is an acute question that has been developed at the middle of twentieth century, in the language of a particular ethics, by Hans Jonas; and, recently, by Gernot Böhme, for example. Both of them insist on the importance of reconsideration of our reflexive and practical position as a co-partnership with nature, demanded by the radical changes in the science-tech progress; by imposing a transformation of man’s moral relationship to the cosmic universe that engages some values, like: decency, respect, care, responsibility.8 Alike the problem of the modern technology, the political apparatus can be one of man’s legitimating or sentencing in this world; an apparatus of giving or taking off any chance of beingness to man. The indifference face to politics is not a vital way for the man living in community. By contrary, the “future humanism” – as Jaspers has delineated – claims a commitment of man grounded on liberty and responsibility in disclosing a real human (and not brutal!) order, working for human rights beyond any kind of arbitrary or anarchy. The only way of human existence is, within the political conditioning, that of struggling in the cause of spirit’s freedom. Seeing that, “technology and politics have almost completely dissolved the millenary spiritual configuration”; consequently, “the Western world does no more represent a community”, and the common conscience characterizes itself merely through “negations: the shattering of historical memory, the absence of a dominant fundamental knowledge, the rout as concerns a uncertain future”, Karl Jaspers stresses on the need for man to be in possession of a good science of the past – the only that would put him in a present and future adequate position –, to find and to assume a model of spiritual human beingness in togetherness, and to make from constructive ‘spontaneity’, ‘love’, ‘heroism’, ‘profound faith’, briefly from creation, the main instrument in overcoming the situation of “inner paralysis” and the great risk of “laying waste and even death” of mankind.9 Finally, inquiring about the “type of humanism which would be possible”, Jaspers emphasizes the necessity of an education oriented to the significance of the “authentic human beingness”. It must be tied to the Greek-Latin spirituality and to the strong good will for humanness; to the conquest of inner independence of man, too. A “new humanism” enlightening the meaning of life becomes possibly just by proving self-awareness, living of inner freedom and working for spiritual affirmation by each individual as part of the whole mankind community. At this point, the existentialist philosopher insists on the role of philosophy for the mankind of twentieth century, by drawing the following three basic ideas: (1) philosophy can enlighten the truth that has to be seen and realized by

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each of us; (2) through the theory of categories, through the methodology and epistemology, philosophy can transform us in masters of our own thoughts; (3) philosophy is the one that guides us to a free reasoning which allows the manifestation of our essence self-fulfillment and elevation (similarly to the situation of those who believe in the truth of revelation during their prayers).10 Actually, Karl Jaspers utters for a “modern heroism” of a real free human beingness within a life-experience working for an infinite self-conquering. The stake is quite the “moral force of man”: “the unique substance and factor for that shall happen to man”.11 Over decades, the symptoms of the human crisis that Karl Jaspers has ascertained and he tried to discover a pathway for a “new humanism” have enhanced. And we face a global acute moral crisis – that claims more than ever the appeal to the philosophizing functions. We have to reconsider the ideal stated by Edmund Husserl, namely that of philosophers as “workers of humanity”, able to intervene by “responsibility and cultural commitment” in clearing up and restoring the meaningfulness of mankind existence.12 In the phenomenological tonality, an entitled praise of philosophy opening to a “new humanism” is made by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. The founder of “phenomenology of life” is one of the most representative philosophers of present times who sustain the value of philosophizing in the search for a “key to pursuing understanding of the meaning of all human endeavor”; especially, considering the situation of “our total disorientation” and our need for guide ourselves to the “specifically human significance of life”.13 To the marks of despair and destruction viewed by Karl Jaspers as specific features of the post-World War II age, at the same time sensing the general climate of anxiety in the last decades of twentieth century because the “anatomy of disarray” of humanity, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka has succeeded in elaborating an original direction in the contemporary philosophy that impresses – among many other contributions – by its avowed humanist referential. She is one of the most important upholders of a “new humanism” of nowadays – a note easy to be understood even from her option to pattern her philosophy like a “Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Condition”. This is, essentially, the thread of Tymieniecka’s original work unfolded in her magnificent four books of the treatise Logos and Life.14 The three major interrogations identified in Jaspers’ Rechenschaft und Ausblick seem to persist, also, in Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of life. Certainly, we are speaking about a transparence of some obsessive motives that the North-American phenomenologist concerns with. And, what does matter is the fact that we can find good responses to the existentialist questions of Karl Jaspers; now, using the tools of phenomenological integrator and dynamic

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hermeneutics; all moving around the “meaning as the nexus of phenomenological methodology, epistemology, anthropology and metaphysics” in a complex analysis of existence and essence which might be “summarized by three statements: (a) neither essence nor existence may be dispensed with; (b) the features of essence determine its type of existence; (c) real existence is decided by the properties that en-world it”.15 And, circumscribing a central thesis of AnnaTeresa Tymieniecka, we are coming to the approach of Human Condition through the creativity dimension of human existence, as “the Archimedean point in the ontopoietical design of life”. To awake toward the creative power which must be continuously activated as the climax of our human status in the total web of life is one of our prime duties to assure the metamorphosis from homo into humanus; or, using the terms of Jaspers: from “hominism” to “humanism”. In her turn, AnnaTeresa Tymieniecka introduces some new concepts, like: “Promethean gifts” and “Imaginatio Creatrix”, in which she sees the elements of prompting and reorganizing of the life-world by the creative soul. At stake are, also, the three “sense-bestowing factors”; respectively, “the aesthetic/poetic, the intelligible, and the moral senses” that contribute in crystallizing and sustaining human singularity. All together “inspire the élan of human being transcending the confinements of concern with survival only and allows his weaving of his own universe”.16 The orientation toward a “new humanism” is one of conceiving man’s existence as a part of the world, engaged in it, while at the same time differentiating from and surpassing it by his inventive constructive virtualities; man’s existence being thought only in an intimate relation with the “unity of everything there is alive”. Within the whole expanse of life, man can reach his specific mode of being, and the “Human Condition” is revealed as “placed deep in the midst of the unity of everything there is alive”.17 Phenomenology of Life delves into a “new humanism” with the temptation of essence’s knowledge, of life’s explanation and understanding of man’s position in the world, by extracting his unique beingness “from an anonymous Nature” with its energies, dynamisms, forces.18 A “new humanism” is built on the idea of the union of internal and external man, as self-transcendence, through the creativity – man’s peculiar prerogative that makes from him an exceptional agent accessing to the “Ontopoiesis of Life”. Man appears in the diversity of his beingness’ circumstances (organic, vital, psychic, societal), in his life-individualizing process which “is simultaneously crystallizing the ‘outward’ framework of his existence within the world and manifesting ‘inwardly’ the entire spread of his vital existential and creative virtualities as they may unfold”.19

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We have already written about the directory lines of this impressive original philosophy that could be very well taken like a creatology in a humanist general vision.20 Here, we just resume to underlining that by her unshakeable trust – a Kantian one, we dare to say – in the sublime potential of man to do something significant with his life, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka enfolds a nuanced humanistic perspective that encourages us to continue to believe the functions of philosophy to help us in making our world much better; in the sense emphasized by Karl Jaspers, too. It is not a simple accident that two great contemporary philosophers – one, belonging to the existentialism, and the other coming from the phenomenology – manifest such serious determination in elaborating the support for a “new humanism”. Being veritable thinkers of philosophical refinement who assume the responsibility of their voice in offering a wise lesson in life to anyone wish and can receive their message of humanity, Karl Jaspers and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka inscribe a golden page in the history of humanism of all the times. Eventually, each of them, Jaspers and Tymieniecka give us strong reasons to not fall in complaining because we are crossing a dangerous cultural crisis; neither to endorse a fashionable terribleness of so called “post humanism”. But, they lead us to maintain and to increase our belief and to work for the supreme human values of life and, finally, to find and to grow the meaningfulness of our existence in the world. First of all, by bringing in light and developing our creative potential; and thus, by realizing our greatest work: the self-creation, the accomplishment of personality in freedom, dignity and love. “Al.I.Cuza” University of Jassy, Romania

NOTES 1

See Karl Jaspers, Rechenschaft und Ausblick, Reden und Aufsätze, R.Piper & Co. Verlag, Münich, 1951. 2 Cf. Karl Jaspers, Einführung in die Philosophie, R.Piper & Co. Verlag, Münich, Fünfte Auflage, 1958. 3 Karl Jaspers, Rechenschaft und Ausblick, Romanian translation, in Texte filosofice/Philosophical Writings, Editura Politic˘a, Bucharest, 1986, pp. 81–82. 4 Idem, p. 83. 5 Idem, pp. 87, 88. 6 Ibidem. 7 Idem, p. 90.

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See Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, Chicago and London, Chicago University Press, 1984; Gernot Böhme, Ethics in Context. The Art of Dealing with Serious Questions, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2001. 9 Karl Jaspers, Rechenschaft und Ausblick, Romanian translation, op. cit., p. 93. 10 Cf. Karl Jaspers, op. cit., p. 104. 11 Idem, p. 106. 12 Cf. Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis des europäischen Menschentums und die Philosophie, in Husserliana, Bd.VI, Den Haag: M.Nijhoff, 1953. 13 Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “In Praise of Philosophy”, in Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason, Analecta Husserliana, Volume LXX, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2000, pp. xxx–xxxi. 14 See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life, Book 1: Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1988; Logos and Life, Book 2: The Three Movements of the Soul, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1988; Logos and Life, Book 3: The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Ontopoiesis of Culture. The Life Significance of Literature, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1990; Logos and Life, Book 4: Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2000. 15 Thomas Ryba, “Ana-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life”, in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology World-Wide. Foundations – Expanding Dynamics – Life-Engagements. Encyclopedia of Learning, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2002, pp. 432, 444. 16 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Creative Forces and Formation, Life’s Creative Matrix”, in AnnaTeresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Volume LXXVII, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht/Boston/London, 2002, p. xxv. 17 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Phenomenology of Life and the New Critique of the Reason: From Husserl’s Philosophy to the Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Condition”, in AnnaTeresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Volume XXIX, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1990, p. 16. 18 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “The Theme: The Human Being in Action” in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Volume VIII, D.Reidel, Dordrecht, 1978, p. xiii. 19 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, “Truth – the Ontopoietic Vortex of Life”, in Phenomenological Inquiry, Volume 25, Belmont, Massachusetts, 2001, p. 8. 20 See Carmen Cozma, On Ethical in the Phenomenology of Life, Edizioni Eucos, Roma, 2007.

PETER ABUMHENRE EGBE

CREATIVE IMAGINATION IN HARMONY AS FULL MATURITY OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY

ABSTRACT

“The question is no longer a particular reason or rationality plays the role of foundation, but is a matter of the life dynamic itself that flows along all that can be seen and felt”.1 The task of imaginatio creatrix is bringing to awareness in the philosophical camp that the methodological approach hitherto adopted needs to be given a second thought in the effort to reflect the growth in the understanding of the human reality and the complexity of the natural world. This is phenomenological and much more. It is phenomenological because it is existential. It goes beyond concrete existential phenomenon to the scrutiny of the inner hallmark of meaning of the creative experience, leaving an opening for renewal in the entire philosophical world. The dynamism of the human capacity cannot be restricted to the rationality of man where the role of reason is only that of perceiving and ordering reality in its constitutive form. It has to be something more than this kind of rationality. It goes further than that to making meaning and bringing transformation of the visible reality and through that reaching out to invisible intelligible reality. Such is the case because reason as has been referred to: Is the synthetic interpretation of perception . . . called forth spontaneously by the stimulus of perception, and which, equally spontaneously, entails not only action upon the subject of perception, but also its transformation into an object whose properties can be named, measured, cognized, interpreted, and valued – all acts of creation which simultaneously serve to constitute the performative subject.2

It is this new understanding in the Tymienieckian philosophy of creative imagination, that not only completes the phenomenological inquiry down through the ages, it is also a new critique of reason. Going deeper than just phenomenological and in fact purely philosophical inquiry, one sees an opening to the sphere of the divine. Such is realised in Tymieniecka research into theodicy. This testifies for the diversity of possibilities of the phenomenological philosophy and its methodology. 131 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 131–150. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_9, 

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The discussion on the phenomenology of life will continue to be crucial to the general outlook and direction of phenomenological investigations. The importance of it is not only the fact that it is an innovation in the philosophical circle, but it is also an effort that contributes to the re-reading of the hitherto exaggerated differences between phenomenology and metaphysics. What is new and significant about life is that even though it is evident in the flow of the history of philosophy, no philosopher has seriously addressed it. Not many philosophers have said something in particular about life in serious philosophical reflection. The discussion on life by Henri Bergson attests to this and one can hardly point to other deep reflections elsewhere about the subject.3 The advantage here about our area is not only that it has extended the horizon of phenomenological thinking, it has also helped to lead phenomenology from the constitutive analysis to a creative impetus that has brought a new point of view to the field, hence raising questions about the general philosophical tradition from ancient times. This is a reading which my philosophy attempts to investigate about Tymienieckan thought. The emphasis in philosophy till now has been more on reason in its intellection and pure rational dimension based on the earliest conception of the human person distinguished by rationality. This is very important and crucial to philosophy and the quest to understand the human person and the world in general. However, it is obvious from new problems that such a view will not only be insufficient, but could be misleading as it could be doing violence to the same human person who is not just a bundle of intellective mass but a sentient-creative being. Further consequence is that it will continue to extend the fragmentation that has led many thinkers to nihilism. The view sustained by this project is also an opening of possibility to the discourse of theological issues as has been evident in recent research fruits of Tymieniecka. This is particularly obvious in theodicy in outline as she indicated to me in her note on a publication.4 This whole investigation is also from a conviction that is based on a long reflection on different areas of philosophical research.5 THE BACKGROUND TO THE ISSUE

Embarking on a philosophical reflection about life is a task although tedious that is considered worthy of attention. For an adequate philosophical consideration it should not be separated from the mainstream of inquiry into the general problems and issues in philosophy. In this way it will contribute to the

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advancement of the perennial unity of the task of philosophy.6 Here is the high point of the theme of our discussion, which is, the necessity of phenomenology for a more realistic metaphysics. Doing metaphysics is the most reasonable way to bridge philosophy and religion and the affirmation of the inclusiveness of the relationship between faith and reason. Realistic metaphysics does not indicate here a disregard for transcendence. No effort that disregards the transcendent is worth the name of metaphysics and no metaphysics can afford to be limited to the concrete visible realities only. At the same time metaphysics cannot be restricted to the speculative, as it cannot be reduced to the concrete per se. Such will be putting it in a straight jacket. In fact, without transcendence, going beyond the material such metaphysics is a caricature and cannot serve human need in the long run. Hence addressing the problem of life in philosophical inquiry is most relevant and crucial to any discussion in philosophy. Therefore, metaphysics is both existential in the strict existentialist and transcendent in the true idealist senses. Both together become the most realistic approach to the question of being visible and invisible.

THE GENESIS OF THE NOVELTY

Many contributors to the work of Husserl have made input to but in a very peculiar manner, Tymieniecka has been able to extend phenomenology from the intentional perspective to the creative point of view. The methodical innovation is a contribution that helps in yet another way to harness the wealth of phenomenology; she criticises the use of intentionality and extends its application. In her extensive publications, particularly Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason, phenomenology finds a deeper reading and a wider application. The view of Ales Bello elucidates this fact: Firstly, they are an example of the correct application of phenomenological procedure and, secondly, it is precisely on the terrain of a confrontation of method and result that her position is extremely useful in causing us to re-examine the results of the classical phenomenologists, especially Husserl and Ingarden.7

For Husserl, the problem of existence and intentionality is the question of interest and the choice of method. He was not particularly interested in the treatment of the problem of existence. He, however, did not deny existence as he saw it as already a given and presupposed in every research. Existence for him is objective, theoretical and obvious; hence he puts it in parenthesis so as to go directly to the thing itself. Husserl views intentionality as crucial in order to give priority to the individual and subjectivity. For Ingarden, this will reduce the world to an artistic design of consciousness as a result of the transcendental ego.8

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This is the most probable reason why those who criticise Husserl see the influence of Kant in his thought. Such belief made many of his disciples including Tymieniecka part ways with Husserl.9 The inherent danger of such a classical phenomenological position is the abrogation of the individual and subjectivity that are so important to phenomenology. For Ingarden, priority should be given to Ontology in phenomenological inquiry; which helps to establish the existence and concreteness of the individual. Between Husserl and Ingarden one finds a point of concordance if the ideas are re-arranged and united. In as much as their positions have their relevance to the current discussion of the point at stake, creativity becomes the common grounds at which the differing views could be considerably reconciled. Life becomes the basic point of departure and the analysis of such encompasses the existence of particular beings in their immanence and transcendence. Heidegger is an advocate of the pre-eminence of the human person in his concept of Dasein, as the most reasonable place to study being. Tymieniecka also has similar idea of the human priority in the study of being. But she differs from Heidegger in a way. This idea will be returned to towards the end of this presentation. For the purpose of this research emphasis will be placed on creativity as a complement to the intentionality of Husserl. The importance of creativity is stressed by this quotation: It is undoubtedly a merit of Tymieniecka’s inquiry that it should have indicated the development of reality as an ontopoietic fundamental, to have introduced an enlarged concept of creativity that Husserl had only adumbrated by indicating the intentional impulsive drive of reality that can be grasped by means of the hyletic movement . . . in a wholly independent manner – in the phenomenology of life of A.-T. Tymieniecka, not least the selfsame notion of imagination that with its productive capacity is one of the fundamental nuclei that she proposes in the analysis of the role of the Imaginatio Creatrix.10

It is important to point out however, that apart from the extension of the phenomenological optic to the creative imagination, Tymieniecka remains subjective and, in fact, advocates a realistic ontology that creates room only for regional harmony. As much as this view is a welcomed idea and acceptable, it should be noted that the issue at stake is more than regionalization. Philosophy needs more than just regional harmonies no matter how comprehensive they may be. Real globalization is possible both in ideas and in practical human interactions, though there is need for a lot of groundwork to realise such project. It is from this point of view that the present research would want to go further than previous efforts (that have either been uni-directional or advocate regionalisation and independence), to establish the necessity of an inquiry that takes

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into cognisance the importance of seeking a more inclusive harmony as a principle in and as a basis of philosophical investigations. This project agrees with seeking regional ontology, but that will not be sufficient; it should go beyond the bounds of individuality and regionalisation to the holistic harmony that defines and binds all together in a web of connected relations. This is not philosophical monism, and as such will be unrealistic and not functional to consider it so. The point of emphasis here is recognising diversity and its riches for unity. Such will neither subsume the individual nor impede creativity. Differentiation and unity become very important to harmony in the application of the philosophy of life. The reconciling of the differences and similarities makes the legacy of philosophy11 the crown of all disciplines. But something is new – the logoic existential incarnation (not the purely divine) extends the creative force in analogical propensity in the human experience to the possibility of reaching out to the sacred and making sense in disciplines like theodicy and theology. It is a philosophical truth that, no human effort, not even theological can unravel the exhaustive knowledge of the BEING of beings.12 It is the thesis of this paper that life is both a principle of unity and of individuation. Here comes in connection with our topic a reminiscence of the old argument of the one and many, the absolute and the particular, the infinite and the finite. It is the balance of these seemingly opposing ends that results in ontopoiesis. Ontopoiesis is the principle that combines impetus – a dynamism that creates and is in eternal flux and equipoise a regulating dynamism, which stabilises the individual immanence and differentiates it from the eternal flux of impetus. Here lies the combination of differentiation and unity in reality that brings about success in research. From the beginning of known philosophical research the quest for harmony has been very obvious and the one principle that would have made that possible with the greatest degree of success would have been the reflection on life. A look at some particular details in this discourse will only further strengthen such an effort when it particularly concerns life as a ground for and about the study of harmony. In her comment on Tymieniecka’s philosophy of life, Ales Bello once again re-echoed the very salient question that reveals uniqueness in philosophical activities: “Why is it that for many centuries Western philosophy has avoided life as a field of inquiry?”13 The response to this question is implicit in the question itself as it is clear that when the issue of life is the point of discussion, philosophy can go to a limited extent.14 It is for this same reason that research about life is crucial and philosophy cannot be diffident in such a very important reality so present, though so exclusive. Such inquiry will contribute to give philosophers a better insight into the enormity of philosophical vocation. In view of such importance Bergson writes:

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But a philosophy of this kind will not be made in a day. Unlike the philosophical systems properly so called, each of which was the individual work of a man of genius and sprang up as a whole, to be taken or left, it will only be built up by a collective and progressive effort of many thinkers, of many observers also, completing, correcting and improving one another.15

Henri Bergson has treated the issue of life and tried to address the seemingly opposing ends. However, it is the view of many authors that he has not succeeded in reconciling the differences. Ales Bello attests: “Bergson has already come to grips with this problem and attempted a solution, though in the end he did not succeed in demonstrating a profound link between the two opposite poles: the one of the elementary conditions (blind nature) and the other of human freedom.”16 This is the whole idea of Bergson’s Creative Evolution in which the difficulty of reconciling the two ends of the physical (mechanics) and finality (the realm of freedom and finality) presents itself in a clear and perennial manner. The problem was obvious to Bergson himself when he bemoaned his inability and the failure of previous systems to come to a comfortable solution to the inherent limit of the human mind. The effort can be expressed better in the words of Bergson: . . . we try on the evolutionary progress the two ready-made garments that our understanding puts at our disposal, mechanism and finality; we show that they do not fit, neither the one nor the other, but that one of them might be recut [sic] and resewn, and in this new form fit less baldly than the other.17

The line of thought here is the involvement of everything in every other thing. There is no absolute ontological difference between the individual moments and the eternal dimensions of life.18 Such will be very valid and necessary, but to close the possibility of further research into the individual moments that are also very crucial and in particular when they have to do with the human person will lead to a vicious circle and a denial of the creative power of the human person. This is very clear in Bergson’s criticism of creative imagination, which is also a product of the human intellectual capacity when seen from a wider perspective.19 The negative understanding of imagination from the onset became the bane of the failure of such a system. It is however important to state that Bergson realised the importance of creative power of the human mind even when he did not agree with its prominence in philosophical dialogues. He comments further: So understood, philosophy is not only the turning of the mind homeward, the coincidence of human consciousness with the living principle whence it emanates, a contact with the creative effort: it is the study of becoming in general, it is true evolutionism and consequently the true continuation of science – provided that we understand by this word a set of truths either experienced or demonstrated, and not a certain new scholasticism that has grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo, as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle.20

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The above view reveals a difficulty that will hardly allow free dialogue with other views and positions. Hence it is very obvious why an effort as relevant as Bergson’s had a trouble that would have been hard to surmount under normal circumstances within its context. Furthermore, we do not have to necessarily reject imagination so as to appeal to understanding as two of them are not contradictory. To such an extent the effort of Tymieniecka at this point will be developed further to supplement the inquiry of Bergson about life. Not only because it completes it, but because it has gone a long way to correct the erroneous position and the consequent relativism that could be encouraged by such a position.

O N T O P O I ÉS I S O F L I F E A S D Y N A M I S M I N T H E S E A R C H FOR HARMONY IN CREATIVITY

Part of the innovations of the position of Tymieniecka is the emphasis laid on impetus and equipoise in the new understanding of reason in the life unfolding of the Logos. Some of the issues connected to these are differentiation in types: which pertains to classes of things and differentiation among types: classes of the same type with their particular differences. This idea has been dealt with in previous presentations.21 The theme of differentiation and unity is as important as talking about the goal of Tymieniecka’s philosophical ambition. It is this Logos in its ontopoietic dynamism that defines the unity between the finite and the infinite, the visible and its underlying principle. . . . the logos as a force not only carries within itself its virtual endowment toward constructive employment–its seminal arsenal–and its vertiginous networks of constructive virtualities, varying with circumambient conditions, but also leads them to their constructive articulations from within, applying its own measure. It carries within itself a prototype of singular beingness to be infinitely molded and yet remain enduringly the same: the ontopoietic sequence. It is the ontopoietic sequence of the logos which serves as its ontic, infinitely variable and yet at its core essentially perduring model/measure of constructive becoming as well as the ontopoietic yardstick for life’s articulations. Through its dynamic, variable, and yet relatively perduring ontopoietic model, the logos of life is not only force and shaping but also the ordering principle of life.22

Such opinion also gives credence to the intricate connection between the absolute and contingent. This is the difficulty of Cartesian internal revolution of reason, the attempt of the Husserlian constitutive approach that play role in a core ontological/metaphysical investigation. The interest in ontology has been indicated in earlier discussions and it is only strengthened by the passage of time and with experience.23 Unity and difference becomes the measure of the relationship between the one and many and the many and the one. With such a stand, the age old problems of the earliest philosopher’s concern will receive

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some rays of light in their solution. The basis of this resolution becomes the creative imagination that probes further into the hitherto conception of circular activity of pure reason. Philosophy cannot avoid the hard question of addressing the apparent presence of life in its concreteness. The attempt to resolve the seeming ambiguities involved in the search for grounds, projects philosophy beyond the visible to the hidden reality that makes the curious search of man in his attempt to discover, conquer the world and reach beyond. He is the only creature known to be able to engage in this drama of life’s meaning and the search for purpose. He conquers, yet wonders. He is complete yet longs for fullness. He is caught in the eternal flux of becoming, yet he is always the man he is and must search for meaning to change. He remains an individual but needs both the other individual and the hidden reality. In this triadic drama of realization man craves for union and community. He is with the other many and he searches for the one that can explain both his contingency and his association among the many.24 He faces a puzzle about becoming and within the space of his presence identifies stability. “We cannot refrain at this point from recalling Leibniz’ idea of set: individual substance and preestablished harmony.”25 At the same time, one cannot also be carried away by such unity as to deny the essential autonomy of the individual. The importance of the present inquiry is not to discredit the past but to add something that it has lacked in the approach to the reflection on the immanent given and the hidden real.26 This receives further explication by the following: Nowadays it seems clear that human life, in both its individual and its collective dimensions, asks for a meaningful interpretation that tries to go far beyond the static classical notion of nature and its implicit limitation. This is the reason why we can no longer understand human existence as something closed, finished. On the contrary, it involves dialectics between a process of individualization-delimitation, on the one hand, and a constant aspiration to go beyond all the limits, on the other.27

The crucial point to draw from the above as a programme of research is a new direction of phenomenological activities.28 The success of this view will not only help to see philosophy in its original methodology, it will also lead to an expansion in the previous critiques of reason.29 A consonant approach will help the human mind to combine ingenuity with reasonableness and finality. The uniqueness of this proposal is both thematic and systematic. It is thematic in the sense that the history of philosophy has not been able to sufficiently address the problem of harmony which incorporates the principle of creative imagination. It is systematic because it seeks a methodic connection between phenomenology and metaphysics. It seeks to emphasise the unity of the universe and the links between all that is concrete

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within the universe. While the research maintains the possibility and reality of unity, it does not undermine the uniqueness of individual groups of beings and the differences within particular groups. However, it is a fact of human experience that exaggerated individualism has led to inimical fragmentation and relativism. It is also important to note at the same time that this presentation does not envisage the possibility of a monologos universe. The universe is a complex whole and it goes beyond the concrete, even though philosophy and in fact any discipline cannot by itself alone conquer such domain. One cannot reduce the function of Logos to the limit of the researches of individual philosophers or scientists and in the same manner it is impossible to limit the Logos to a system. Nor can the Logos be said to be restricted in its pervasive activities. Here we talk about the play between the finite and infinite, the union between all that the human mind can create in its dynamism and limitation. Pantheism is not a view that is advocated here and fideism will not be philosophically adoptable. At the same time, secularism will be considered as dangerous: even more dangerous than these previous non-acceptable perspectives. The task that is required of any veritable inquiry is to recognise any given. This is phenomenological, but the investigation should not be limited to the apparent because no contingent and immanent being can explain its principle of being by itself all alone. This makes the focus of paper pertinent to philosophy and other disciplines. The fear of arbitrary fragmentation by researchers will continue to plague inquiries if the necessary precautions are not taken seriously. Therefore, “as there is no communication among them, so there is no opportunity for today’s man to make a synthesis: to reach a holistic view of his own existence within the world and of life.”30 The solution that could be proffered to this problem is also very clear in the words of Tymieniecka when she posits that: “we have to delve into the conditions of life itself.”31 Delving into the condition of life is recognising the uniting force and the dynamism of differences. This, in a nutshell, is the human condition: man searches and rightly so, for meaning and purpose in life. This task is not restricted to philosophy alone. The wealth of science that should be enjoyed by philosophers here is enormously obvious and crucial. In reference to Edward Caird (1835–1908) . . . “science itself bears witness in its own way to this unity-in-difference . . . one of the tasks allotted to the philosopher by Caird is that of showing how science points to the basic principle of the synthesis of subject and object as a unityin-difference . . .”32 As a basis of other implications this argument favours dialogue and mutual understanding among scholars. The view argued for here

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advocates caution and criticality in every human inquiry. Judgement could be suspended, but nothing is put in an indefinite parenthesis. It is an old school ideal to assume that only philosophers need to be analytic and critical. Science has made it a lot easier for Man to understand the mechanics of the life-world. It is renowned for the great contribution to the understanding of the chemical world and so has explained a lot about the physical state of the universe. Science has done this in a fragmentary but appropriate manner. Knowledge can only be possible for the human person by association and differentiating. A critical mind opens up its powers to the greatest horizon possible and is able to reconcile the paradox of unity and difference. In philosophical activities as in the ordinary life experience one is confronted with these alternatives in the dynamism of events. They form the basis of process and progress of human systems and they give meaning to research advancement. Unity and differences give meaning one to the other. In unity, the idea of difference is implied and in difference the concept of unity is presumed. Life is considered as a very crucial basis to every possible assertion and entity. Life as conceived within ontopoiésis will help further this course of doing philosophy in the most inclusive way ever attained. To that end the contribution of ontopoiésis to this effort will receive further attention in its dynamism of theodicy that links Tymieniecka philosophy with theological reflections. In her theodicy, Tymieniecka has brought the pervasive nature of life to an intelligible front.

THEODICY IN THEOLOGICAL ADVENTURE

Philosophy has continued to search into the various forms of manifestation that the Logos has adopted in the drama of life. The play of the paradox of oneness and division is an antinomy, which philosophy will continue to be engaged in as a discipline of all disciplines. At the same time philosophers need to be conscious of the limitedness of the purity of reason in its aloneness. That is where the work of Edith Stein will continue to be of significant relevance in the different fields of human inquiry. In her reflection about the different disciplines and particularly philosophy, she rightly asserts that: But the realization of this ideal-in the sense of a total comprehension of reality in its unity and plenitude-transcends the capacity of any and all human Wissenschaft. Even finite reality can never be exhaustively understood by means of conceptual knowledge, and much less the infinite reality of God. Thus pure philosophy as a Wissenschaft of beings and of being, in the light of the ultimate reason and causes (and staying within the confines of natural reason), remains even in its greatest conceivable perfection essentially fragmentary. But it is candid in respect to theology and may thus be complemented by it.33

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Apart form the disciplinary truth of the above, man is naturally religious and faith-expressive be it in religious experience or in normal daily living. Such truth is both irresistible and empirically verifiable. Van der Leeuw shows how the necessity of the religious desire of man is a part of his existence despite of [the] flight from the idea by those who refuse to realise their religious endowment as human beings. The inability to realise to its fulness the dream of conquering nature and the desire to seek refuge in a higher force becomes a clear sign of the search of man for the infinite. It is here the work of philosophers and other disciplines become a necessity. Such interaction can conveniently be carried out without diminishing the credibility of any discipline.34

The adventure of logos and life, into the moral/theological sphere can be explained within the ambient of the creative capacity of the human spirit. It is such that is on the one hand succinctly expressed in the words of Tymieniecka thus: . . . by recognizing oneself as the acting centre of the universe of existence, as a self-sustaining agent who directs within this universe of existence through experience, observation, reflection, and deliberation his or her own course and who, finally, endows that course with moral and aesthetic values, and upon the wings of the spirit seeks to understand the reasons of it all and soars to the metaphysical and spiritual realm above, carrying within a thoroughly felt self-aware conviction that to be is to be alive.35

It is important to add on the other hand that this self awareness and the attempt to conquer that is innate in man do not and cannot make him absolute. “With the advent of the creative condition there enters into play a novel modality of the logos’s questioning. It slowly progresses through kairic fulfilments specific to human life by putting in question the meaningfulness of all human creative accomplishment of all aims, criteria, expectations.”36 One can understand the inescapable role of metaphysics and its relation to every other discipline, whether physical, social and even religious sciences. Metaphysics in the sense not just in existential reaching out of the contingent but and more importantly, the reaching out to the ideal Being of all ideas. This is the point this paper in argument for harmony bring into the philosophy of Tymieniecka.

L O G O S A N D L I F E –I T S F U L L N E S S I N R E S T O R A T I O N

There is however, no absolute claim at a final point of resolution of the ambiguity of Being; it is more of an instrumental field that brings about harmony rather than a causal factor. One sees this as an effort that calls attention to a very important point that philosophy has not taken particular interest in, yet is very crucial. Bergson notices that and emphasis is laid on it here: “So the

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present essay does not aim at resolving at once the greatest problems. It simply desires to define the method and to permit a glimpse, on some essential points, of the possibility of its application.”37 Hence philosophical activities ought to continue to revolve around man and his innovation and creativity. The human being, according to Jasper, is the one who is able to study and understand other aspects of nature and things, therefore forming a fulcrum of harmony where all other things converge. He also states very painfully that it is the same human person that has a major difficulty in self-understanding. As the centre of the whole process of becoming and contingence, the place and role of the human person cannot be underestimated as it is of great import. This is ontopoietic realism in the search for meaning and reason in the universe and in all possible human endeavours. To be able to expand the horizon of human inquiry, there is the need to address the crucial role of man, this Homo sapiens, who is at the same time subject and object of inquiry. What is he capable of doing and in a succinct way such could again be expressed in the following. “And man’s creative powers not only carry life on but also in their emergence at [a] sic definitive moments time the evolutive expansion of the logos of life.”38 The question and the answer to it by Tymieniecka are pertinent. “But does the logos of life that carries concretely the poietic individualizing career of a human beingness vanish after having dismantled its natural ontopoietic course? Far from it.”39 This invincible nature of the logos opens up great possibilities in inquiry as this investigation has emphasised.

ANAMNESIS OF THE PROJECT OF LOGOS AND LIFE AS O N T O P O I ÉS I S

In a brief summary, the different types of dynamism in terms of the activities of the logos have been presented. In Logos and Life the work of ontopoiésis and equipoise has made possible the reconciliation of extremes which have made a better harmonious philosophising difficult. The other important issue that has been addressed is the system follow-up of Tymieniecka’s way in the realisation of this project. In Ryba’s view the expansive development of Logos and Life is the peak of the realisation of the philosophical project. This is a higher level of development in the dynamism of the logos as a life force, which hitherto has been avoided in philosophical discourse. In this project one sees a combination of scientific acumen with philosophical prowess in addressing difficult issues of philosophy. Here the individual is capable of self-regeneration and replenishment; which is purely scientific. In their constitution the individuals are imbued with the innate capacity of

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self-multiplicity, a further dynamism of the logos in an ongoing creativity. In discussion here also are the strictly botanical and biological differences that are very difficult to philosophically articulate, which, however, do exist. “The difference consists foremost, in a dynamic locus of relative freedom which is the basis for animal’s deliberative and discriminative functioning in its lifepromoting and conserving activities.”40 Bringing this to the fore in reflection makes philosophy the science of sciences. In fact, it is in this excurrent task that, within and beyond the phenomenological ambient, one sees a newness of ingenuity in what may be referred to as the return to the basis. This is a return to the beginning of history in organised philosophising. Such is the earliest attitude that signifies a search for the common grounds of all. Philosophy dealt with life, both in its concrete and speculative forms. “That is to say, it is an issue as much about the progress of life itself as it is of the experience constitutive of reality for the human being (as Husserl treats it), as it is of logic’s struggles with it as works from the base of Aristotle’s metaphysically rooted conception of the individual”.41 The whole idea under consideration is not just the human person, though the centre of the drama, all that exist become part of this web, but in the dynamics of its analysis, purpose and meaning, single man out of the group. As sophisticated as the level of animal dynamism may be, it still consists of some differences and relatedness, but for the most part more restricted in the fullblown movements of the logos. “At the actual peak seem to be human beings, whose representational and conceptualising communication seems to set them apart from the rest of life.”42 This same man transcends himself and reaches out to mysteries beyond him but in an intelligible way and philosophy ought to recognise that.

CONCLUSION

Going to the things-in-themselves was for Husserl a prerequisite in the eidetic phenomenology. He holds that our knowledge gives us essential insight to things and this leads us to things as they are in themselves. He was constrained to abandon this as a result of the fact that without a common ground, it will be impossible to talk about comprehensive knowledge and so the knowledge of science, which he sees in some way as continuity, will be unattainable. Therefore, things in themselves are essential structures and not individual contingent things. They are not as they are in the raw existent form, but as they are constituted in consciousness. Ideas are also valid in this consideration of essential character.

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It is at this level of tendency to idealism that most existentialists parted way with Husserl. Heidegger was one of the most significant defaulters of Husserl’s allies. Though Heidegger parted ways with Husserl, phenomenological principles resonates in his pure existentialist position. Heidegger’s bold existential assertion of the human being (in the principle of Dasein) in his absolute concreteness adds something to the principle of the Ego by Husserl. Ontopoiesis goes further than the Husserlian genetic analysis of consciousness. It gets to the capacity to create the world not just in the conscious constitutive form which is intentionality, but it involves the entire capacity of the human person beyond the genetic. It digs deeper into the development of the living being from the original basis to its most complex form. Here, existence is not just put in parenthesis but considered crucial and veritable. The analysis of the creative act (human creative imagination), reaches the reality of and how consciousness in itself develops. These are the structural analyses of how becoming is born. This is the ontology of becoming. Every becoming here follows a movement from stage to stage not in the Heraclitean blind flux, but a purpose-imbued process. Ontopoiésis begins and ends with the contingent. For Tymieniecka as for Heidegger,43 the human person is the most appropriate grounds upon which to study being. He is the conduit of existential becoming and the realisation of the work of the logos. She submits: “ontopoiésis sees the contingent as the conduit of the logos of life that proceeds from the unfathomable past and leads towards an open-ended future and which situates and explains the essential status of concrete existence in the space of the present”.44 Between the two authors however, there is a very crucial difference both in thematic reference and in finality of being. In the case of Heidegger, the methodic discourse revolves around Dasein, which though at the end of the day narrows down to the human person and goes beyond his empirical contingency; that is, the being-for-itself from whom he would see the pathway to “Being” in itself. The idea can be further buttressed by the direct opinion of Heidegger. It is enough if we understand that the thematizing of entities within-the-world presupposes Beingin-the-world as the basic state of Dasein, and if we understand how it does so . . . But if Dasein is to be able to have any dealings with a context of equipment, it must understand something like an involvement, even if it does not do so thematically: a world must have been disclosed to it . . . Dasein exists for the sake of a potentiality-for-Being of itself.45

Tymieniecka sees the concreteness of the human person in its thematic accentuation as the centre of research when the issue of being is discussed. She tried to avoid the absurdity of the position of Heidegger precipitated by the ambiguity around Dasein. Nevertheless, their conclusions are not too substantially different in metaphysical consideration. Both did not delve into the pure

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transcendent as a basic ground of the immanent. Furthermore, Tymieniecka, as remedy to this philosophical abyss, proposes a new way that speculative philosophy could benefit from; that is, the philosophy of religion. Morality becomes the very focus that guides such investigation. One sees a clear case of the difference between depraved philosophical search and the application of human religious disposition: Transnatural destiny, as it is outlined through our descriptions of the fragments of spiritual progress, cannot be composed only of lived states. We could without doubt transform the ‘empirical’ soul into a ‘moral’ soul when little by little our natural states and our spontaneous reactions . . . are converted into affective states . . ..46

In conclusion, there is a very serious need for consciousness about conclusions when it comes to research about the human person, his destiny, aspirations, possibilities and finality. The difficulty of getting to the end of the issue of the source of human endeavours and the inability to philosophically transcend immanence in seeking grounds, cannot occasion the view of making man the absolute of his selfhood. The situation cannot also lead to philosophical despair; it simply calls for intellectual humility even on the part of philosophy and philosophers. One can attempt a redactio (redaction) of all that have been discussed so far. The whole effort is towards realising a philosophy that combines phenomenology and metaphysics in response to the question of harmony, which is the proposal of the author of this research. Harmony is both a principle and methodology in philosophical inquiry. The idea here of harmony encompasses earlier uses of the term, but goes beyond their mathematical/astrological usage to seek a basis in philosophical reflection just as the opinion of Richard Tarnas of Plato has it: For Plato believed that it was man’s encounter with the celestial movements that had first given rise to human reasoning about the nature of things . . . By devoting himself to things divine, the philosopher could awaken divinity within himself and bring his own life into intelligent harmony with the celestial order.47

The sections have dealt with both the classical traditional approach and the phenomenological contributions to philosophy. In the last chapters, the evolution of the phenomenological philosophy both as method and content has been demonstrated. The pertinent conclusion that will follow from all this, is that epistemology and metaphysics cannot afford to remain the same. The issues till now occupy themselves with this innovation and have shown a new direction to investigation particularly in the crucial levels of philosophical activities: i.e. metaphysics. Man is always a rational being, but what has been the content

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of this capacity, its application and contextual usage in the historical evolutions. What role has imagination played in the use of this term? Apart from calculative intellection, ratio or in epistemology cognition, what has happened to the other aspects that are intimately connected to the power of man as a rational being that are not common to other being traditionally referred to as non rational? Issues like these are the problems that make this area of attention rich and urgent. It is as a result of these relevant questions and the pattern of flow of philosophical investigation that harmony becomes very important and its quest for unity of philosophical experience through logos and life. Philosophical experience involves every attempt to make reality intelligible within the framework of the dynamism of the mind coupled with an impersonal necessity of philosophical inquiry. This is strengthened by the view of Gilson in his The Unity of Philosophical Experience, where he in the manner of philosophical experiment concludes that there is something stable and enduring about philosophical investigations. For instance: Philosophy consists in the concepts of the philosophers, taken in the naked, impersonal necessity of both their contents and their relations. The history of these concepts and of their relationships is the history of philosophy itself. If this be true, the recurrence of similar philosophical attitude in an intelligible fact, and a comparative history of philosophy becomes a concrete possibility. If such possibility is to materialize, however, philosophy will have to be taken into account, and it should be compared with nothing else but with philosophy itself . . . If this be true, the constant recurrence of definite philosophical attitudes should suggest to the mind of its observers the presence of an abstract philosophical necessity . . . ‘Granted that there is no such thing as an historical determinism . . . The history of philosophy contains more than the interplay of isolated opinions; it contains the inner history of ideas’.”48

It could be said therefore that there is need for an overhaul in the way philosophy has been arbitrarily fragmented by some philosophers at crucial times in its history. The Ontopoiesis unfolding of the logos of life manifests itself in the spectacle of all, cosmos, world, nature, life, the works human spirit . . .. We live within its network and speculate without noticing it. Yet the philosophical query dives below the spectacle to find its genesis and underpinnings.49

Tymieniecka has given a very clear direction here to research programmes that will further the overlapping of philosophy and theology. This area becomes open for more critical analysis and this is only the introduction to the dialogue.

NOTES 1

Peter EGBE, “The Phenomenological Approach to Ontology in the Argument of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka: Differentiation and Unity as Dynamism of Logos and Life”, in Analecta Husserliana Vol. 88, A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Springer, Netherlands, 2005, 197–222 (215).

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Nancy MARDAS, “Creative Imagination – The primogenital Force of Human Life” in http://www.phenomenology.org/mardas04.htm , cited 23-01-2008. 3 Cf. Henri BERGSON, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur MITCHELL, Macmillan and Co, Limited, London, 1911–1920. In this book, Bergson looked at the philosophical foundation to the issue of human life even in its biological treatment. Philosophy therefore cannot afford to be neutral in any human research area. To further substantiate this position the view of Susan Wolf gives a summary of its necessity and difficulty. Susan WOLF, Life, Meaning of, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge, London, 19985 , 630. “The question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’, probably arouses both more contempt and more respect for philosophy than any other. On the one hand, the question is notoriously vague and has encouraged much pompous nonsense. On the other, the urge to understand the point of our existence is deep and pervasive, and is indicative of qualities of mind that are arguably central to being human. A major difficulty besetting the topic is lack of clarity about the subject itself.” The point that has received a lot of attention, however, is the different modes and expression of life; from the biological view point to anthropological issues regarding life. These perspectives are very important and not focusing on them in a particular way in this presentation is not a consequence of ignorance or a negative value judgement, but a methodological choice. 4 Cf. Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, “The Great Metamorphosis of the Logos of Life in Ontopoietic Timing”, in Timing and Temporality in Islamic philosophy and Phenomenology and Life, Springer, 2007. 11–71. 5 Cf. This research has continued to be my focus since my graduate studies and my doctoral theme of harmony which also benefited so much from the philosophy of Tymieniecka. 6 Cf. Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, Why is There Something Rather than Nothing? Royal VanGorcum Ltd., Dordrecht, 1966, 1. “The history of philosophy shows that philosophical questions are tied together; that singling out one while disregarding the others will lead to disastrous consequences. They are linked not only by the particular articulations of a given system, but also – and in a more essential and esoteric way – in relation to their transcendental object.” 7 Angela ALES BELLO, “The Function of Intentionality and the Function of Creativity, A.-T. Tymieniecka and E. Husserl. Confrontation”, in Analecta Husserliana, vol. 83, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2004, 543. 8 Roman INGARDEN, Der Streit um die Existenz der Welt I, Existenzialontologie, Túbingen: Max Verlag, 1964, 7. 9 Cf. Angela ALES BELLO, The Entelechial Principle in Ontopoiesis of life – From Aristotle to Recent Phenomenology, in Analecta Husserliana vol. 50, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1997, 28. “It is quite true that both our thinkers tend to move away from the developments of Husserl’s position, but they do grasp the profound spirit of his inquiry, rather they criticize it precisely because he did not remain consistent with his own programme to the end; indeed, the terrain of the inquiry cannot be limited to the pure I and consciousness, but must embrace the entire dynamic development of reality itself.” 10 Angela ALES BELLO, The Function of Intentionality and the Function of Creativity . . ., cit., 550. 11 Cf. Edith STEIN, Finite and Eternal Being, Kurt REINHARDT, trans., Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, DC, 2002, 23. “. . . it is the task of philosophy to harmonize those propositions at which it has arrived by using its own devices together with the truths of faith and theology.” 12 Peter EGBE, Harmony: A philosophical Investigation from Phenomenology to Metaphysics, Doctoral Thesis, Lateran University, Rome 2008, 222 ff.

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Angela ALES BELLO, The Entelechial Principle in Ontopoiesis of life – From Aristotle to Recent Phenomenology, in Analecta Husserliana vol. 50, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1997, 25. 14 Cf. Ibidem, “Tymieniecka has been asking herself this question for several years now and suggests as an answer the difficulty of tracing an approach to life, which has a breath that the human mind undoubtedly cannot comprehend.” 15 Henri BERGSON, Creative . . . , cit., XIV. 16 Angela ALES BELLO, The Entelechial Principle . . ., cit., 30. 17 Henri BERGSON, Creative . . ., cit., XV. 18 Cf. Ernest HOLMES, The Science of the Mind, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1938–198850 , 30. “Within us, then, there is a creative field, which we call the subjective mind; around us there is a creative field which we call objective. One is universal and the other is individual, but in reality they are one. THERE IS ONE MENTAL LAW IN THE UNIVERSE, AND WHERE WE USE IT, IT BECOMES OUR LAW BECAUSE WE HAVE INDIVIDUALIZED IT. It is impossible to plumb the depths of the individual mind, because the individual mind is really not individual but individualized. Behind the individual is the universal, which has no limits”. See also Peter Egbe, Harmony . . . cit., 216. 19 Cf. Ivi, 299–300. “But the illusion is tenacious. Though suppressing the one thing consists in fact in substituting another for it, we do not conclude, we are unwilling to conclude, that the annihilation of a thing in thought implies the substitution in thought of a new thing for the old. We agree that a thing is always replaced by another thing, and even that our mind cannot think the disappearance of an object, external or internal, without thinking- under an indeterminate and confused form, it is true that another object is substituted for it. But we add that the representation of a disappearance is that of a phenomenon that is produced in space or at least in time, that consequently it implies the calling up of an image, and that it is precisely here that we have to free ourselves from imagination in order to appeal to understanding.” 20 Ivi, 391. 21 Cf. Peter EGBE, Ontology in the Argument of A.-T. Tymieniecka, in Analecta Husserliana Vol. 86, Springer, Dordrecht, 2005. This publication also form an integral part of further researches of the author, particularly the doctoral dissertation that the present theme is extracted from. 22 Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, “The Great Metamorphosis . . .”, cit., 23. 23 Cf. Peter EGBE, Ontology in the Argument of A.-T. Tymieniecka, in Analecta Husserliana Vol. 88, Springer, Dordrecht, 2005, 207. “Therefore, the unity of all that exists, that which is an important part of the philosophy of Tymieniecka, was already foreseen by Stein when she opined that she finds it is ‘impossible indeed to characterize to its full extent any one of the great fundamental genera of being without relation to others.” I. Rainova, “Interview with AnnaTerasa Tymieniecka in Moscow 1993,” in The World Phenomenology Institute – World Institute for Advance Phenomenology, file//c:old%20Documents, 01-Dec., 1999, cit., Furthermore, “with her study under and along side many of the phenomenological philosophers, Tymieniecka became so engrossed in the issue of ontology that she always wanted to know more of that from her teachers. Once in her public expression of this intent, she confronted Ingarden and “asked him why he did not talk more about ontology.” 24 Cf. Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, Why Something . . ., cit., 23–24. Philosophical reflection seems ever to recur from the wonder at the fleeting existence of nature, its passing and unpredictable phenomena, and its cyclic course. It seems that the quest for permanent rules of this fluctuating universe gave rise to pre-Socratic speculations. It seems to have been his dissatisfaction with the unstable, illusory appearance of reality that led Plato toward the eternal realm of

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ideas. And it in order to account for regularities occurring in the seeming chaos of the empirical world Leibniz conceived of the individual substance . . .. However, if we consider contingency as it presents itself in the intrinsic articulations of the real individual being and in the intrinsic organization of the world as his context, we will see that what we call “contingency” is an expression for a threefold aspect of the particular situation of the real individual being: his existential transitoriness, the existential derivativeness, and his lack of sufficient reason or final cause within himself. 25 Ivi, 95. 26 The crucial issue is no longer the material for research, rather it is the ability to combine the possibilities and seek the common grounds from all disciplines as they all have one object to start with and through which the efforts are diversified. The human person is the most suitable and capable of this purposeful inquiry. He is concerned with the meaning of his being and that draws him into explaining the physical reality around him. Since he cannot possibly do that sufficiently without recourse to causality, he is caught in the web of the transcendence. Consequently, from immanence he reaches out to the transcendence. 27 Maria AVELINA, Human Dialectics: “Existence and Coexistence in the Philosophy of A.-T. Tymieniecka”, in Inquiry . . ., cit., 158. 28 Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, Logos and Life Creative Experience and Critique of Reason, in Analecta Husserliana vol. 24, Dordrecht, 1988, xxiv. 29 Cf. Thomas RYBA, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life . . ., cit., 432. “Epistemologically, this reorientation is a new critique of rationality. Because it puts ontopoiésis (the making of being) at the centre of meaning, a refocusing of philosophy results that dissolves the artificial dichotomizations between matter and mind . . .” See also Peter Egbe, Ontology . . ., 208. 30 Angela ALES BELLO, The Function of Intentionality and the Function of Creativity . . ., cit., 7. 31 Ibidem. 32 Frederick COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy vol. 8 . . ., cit., 180. 33 Edith STEIN, Finite and Eternal Being, Kurt REINHARDT, trans., Institute of Carmelite Studies, Washington, DC, 2002, 25. As also used in Peter Egbe, Harmony: A philosophical . . . cit., 222. 34 Cf. Peter Egbe, Harmony: A philosophical . . . cit., 231. See also Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, “The Great Metamorphosis . . .”, 45. We have always been facing the finiteness of our existence on earth. This awareness stands in contrast with our unquenchable thirst for perdurance and fills us with dread.” 35 Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, “The Great Metamorphosis . . .”, cit., 16. 36 Ivi., 45. 37 Henri BERGSON, Creative . . ., cit., XIV. 38 Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, “The Great Metamorphosis . . .”, cit., 65. 39 Ivi, 64. 40 Ivi, 25. 41 Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, Differentiation and Unity . . ., cit, 10. 42 Ibidem. 43 Cf. Dietmar KÓHLER, Sein, in Metzler Philosophie Lexikon, Stuttgart, 1999, 530. “Nur der Mensch als Dasein versteht sein eigenes S. und das von anderem Seienden im Entwurf desselben auf Zeit.” It is generally understood by authors and rightly so, that Heidegger refers to the human person as Dasein. 44 Peter EGBE, Interview with Tymieniecka on Logos and Life, New Hampshire, 2005. 45 Martin HEIDEGGER, Being and Time, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 1962–2002, 415/416.

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46 Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, Logos and Life: The Three Movements of the Soul, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1988, 147/148. 47 Richard TARNAS, The Passion of the Western Mind . . ., cit., 50. Here Tarnas also asserts that philosophy as the most liberating act of man is a product of the encounter of the human person with the mechanical order that gives rise to reflection or reasoning. 48 Etienne GILSON, The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Charles Scribner’s Sons & Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1937–19992, 243–245. 49 Anna-Teresa TYMIENIECKA, Logos . . ., cit., 10.

SOL NEELY

HERMENEUTICS AND THE VOCATIVE STRUCTURE OF THE DIVINE: TOWARD A DRAMATIC, REDEMPTIVE PHENOMENOLOGY

To think metamorphosis means thinking the truth. Edmond Jabès ABSTRACT

This paper attempts to bring together the phenomenological approaches of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and Emmanuel Levinas in order to stage an ecumenical dialogue that might help articulate a redemptive possibility for phenomenology and existentialism capable of addressing the social and political violences of the twenty-first century. The operative assumption of the paper is that no phenomenology can be effective if it does not take into account the genealogical, social, and political conditions of its articulation. In order to stage such redemptive possibilities, then, it is first necessary to evaluate the origins of contemporary phenomenology as they were first developed during the atrocities of the twentieth century. Recognizing that Tymieniecka and Levinas rely on what might be considered by some as incommensurable philosophical and religious vocabularies, the paper locates their shared priorities for responsibility, hope, and redemption in Husserl’s work – mainly Cartesian Mediations – and argues that their respective emphases on the dramatic context and quality of phenomenology unsuspectingly subverts the noble role traditionally reserved for philosophy and thus preserves a priority for the ethical in concrete, existential terms. The paper thus calls for a kind of urgent intervention in the disciplinary and institutional incentives of contemporary Continental philosophy to recover the hope for responsibility at its origins and contribute to the upbuilding task of helping to heal the world’s sorrows. In “The Great Metamorphosis of the Logos of Life in Ontopoietic Timing,” Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka takes as her point of departure the “spark of life,” which she identifies as “the force of logos shaping life” that drives the movement of individualization and underlies the experiences of “existential 151 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 151–170. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_10, 

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certainty,” which Tymieniecka beautifully describes as “being expanded and integrated into the world by one’s own body in performance, to be dimly aware of one’s vital bodily/psychic participation in the world’s performances, to be from the inside out oriented toward close integration with the world’s/life’s progress.” Tymieniecka thus renews “the philosophical quest” by adopting phenomenology to the ontopoiesis of life, and in doing so she preserves a necessary dramatic context for her phenomenological investigations. In this manner, Tymieniecka’s commitments clearly situate her as one of the prominent figures to help articulate and guide the recent postsecular turn in Continental philosophy. These commitments include special attention to the hermeneutical dimension of dramatic phenomenology, but it also defends a notion of the universe as full of life and meaning, against (modernist) existential notions of a dead, entropic universe. More importantly, it phenomenologically defends what Martin Matuštík describes as the “vocative structure of the divine,” to which phenomenology is uniquely, but not solely, suited to interpret. In some sense, emphasizing the dramatic is a key characteristic of contemporary phenomenology, especially in its postsecular turn. The dramatic, as such, is not used in any romantic sense; rather, it is taken in its etymological sense, as Merleau-Ponty reminds us, which we might take as meaning action, or performance, related by means of dialogue and gesture. The general drama arising from the metaphysical structure of the body is situation – occurring in the ambiguous setting of inter-communication, of body as expression, by which bodies run into each other, against each other, brought to life by consciousness and a primary tending toward one another. For Tymieniecka, it is the “logos of life” – in the guise of sentience – that “establishes the means of intergenerative and social communication” (23). Her phenomenological approach is thus dramatic in that it is existential and committed to philosophy in the full embodiment of life, the individualization of the singular self, and the in-carnation of the world. For Levinas, the dramatic is a more radical and complex existential relation of bearing witness (phenomenology as such a form of bearing witness) – a task with which philosophy might not be capable of fully contending. While Tymieniecka observes that “the gist of our human drama and of our plight is suffering” (48), Levinas remains famously skeptical of any theodicical appeal that would give suffering any kind of meaning (“Useless Suffering”); within the dramatic, a difficult hermeneutical task is thus opened, and it is to this difficulty that this paper turns most of its attention. While we might agree that there is a “vocative structure to the divine” – to use Martin Matuštík’s phrase – that is phenomenologically accessible (in the logos of life, in the face of the Other, in the saturation of the gift and of givenness), Tymieniecka and Levinas offer different insights in their

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respective hermeneutical approaches. Tymieniecka’s responses are largely conditioned in the light and metamorphoses of logos, just as Levinas’ responses are conditioned through Torah; however, it is through a working out of their shared phenomenological movements – and in an assessment of how true to Husserl’s phenomenological approach each stays – that we discover the context for effecting a genuinely ecumenical and redemptive possibility for our work in the world. As such, while drawing such parallel criticisms between the two phenomenological approaches helps adumbrate particular strengths and weaknesses, this paper commits to the more difficult critical (and pedagogical) task of reading one through the other in a productive, upbuilding, and edifying way. In this manner and in this ecumenical spirit, the phenomenology and existentialism of the twentieth century must turn its attention to help heal the atrocities that already present themselves at the start of the twenty-first century. A CALL TO RESPONSIBILITY: PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE HORRORS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Any accounting for the existentialism and phenomenology of the twentieth century is inseparable from the political, social, economical – indeed, dramatic – contexts of its articulation. Levinas, in this way, opens Totality and Infinity with the immediate and concrete question of modern warfare. In his characteristic critique of philosophy, he asks if we have not been duped by morality (Kant); he asks if “the mind’s openness upon the true” and the lucid (Plato) does not also “consists in catching sight of the permanent possibility of war”; in a veiled reference to Heidegger, he notes that “[w]e do not need obscure fragments of Heraclitus to prove that being reveals itself as war to philosophical thought” (21). Modern war is an ontological event that cast beings “anchored in their identity” into a “mobilization of absolutes, by an objective order from which there is no escape” (21). Much like Levinas, Jan Patoˇcka – who was also a student of Husserl – argues that all previous theories of war approach war from the perspective of peace; that is to say, from the perspective of peace, the general movement of history is what matters most, and individuals bear this movement along in such a way that war and death invest this movement of history – making it mean, investing war with a kind of necessity. In the opening pages of his sixth Heretical essay, Patoˇcka articulates a strong critique of Hegel and Marx, by which he contends that explanations of war and theories of history that approach war from “the day,” from “life,” fail to explain the real crises of the twentieth century. Patoˇcka begins his analysis of the twentieth century, defined by a rapid mobilization and mass release of Force through warfare, by applying his

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more general critique of technological civilization to the defining political and historical events of twentieth century European history – specifically, the origins of the two world wars. The restructuring of society through “conspicuous scientification,” the events contributing to the development of the “technoscientific age,” Patoˇcka attributes rather directly to the organization of Germany through Bismarck – a “new society of work, discipline, production, and planned construction leading in all respects to the releasing of ever further stores of energy” (123). According to Patoˇcka’s genealogical narrative, the First World War had its origins in the struggles of a burgeoning ideology that aimed to overthrow the status quo of an imperially organized Europe, with its power center in the West: Patoˇcka observes, “It was this war that demonstrated that the transformation of the world into a laboratory for releasing reserves of energy accumulated over billions of years can be achieved only by means of wars” (124). The consequence of this development, Patoˇcka argues, effected a “definitive breakthrough of the conception of being [. . . that] swept aside all the ‘conventions’ that inhibited this release of energy – a transvaluation of all values under the sign of power” (124, emphasis mine). The transvaluation of all values under the sign of power is in fact a radical ontological shaking that Patoˇcka already describes in his fifth essay, when he notes that “Humans have ceased to be a relation to Being and have become a force, a mighty one, one of the mightiest” (116); this Force, moreover, has been transformed, finally, through the actualization of all potentiality regarding the organization, massifying, and release of Force: “In this process humans as well as individual peoples serve merely as tools” (125); or, as he expresses in the fifth essay, “understanding the world as Force makes mere forces something more than a correlate of human activities. [. . .] Force is the Highest Being which creates and destroys all, to which all and everyone serves” (116, emphasis added). Humans, as mere forces, are entirely subordinated under the totality of being qua Force. Patoˇcka’s critique shares much in common with Levinas here. Like Levinas, Patoˇcka reiterates that the total mobilization of Force, that “energetic transformation of the world,” must necessarily take on the form of war; Patoˇcka’s articulation of the transformation of force into an ontologizing of war – and not just an understanding of ontology as war, but the radical and permanent elevation of war, of Force, as Highest Being – is genealogically grounded in the “slowly germinating conviction that there is nothing such as factual, objective meaning of the world and of things, and that it is up to strength and power to create such meaning within the realm accessible to humans” (121). For Patoˇcka, the first site of the emergence of the ontologizing of war occurs in the form of the front-line, of the “rot” of trench warfare that at once expends tremendous energies and still necessarily “favors the defensive”

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(124). War in the form of the front line is not a trauma, he maintains, but a “fundamental transformation of human existence” (125). This transformation of human existence occurs through two phases, or degrees of intensity: first, through a profound experience of meaninglessness predicated precisely on the understanding of war from the perspective of peace, of the meaninglessness of life and the call to fight a war against war; and second, through a transformation of the enemy from “someone to be eliminated” to a “fellow participant.” This second consequence unsuspectingly conditions a new community, or solidarity, of the shaken who collectively refuse the mythologies (the secular political theodicies) that understand war from the perspective of peace and thus mask its egregious horrors (Patoˇcka 131). From the first world war to the second, Patoˇcka points toward another development in the mobilization of Force that further contributed to the permanent organization of culture as war: the elimination of “the distinction between the front line and the home front” through the advent of aerial bombing (132). The coinciding of the front line with the home front will be important in terms of both extending the analytical critique of technological civilization and for broadening the possibilities of refusal, of the collective no, through both a more extensive inclusion of the community of the shaken and generating a more profound understanding of responsibility through what he describes as absolute self-sacrifice. What makes Patoˇcka’s sixth essay especially riveting is the second phase, or intensity, of the meaningfulness that emerges from this global organization of Force – or “transvaluation of all values under the sign of power”: The second phase that occurs only on the front-line, which is the transformation of the enemy from someone to be eliminated to a “fellow participant” – the idea Patoˇcka develops into the concept of the “solidarity of the shaken.” If Force – that organization of permanent war in the name of peace – makes tools of every individual, the reciprocal aspect of this concerns the willingness to sacrifice oneself for this larger Force, or cause. That is, on the front line the soldier passes through radical meaninglessness – a difficult phase to transcend, Patoˇcka admits – to bear witness to the “‘demoralizing,’ terrorizing, and deceptive motifs of the day” (134) and say “no.” This is the metanoia, the conversion of the shaken on the other side of nihilism and the profound collision of Force. Here, Patoˇcka’s analysis opens toward something much more radical: The absolute freedom of the front line, the absolute freedom of the night ripped permanently from the failed promises of day, erupts across the coincidence of front line and home front and thus escapes the force of general mobilization. If, for Patoˇcka, “Force has become the modern figure of being” (Derrida 37), and if humans as mere forces have allowed themselves to become instruments of this calculable being – or, as Slavoj Zizek observes, we live in a post-political

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age where the general mobilization of society qua Force is now mechanistically reproduced in the form of general administration – then the experiences of the front-line are such that Force, and the society it organizes, demands sacrifice for its continued development and release of energy. Soldiers on the front line thus presumably give themselves – in the interest of peace, life, “day” – to such requirements. However, in light of the first intensity of the front line experience, which is an absolute experience, “sacrifice loses its relative significance” and becomes absolute: Sacrifice is no longer a cost or investment; rather, it is significant in itself (129–130). In the radical meaninglessness of the front line experience, an absolute freedom is achieved – one which is transformed from an orientation toward the objectives of peace to an indifference to “day,” an indifference to all mobilizations of violence for the sake of a liberation from violence to come. Here, then, is where Levinas and Patoˇcka aver parallel concerns. This transformation of the individual on the front line – which is a transformation of the nature of sacrifice itself – is capable of overcoming Force. Patoˇcka makes the case that the absolute freedom achieved in indifference to the morality of “day” – in the absolute giving of oneself in all of one’s being, as gift – becomes the surplus irrecuperable by Force. The consequence is not a Nietzschean mythologizing of Force and the overcoming of man – since, indeed, the cult of heroism becomes shattered. Rather, Patoˇcka argues for an emergent possible foundation of ethics, justice, and community that comes “before and beyond” the ontology of “Force as Highest Being.” There is indeed a very Kierkegaardian moment in Patoˇcka’s fifth essay, in which Patoˇcka proffers a genealogy of the I as it passes from the orgiastic mysteries through Plato, Neoplatonism, Christianity and modern technological society: The responsible human as such is I; it is an individual that is not identical to any role it could possibly assume [. . .]; it is a responsible I because in the confrontation with death and in coming to terms with nothingness it takes upon itself what we all must carry out in ourselves, where no one can take our place. Now, however, individuality is vested in a relation to an infinite love and humans are individuals because they are guilty, and always guilty, with respect to it. We all, as individuals, are defined by the uniqueness of our individual placement in the universality of sin. (107, emphases added)

The metanoia, or conversion, of the responsible I must, of course, undergo “the pressure of the Force” (134), which is to say that one must in a sense pass through nihilism in order to become unconditioned from the philosophies of power, the fetishized religion, and the idolatry of heroism, reason, and state; moreover, it is only from the perspective of the night – from the universality of sin – that the individual can experience the absolute guilt that Patoˇcka mentions in the above passage. The radical moment of collision expressed in the two

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intensities of the front line – a collision in the sense of a dialectical collapse similar to the structure of faith articulated by Kierkegaard, with whom Patoˇcka shares a certain heretical understanding of Christianity and its role in European history – allows the conditions for the possibility of an ethical dimension of sacrifice to open: the offering of oneself absolutely, with all of one’s being. This gift (of death), as Derrida will describe it, “cannot be thought of, except in terms of this irreplaceability” (42). The solidarity of the shaken, constituted through a community of singular and irreplaceable self-sacrificing individuals, extends Patoˇcka’s phenomenology of responsibility predicated on the conversion of the responsible I to assert the possibilities of a profound new responsibility for Europe. Patoˇcka thus offers a description of community after the collision of Force, after the ontologizing of war, and after the immense release of energy and violence that defines the twentieth century. Still, such a community of the shaken has yet to emerge in any effective sense, and Patoˇcka’s critique of Force only seems more relevant today. What else is the war on terrorism but an indefinite war against an indefinite enemy that requires the mobilization of a state of exception that absolutely collapses the distinction between front line and home front? As such, it is Patoˇcka’s warning that resonates loudest: “We continue to be fascinated by force, allow it to lead us along its paths, fascinating and deceiving us, making us its dupes. Where we believe we have mastered it and can depend on it for security, we are in reality in a state of demobilization and are losing the war which cunningly changed its visage but has not ceased” (132). What, then, can we expect of phenomenology in the twenty-first century? Perhaps, as Patoˇcka suggests, it is precisely the absolute coinciding of the front line with the home front that might engender the possibilities for transformation – from paranoia to metanoia. According to this perspective, what will be required is the movement toward a solidarity of the shaken – the dialogical transformation that Patoˇcka appeals to in his concluding remarks on polemos. We must engage actively through the “warnings and prohibitions” of Socrates’ daimonion to create a spiritual authority (135), a mysterium tremendum of the other. Only in irreplaceable singularity, and only through a collective and resounding “no” can adversaries be united qua polemos to “an ultimate unity and mystery of being” (136) – to abandon the promises of day for the trembling mystery of night. This is not, of course, to suggest that Patoˇcka offers a prescriptive approach for some revolutionary political solidarity in the form of a bloc; rather, he offers a genealogical description of how phenomenology might approach the question of Force and of power so that a genuinely transformative, internal critique might help to effect social healing. As an internal critique, it refuses the hopelessness and nihilism of political theodicy or heroic

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nationalism, for a phenomenology that arrives at a defense of theodicy risks appearing obscene before the starved, the raped, the impoverished millions who die every year because of global poverty and war. As Levinas, in the preface to Totality and Infinity notes, it is not enough just to seek peace in an ontology of war, for such a peace offers only a theodicical peace by which “the unicity of each present is incessantly sacrificed to a future appealed to [in order] to bring forth its objective meaning” (22). It is not enough to found peace on these principles of reason and identity: “The peace of empires issued from war rests on war” (22). Such a peace is grounded in a secular philosophical theodicy that is still not capable of restoring to alienated beings their lost identity. Moreover, it would be obscene to read Patoˇcka as arguing for others to give themselves in sacrifice since, as Levinas avers, such a call would constitute a call for human sacrifice! Instead, for radical peace, the “certitude of peace” must dominate “the evidence of war”; in other words, “the eschatology of messianic peace” will have to superpose itself upon the ontology of war. Patoˇcka’s “heretical” philosophy of history offers a genealogical narrative of the complicity and abuses of philosophy in mobilizing Force as “highest being.” As genealogy, Patoˇcka’s work shifts from a description of disciplinary forces and regimes to a description of responsibility after the nihilism of a society mobilized for perpetual war; as phenomenology, Patoˇcka’s work contributes to a development of what Levinas describes as a “phenomenology of sociality,” which takes as its starting point not so much in the “spark of life,” as Tymieniecka’s philosophical quest does, but the concrete circumstances of devastated global reality. The folding of the genealogical critique into the existential dimensions of phenomenological inquiry provides an effective approach to how we understand the self as irreducibly relational and constituted through such intersubjective relations. If we are to assess the impact of existentialism and phenomenology in the twentieth century, and if we are to orient our assessments of this legacy toward effecting genuinely ecumenical, redemptive, and healing phenomenology for the twenty-first century, we must begin in the tragic and concrete realities of the kind of radical brutality and egregious violences that have come to define the dramas of human existence.

THE ETHICAL IMPLICATIONS OF A DRAMATIC PHENOMENOLOGY: STARTING WITH HUSSERL FROM RESPONSIBILITY

Patoˇcka offers a very broad genealogy of the mobilization of Force in the twentieth century, and while such a genealogy might not be as detailed as

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some of the patient work of, say, Michel Foucault, Patoˇcka’s philosophy of history turns on itself to offer a history of philosophy, and in this move Patoˇcka achieves a remarkably appropriate coincidence of the genealogical with the phenomenological. From one perspective, it is this folding of the genealogical into the phenomenological that I call dramatic phenomenology. The genealogical – as offering a diachronic (in the Foucauldian sense) and internal critique of the history of philosophy – sharpens the phenomenological reduction by preserving the social, political, economical, and ethical contexts of the reduction. For instance, Levinas writes in “The Temptation of Temptations” that “In the beginning was violence” (Nine Talmudic Readings 37). To my mind, Levinas is not staking out some mythical violent origins of social ontology; rather, “in the beginning was violence” merely means that we are born into a world not of our making. We are born in the wake of the most egregious historical abuses – whether it be the Holocaust, the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans and the expropriation of African resources, or the ongoing abuses a capitalist political economy that includes the deaths of 25 million people every year (what Enrique Dussel describes as an “international Auschwitz”). The phenomenological approach “sees” this – not in representational form but in the symptoms of real historical violence that are everywhere evident. The phenomenological “existentializes” the genealogical, while the genealogical preserves the dramatic context (situation) of the phenomenological approach. As such, from a second perspective, the notion of dramatic phenomenology must also bear with it the possibility of effecting an unsuspected subversion of philosophy itself; that is, the hermeneutical demands of our ethical responses should be made in the intensity of the dramatic context and not in necessarily in accord with the requirements of reason, the state, or truth in the Platonic sense. A genuinely dramatic phenomenology effects, for one, what Jeffrey Paris describes as a “total and scandalous reconstruction of the human subject” – the seriousness of which philosophy too often avoids. Indeed, Levinas himself notes that “[t]he liberalism of the past few centuries evades the dramatic aspects of such a liberation” (“Reflections on Hitlerism” 68, emphasis added). An important question for phenomenology emerges: Does the move to responsibility and the positing of ethical transcendence necessarily betray fundamental Husserlian notions of phenomenological reduction? Dominique Janicaud famously argues that that so-called “postsecular turn” in Continental philosophy merely smuggles theology into phenomenology. For Janicaud, the problem is that the postsecular phenomenologies – such as those offered by Marion, Levinas, and we can add Tymieniecka – violate Husserl’s principle of principles. Janicaud writes,

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[Husserl] could not foresee that a new turn of the phenomenological movement would open onto theological perspectives equally foreign to the spirit of phenomenology “as a rigorous science.” Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, whatever liberties they had taken in regard to the Husserlian methodological prescriptions, at least remained faithful to this fundamental Husserlian inspiration: the essence of intentionality is to be sought, by the phenomenological reduction, in phenomenal immanence. If there is an intentional transcendence, it is to be grasped as it is given itself in the world. The suspension of the natural attitude ought not to lead to a flight to another world or to the restoration of absolute idealism, but to a deepening of the transcendental regard vis-à-vis experience and for it. (35)

Salomon Malka, in his biography of Levinas, also records an anecdote about Jean Hering, a professor in theology at Strasbourg who studied with Husserl in Göttingen, toured France in the 1890s with one point of contention: “Did the reform proposed by Husserl succeed in establishing a radical science, or, on the contrary, did it establish the right of theology”? (36). According to Malka, Levinas never answered the question. In fact, Levinas may have subtly answered the question by sending his two distinct bodies of writing – those belonging properly to philosophy and those more “religious” texts of his Talmudic Readings – to two separate publishing houses. To my mind, the religious and the philosophical works of Levinas demand to be read continuously with one another, but they are to be read not on the ground of philosophy but on the ground of the dramatic, or what Sandor Goodhart – developing some of the important insights of Maurice Blanchot – calls the literary. The question I pose, then, is as follows: Without resorting to “the right of theology,” can Husserl’s methodological prescriptions for phenomenology nevertheless contribute to a destabilizing of the so-called “philosophical quest”? If so, what is the consequence of this destabilization both for ethical response in intersubjective relations and for the very question of how to develop a redemptive phenomenology? Let us briefly recount the movement of Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations in order establish the difficulties and limitations of outlining ethical response in Husserl’s intersubjective relations. Delivering his Cartesian Meditations as a series of lectures in Paris – between the two world wars – Husserl again aims to “mark out the determinate methodical course of a genuine philosophy, a radical philosophy that begins with what is intrinsically first” (8). Such a hope to establish an apodictic foundation for philosophy aims to discover a “consciousness of responsibility” to renew radical philosophy “in this unhappy present” (5). The reduction of the ego, as a turn toward the subject, begins “in absolute poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge” (2); such radical bracketing, however, as Husserl very clearly states does not leave us confronting nothing: “On the contrary,” Husserl notes, “we gain possession of something by it” – which is my “pure living, with all the pure subjective processes making this up” (20).

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What we arrive at, “by virtue of my free epoché” (25), is an existential status that is primary, “by which I apprehend myself purely: as Ego, and with my own pure conscious life, in and by which the entire Objective world exists for me and is precisely as it is for me” (21). From this proposal, then, we can certainly get a sense of the hopefulness promised by Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, as an intentional act of freedom by which “I put myself above all this life and/refrain from doing any believing that takes ‘the’ world straightforwardly as existing” (21); in its task to bracket the pre-scientific and the mundane, we are disabused of the prejudices of the natural world, as movement of liberation – as, perhaps, a radical new form of civilization. Thus, hope and a consciousness of responsibility is opened; however, from the perspective of the question at hand, which aims to discern ethical implications in Husserl’s intersubjective relations, the problem of relation itself already offers the first difficulty – which is a difficulty of intrasubjective communication. Indeed, Husserl’s radical meditations encourage us even to bracket “the intramundane existence of all other Egos, so that rightly we should no longer speak communicatively, in the plural”; moreover, Husserl specifically announces that “Other men than I, and brute animals, are data of experience for me only,” noting as well that “[a]long with other Egos,/naturally, I lose all the formations pertaining to sociality and culture” (19). However, what we are given by Husserl’s meditations – apodicity of Ego, the opening of horizons (even through those horizons which delimit the possibilities of reduction), and analogical apperception – become the conditions by which sociality, temporality, and Nature are opened again. As Husserl promises in the first meditation, the fifth meditation bears the possibility of empathy, qua “a new legitimation of significations,” and thus becomes the ground for a consciousness of responsibility capable of robust ethical relations with the suffering Other. Indeed, what might a new legitimation of significations be other than ethical, or at least empathetic, response? Husserl’s transcendental reduction, in its first articulations, presents the problem of solipsism and relation; however, thinking through to the end the problem of relation, Husserl grants the possibility of a community of monads – individualized but still brought to together by analogical appresentation of the alter and the ego. With some degree of hermeneutical charity, we can read the ethical implications of Husserl’s intersubjective relations as positing the un-substitutability of Other and same while still opening qua horizon the possibility of empathetic intersubjective relations. By the end of the fourth meditation, Husserl brings us through an experience of the transcendental reduction to a question of the limits of his investigations; at the earliest stages of the phenomenology, the transcendental ego is grasped apodictically, but only as “having a quite undetermined horizon, a

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horizon restricted only by the general requirement that the world and all I know about it shall become a mere ‘phenomenon’” (149). What is lacking in these formative stages of constitutional research are those distinctions “which are made only subsequently by intention explication but which nevertheless,” Husserl insists, “pertain to me essentially”; specifically, Husserl observes, what is lacking is a respect for what is constituted as an Other in the sphere of ownness (149–150). As if to preserve the components of hope and responsibility in our meditations of self-explication – which Husserl describes as involving an “infinity of tasks” – we become aware of the problem of “others”: “Even in our fleeting glance at what is constituted in us – in me always, in the meditating ego – as a world, a whole universe of being, we naturally could not avoid being mindful of ‘others’ and their constitutings” (87). In fact, the question of intersubjectivity, Husserl readily admits, risks destabilizing the methodic predelineations of self-explication if the “possibility of the being for me of others” is not explicated. Moreover, in the last sentences of the fourth meditation, Husserl raises two important qualifications for transcendental reduction regarding the problem of experiencing someone else: first, the question of others is the advent of a “genuine ‘introduction’ into a philosophy and the beginning that establishes the actuality of a philosophy as a necessarily practical idea” (88); and second, the concreteness of self-explication as achieved by actual work (86) – in a community, in some sense, of “all of us” who meditate together (87) – is precisely what opens the meditations “for an infinity of executing work” (88). In this articulation of the executing work of phenomenology, in its aiming to achieve a consciousness of responsibility, reduction must be understood as a movement to concretion, to a monistic unified field and not a reduction to abstraction or to mere metaphysical constructions. These qualifications by Husserl are always important for preserving the principle of principles in his discussion of the Other in the fifth meditation, which entails, moreover, a dual requirement: First, a description of primordial experience and other’s access as excess, which is to say beyond that which I can bracket; and second, others as Other must be irreducible to me. Without these two important requirements, the Other risks being reduced to a relation of sameness. As is evident, the question for Husserl is not whether the Other risks being reduced to me, as Levinas will be more inclined to assert, but how we can approach the Other in communication – that is, how can community, solidarity, philosophy emerge for a community of monads. With a sense of how the meditations begin, with indistinct horizons in the opening reduction, and with a sense of where the meditations deliver us, toward the horizon of the Other – from transcendental subjectivity to transcendental intersubjectivity, let us turn to a more thorough account of Husserl’s notion

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of intersubjectivity in order to carefully arrive at the kind of responsibility I hope to emphasize – not without qualification, to be sure – as a basis of commiseration, as empathy, with the suffering Other. As noted, for Husserl, the Other is always an alter ego, which is to say, the Other as alter is constituted by the transcendental ego; however, in the “reduction of transcendental experience to the sphere of ownness” (§44), in the pre-eminent intentionality – in my concrete being as a monad which includes “[my] every intentionality and therefore in particular, the intentionality directed to what is other” – I discover “a new existence-sense that goes beyond my monadic very-ownness”: the constitution of an alter ego as an other “mirroring” my own self (94). The problem, though, is that such a mirroring is not a mirroring in the proper sense, meaning that the Other constituted as alter ego can not be known directly – otherwise, the problem of transcendental solipsism will not have been solved, since the Other would be recuperated, or posited, by the personal essence of the transcendental subject. The problem for Husserl is the problem of origins: Since I have no direct access to the Other’s own essentiality – since that would entail reducing the Other to my own essence – I can approach the Other not by way of original access but by way analogical appresentation. Given the radical, monadological alterity of the Other – even as constituted within one’s ownness as anological appresentation – the question of communication capable of bearing empathy emerges. As Husserl concludes the fifth meditation, two intersubjectivities are not absolutely isolated: “Accordingly they belong in truth to a single universal community, which includes me and comprises unitarily all monads and groups of monads that can be conceived as co-existent” (140). In such community of men [sic], “there is implicit a mutual being for one another, which/entails an Objectivating equalization of my existence with that of all others” (129). Husserl notes, “If, with my understanding of someone else, I penetrate more deeply into him, into his horizon of ownness, I shall soon run into the fact that [. . .] he experiences me forthwith as an Other for him, just as I experience him as my Other” (130). This holds true, Husserl maintains, even in a plurality of Others so that “I can experience any given Other not only as himself an Other but also as related in turn to his Others and perhaps – with a mediatedness that may be conceivable as reiterable – related to the same time to me” (130). This open plurality of men, Husserl designates, is community in transcendental concreteness – as an “open community of monads” which he designates as transcendental intersubjectivity. The basis of communalization by which communication is renewed – and thus the possibility of empathy is offered – broadens to affect, in addition to those whom we encounter and with whom we can enter into relations, those whom we do not even know: “Openly endless Nature itself then becomes a Nature that includes

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an open plurality of men [. . .] distributed one knows not how in infinite space, as subjects of possible intercommunion” (130, emphasis added). Husserl thus delivers us again to the possibility of a renewed communication, qua empathy, that opens us in relation to Others in commitment. The community of monads, radically individualized, at last encounters the substratum of the phenomenal world in terms of a substratum of responsibility.

PHENOMENOLOGY AND HERMENEUTICAL RESPONSIBILITY: TO BEAR WITNESS

Does this substratum of responsibility that seems to organize the ethical implications of Husserl’s intersubjective relations hold the possibility for justifying a coincidence of the theological and the phenomenological? Here’s where Tymieniecka’s essay puts this question to work, for hers is a phenomenology that seems to preserve the sincerity of Husserl’s approach while also holding out for the possibility of a sacred response. It might very well be that Tymieniecka is guilty of Janicaud’s charges, but let us examine the quality of the dramatic – as it is averred, at least, in her essay “The Great Metamorphosis of the Logos of Life in Ontopoietic Timing” – to assess its potential as a corrective to some of the ethical critiques against empathy. Briefly stated, empathy achieved through the question of life is not radical enough a response for Levinas’ ethical commandment expressed in the face of the Other. To be sure, any move to develop a dramatic, redemptive phenomenology requires a rigorous and honest accounting of the origins of its articulation. Noting, then, the custom in contemporary philosophy “ to legitimate not only the point of departure but also the procedure of philosophizing,” Tymieniecka submits that phenomenology “takes from life poignant evidence of the self as the firm ground from which to delineate life’s course, retracing in the work of the mind the dynamic vital/existential lineaments of the logos of life” (17). In contrast to “ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, aesthetics, anthropology, etc.” – which “all have their source in this logos and yet escape from it into the labyrinths of their singular intellective approaches” and “[get] lost in endless intellective speculation” – phenomenology, according to Tymieniecka, takes as its point of departure a “vital confidence” in the identification of one’s very beingness: “The force of the logos shaping life drives the subsequent escalation of more and more complex individualizing steps and finds its apogee in the human individual” (16). Starting, then, with the human creative act as that experience which allows us access to the logos of life, Tymieniecka notes that the “nature of the logos of life is revealed through life itself”: “[T]he logos of

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life IS sentience”; “[t]here is no ‘outside’ to the logos of life” (22). If “to be means essentially to be sentient,” we are lead to understand “that in this guise the logos of life establishes the means of intergenerative and social communication”; in its development, human beings acquire full cognitive measure, which is what Tymieniecka calls “the dianoiac thread of life.” The conditions for the possibility of this intergenerative communication are phenomenologically evinced in the dramatic terms of life brought by the human condition, which includes pain, birth, and death – to be sure – but also the possibility of empathy and being brought to bear witness. Moral awareness is brought in by moral sense, which Tymieniecka describes as the “grounding of the primoridial sensibility of human communion”; she writes: It is within the sentient core of the logos of life that the moral sense surges from the numerous lines of sentience of commonality in animality to the re-cognition of another human as being equal to oneself. In this re-cognition resides a novel morality of the logos: a spirit of human communion. A human being cannot become fully aware of himself/herself as a conscientious being other than in relation to another human being (36).

The individualizing movement of the force of the Logos (Logos as Force) in Tymieniecka’s phenomenological approach preserves the hope and the consciousness of responsibility that motivate Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. Moreover, she maintains the dramatic context of this process by insisting that logos – as “the reason of reasons” – “acquires ‘shape’ in its performance and is then intuited through that performance, from the inside, as it were” (19). Tymieniecka thus touches on a number of important themes important to the postsecular turn in Continental philosophy: First, she emphasizes the dramatic quality of existence; the dramatic quality of phenomenology means that we are singular, contextual, responsive (response-able), and beholden to perspective even if this perspective is broadened through empathetic possibility. Second, the dramatic quality means intentionality is overwhelmed at time by intuition – whether it be in pain or commiseration, or overjoyed in love or isolated in our singular loneliness; thus, there is an irreducible hermeneutical dimension to our phenomenological response. Third, we are individuated in this constitutional movement so as to be irreplaceable and radically singular. However, there are clear differences between Levinas’ response to the problems of Husserl’s ethical subjectivity and Tymieniecka’s response. Since the purpose of this paper is specifically to open an ecumenical and cooperative possibility for a dramatic, redemptive phenomenology, I will not here pit the two responses against one another except to offer some key pedagogical (as opposed to polemical) reflections. Levinas, for instance, critiques the idea of a logoic “reason of reasons,” and he would certainly be

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skeptical of understanding such logos on the basis of force, which he might read as reproducing essential components to a philosophy of power. To this end, Levinas remained skeptical of ego and the Cartesian starting point of Husserl’s phenomenological meditations, and he maintained a strong suspicion of Heidegger’s concept of ontology – which, according to Levinas, remained in the tradition of Western metaphysics, beginning with Plato, that accepted the dominance of reason – since reason, for Levinas, is the faculty of identity. But Tymieniecka is careful with how she uses these terms of force, reason, and logos. Perhaps we can read her use of these terms, and I take humble precaution here, more in line with Jean-Luc Marion’s notion of givenness. In Being Given, Marion confirms and problematizes a fundamental equivalence he establishes in between givenness and phenomenality. As Marion states the case, givenness and phenomenality “amount to same ascent to the visible, to the same anamorphosis” – an equivalence Marion aims to develop without exception in order to account for how givenness would organize phenomenality universally while still accounting for the “fundamental differences that continue to distinguish the different types of phenomena” (189). In other words, Marion emphasizes, givenness must be further refined so as to account for the differences between phenomena not in terms of deficiency – of either intention or intuition – but solely in terms of the criterion of givenness. Marion thus aims to “destroy the ordinary definition of the phenomenon such as it reigns in metaphysics according to Kant, as well as in phenomenology according to Husserl” (189), since Marion understands Husserl as suffering the outcomes of decisions made by Kant – decisions that subordinate givenness to intuition while further positing intuition as essentially lacking. Givenness, Marion stresses, cannot fulfill its “originary and justificatory function” so long as phenomenality is either determined in advance according to conditions of experience or so long as possibility is determined “before the tribunal of the transcendental I” that lays claim to its constitutive posturing through the act of determining givenness rather than becoming its receiver. The problem, as Marion understands it, is that Husserl has inherited a duality of the phenomenon that posits a fundamental ambiguity in the correlation between the appearing and what appears – a correlation, Marion adds, orchestrated in several pairs: intention/intuition, signification/fulfillment, noesis/noema (190). Accordingly, the highest phenomenality whatsoever is accomplished in the perfect adequation between these two terms; however, Marion notes, such an adequation for Husserl remains a pure ideal. Thus, while adequation, as in metaphysics, suffices to define the truth, it nonetheless remains above all a limit, or an exceptional case.

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As the “reason of reasons,” Tymieniecka’s use of the term logos might function in a similar manner to Marion’s criterion of givenness. As exceeding intentionality – and as a kind of saturation – we must continually shift our perspectives, re-articulate our questions, and take ownership of our decisions (and the violence consequent of our decisions) if we are to commit fully, humanly, to our response-ability. Dramatic phenomenology is thus intensely existential, and we must continually prepare ourselves to be capable of fulfilling our obligations even, Levinas continually admonishes, as we are obligated despite our ability (a “thou must” without accounting for a “thou can”). The strengths of Tymieniecka’s phenomenological commitments – which begin by confirming “the spark of life” – is that she opens the possibility for a non-violent starting point, and she preserves the centrality not of presence per se but of a necessary, hermeneutical, and phenomenological metamorphosis. Edmond Jabès, the great Jewish poet, writes, “To think metamorphosis is to think the truth.” Levinas, who greatly appreciated the work of Jabès as offering precisely the kind of dramatic subversion of philosophy, might finally commit to the use of the word “truth” if it is qualified in this radically hermeneutical, existential, and phenomenological way. Can we be justified, then, to read Tymieniecka’s “reason of reasons” in a similar way that we might understand the Judaic expression that states the whole world is contained in Torah? It superposes not metaphysical presence; rather, it adumbrates but what Martin Matuštík describes as the “vocative structure of the divine.” We are called to respond in responsibility to commit not only to peace – especially as a peace born of the ontology of war – but to a healing of the world. In setting up his concern for certain methodological liberties assumed by the theological turn in phenomenology, Janicaud raises the question of an ambiguous and late expression of Heidegger: the “phenomenology of the unapparent.” The question I pose here is, despite Heidegger’s intended use of the phrase – which is well beyond the scope of this paper – how can the possibility of a “phenomenology of the unapparent” contribute to a dramatic, redemptive phenomenology – one which unsuspectingly subverts the dominance of philosophy? Philosophy, in general of course, is “larger” than phenomenology; however, phenomenology must not always come under the auspices of philosophy alone. There can be literary, dramatic modalities of phenomenology that escape the insistence on reason that defines Western philosophy from Plato forward. Thus, phenomenology, in its most dramatic and hermeneutical expressions, effects an unsuspecting subversion of philosophy. Would it be too much to suggest that the substratum of responsibility and the very insistence on hope in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations holds out for this possibility?

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Should we start, then, from Tymieniecka’s starting point that confirms a “vital confidence” in life, or should our starting point begin from the perspective of Levinas’ phenomenology of sociality where we are already born into and of violence? Is a coincidence of the two even possible? I would argue that a coincidence of the two must be possible, however paradoxical. Not only must we respond in responsibility, as Levinas avers, but we must increasingly make ourselves capable of responding in our fullest capacity of commitment, commiseration, and love. Tymieniecka’s “question of life as the radical beginning” must begin as a question of life for the Other; otherwise we reproduce the very struggle for existence (conatus essendi) that views war from the perspective of peace – as cruel and obscene theodicy.

PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE TASK OF REDEMPTIVE CRITICAL THEORY

As Martin Matuštík writes in his recently published book, Radical Evil and the Scarcity of Hope, “[w]ith ethnic and religious wars and the permanent war on terror in the twenty-first century, philosophers might doubt the reality of the most radical evil, but ordinary people no longer do. At least since the twentieth century we can say with certainty that everyone knows what is radical about ‘radical evil’ – it strays from the bounds of mere reason” (7). I follow Matuštík in his call for a “redemptive critical theory” that aims to move toward raising the problem of evil from an “existential-transformative way” – one which reveals the phenomena of despair and hope by preserving the lived evidence of one’s “positive or negative relation to hope” (6). Matuštík’s notion of redemptive critical theory holds out for an “internal critique of radical evil” by harnessing “the advantage of living in the postsecular condition” (7). As an internal critique of radical evil as a religious phenomenon, Matuštík suspends previous ways of raising the problem of evil – which include theodicy as well as cosmological, ontological, and moral cases for or against God’s existence – and embraces instead an “existential-transformative way”: By “existential” I do not mean an ontological structure of being-in-the-world, but rather the passionate care for one’s soul found in Job, Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, Augustine, Pascal, or Buber. Care for existence become a philosophical topic for the nineteenth-century precursors to existentialism. Kierkegaard defines self as spirit. I read this view in a Levinasian manner: the self is a performative site of difficult freedom wherein I live by caring responsibly for myself, others, and the Other who always already names the possibility that I live by either hope or despair. [. . .] The “existential” is thus something always lived, singularly personal, ethically interpersonal, social and political. (7)

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Matustik’s “postsecular meditations” radically reorients philosophy toward redemptive efforts, and it is in this ecumenical spirit that I offer my reflections here. To reiterate, beginning from the sphere of intelligibility, of the profane, sociality must be understood not in the positive sense of normative or prescriptive community, but as the need to repair the damaged moral conscience. But in suggesting that we understand Levinas’ phenomenology of sociality in this way, I do not intend to suggest that the diagnostic efficacies of determining such need involve a deliberative process that precedes the ethical; rather, to engage a phenomenology of sociality – as a phenomenology of the need to repair – we must begin by opening in our phenomenology of sociality not a logic of representation, but a logic of the symptom. Such a logic of the symptom, however, must be released from any psychoanalytic notion of repression and given back over to this expression of a prophetic hermeneutic: As Enrique Dussel already insists, we must see in the suffering of the Other not the Other as such, but the systemic conditions that engender indifference, exploitation, and offense. If a phenomenology of sociality is thus diagnostic, it acts hermeneutically in the prophetic sense – in the tracing out of a logic to its ends; it is the way that genealogy becomes capable, finally, of emptying itself in such a way as to open toward the prophetic – from the dialogic and the diagnostic to the diachronic. It is the need, for witnessing, effectuated by witnessing itself – a clearing within violence that strives neither for sovereignty nor for sacrifice. Phenomenological revelation is thus never about knowledge, but of the act of bearing witness. It is precisely in the response of this revelation that we undergo our radical individualization, as Levinas argues. Tymieniecka’s starting point – by which the question of life becomes the radical beginning – requires that we think the question of life as beginning with the face of the Other so that we do not merely reproduce Janicaud’s suspicion of a phenomenologically justified onto-theology. The consequence is not an arriving of religion on philosophy’s terms; rather, in the religious comportment, philosophy is subverted, inverted, turned on its head. On the one hand, it takes seriously Janicaud’s concern for couching theology in phenomenological terms; on the other hand, it no longer fears its postsecular arrival. The world is saturated with intuition and the spark of life, just as it is saturated with radical evil and bitter indifference to the suffering poor. The postsecular turn in phenomenology must reinvigorates the hope and consciousness of responsibility articulated by Husserl. That is, phenomenological priority must be given to responsibility rather than scientification if it is to avoid the tragic seductions of reason and state. In his Nine Talmudic Readings, Levinas writes: “The messianic promise is not possible unless the original perfection is given back to each person

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individually, unless each person finds his own crown again” (45). It is precisely in such a sentiment that the ostensibly incommensurable philosophical and religious vocabularies of Tymieniecka and Levinas can converge to help offer an urgent intervention for phenomenology in the concrete despairs and hopelessness of those without hope. What we discover is that the need for transformation is opened not in not with some historical advent (even that which we might call the postsecular) but in the act of bearing witness itself, by which we are radically individualized, called forth to respond, and it is only on this basis that we can come together as community – as a being-toward-other rather than a being-toward-death. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

REFERENCES Dussel, E. Philosophy of Liberation (translation by Aquilina Martinez and Christine Morkovsky, Eugene, Wipf and Stock, 1985). Janicaud, D., et al. Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn” (New York, Fordham UP, 2000). Levinas, E. Totality and Infinity (translation by Alphonso Lingis, Pittsburgh, Duquesne UP, 1969). Levinas, E. Nine Talmudic Readings (translation by Annette Aronowicz, Bloomington, Indiana UP, 1994). Levinas, E. Entre Nous: Thinking-of-the-Other (translation by Michael B. Smith and Barbara Harshav, New York, Columbia UP, 1998). Levinas, E. God, Death, and Time (translation by Bettina Bergo, Stanford, Stanford UP, 2000). Marion, J.-L. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness (translation by Jeffrey L. Kosky, Stanford, Stanford UP, 2002). Matuštík, M. B. Radical Evil and the Scarcity of Hope (Bloomington, Indiana UP, 2008). Patoˇcka, J. Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (translation by Erazim Kohak, Peru, Open Court, 1996). Tymieniecka, A.-T. “The Great Metamorphosis of Life in Ontopoietic Timing.” Timing and Temporality in Islamic Philosophy and Phenomenology of Life (Dordrecht, Springer, 2007).

ANÍBAL FORNARI

ARRIVING IN THE WORLD-OF-LIFE

ABSTRACT

The Author reflects: (1) in an introductory manner, on the ontological dimension of the event, from a phenomenology of birth, as a key to a methodological and thematic broadening of the exercise of the reason. This whole article mainly covers, with that purpose, the thought of Claude Romano, while taking up specific critical comments of Paul Ricoeur and Romano Guardini. (2) Then, the difference and the relationship between “fact” and “event” are dealt with through a brief analysis of the anticipation of the topic in decisive instances of the philosophic tradition which bring out the competence of reasoning (Aristotle and Husserl). (3) As being born, from and for the event, strictly and only concerns the self, the rigorous and nontransferable conceptual meaning of the word “I” is investigated from the experience of the self: as transcendental and existential as it is. (4) The event, inherent in the whole human dynamic, opens the finiteness from top to bottom and, as such, it is a transgression of the intention to totalize the existence in the finiteness (Heidegger); this derives in the correlation between event, world transfiguration and remarkableness of the self, as advenant. (5) The mutual implication between ontology of birth, broadening of the reason and expansion of freedom finally leads us to reflect on the enigma of ipseity, impossible from the selfness and barely possible from the otherness. The link between otherness and birth poses, in the newly-arrived-inthe-world, the relationship between the history and its history. Being born and existing, in the ontological dimension of the event, is exceeding every power of appropriation, by the self and by others. With regard to the otherness of the immemorial and unattainable past, birth opens advenant to a future beyond any project and, thus, also goes right through the foundations of the future, which cannot be limited because it is event-like.

SENSE OF BIRTH AND BROADENING OF THE REASON

This paper poses the rationality of the dimension of the event, from an approach that takes birth as a proto-event. It would seem strange to articulate the matter of birth at the beginning, from the standpoint of a broader and, effectively, 171 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 171–190. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_11, 

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universal rationality. However, the initial strangeness it raises is cleared once we realize that this forgotten dimension is the one that affects human reality most decisively, going through it integrally, linking the singularity of what exists with the universal communicability of its sense, and what is more, showing the fact that the vigor of discovery and the reason, alive and multiple in the ways it methodologically adapts to the subject, eager to find the different manifestation and existence levels of what is real, have their impulse and support in the event. Because it is the reason adhered to the bodily-lived-self that, through birth, bursts with an original curiosity in the world of life and, through rebirth, renews and broadens its horizon of discovery. However, dealing with birth means noticing certain aspects that constitute each event, the first of which is the fact that it bursts into the presence and becomes accessible to reason from its bond with what remains immemorial. “My birth – states Ricoeur – is the beginning of my life: I have been placed, once and for all, into the world through it and posed in the being before I was able to posit any act voluntarily. Yet, this central event, to which I refer in dating all the events of my life exceeds my memory. I am always after my birth, -in a sense analogous to that of being always before my death”.1 1 Secondly, he who has been given his very own arrival into the world or, what is more, his opening of a world, as space of experience, articulation of meanings and possibilities, and as horizon of expectations that in time acquire consistency or flatten out, has absolutely no experience of his own origin. “My birth in the first person is not an experience, but the necessary ‘before’ of every experience; this necessity of being born in order to exist remains in the horizon of consciousness . . .” [VI, p. 411]. Thirdly, birth appears to be the result of the delivery of a previous inscrutable retro-enablement that took place from others. Then, my possible-being involves the precedence of the otherness. The being-given by another one underpins my being-able-to-be, nourished by the positivity of my original dependence. “My birth does not only mean the beginning of my life, but also expresses my dependence on other two lives: I do not posit myself, I am posited by others” [VI, p. 408] and, in principle, sought by others before I can even want to be myself. Being-born implies – forthly – emerging from the improbable, noticing my exceptional contingency. “Even if I know nothing about genetics, I will already be bothered by the idea that this only-self I am

1 [Translator’s Note: all the references have been translated into English together with the rest of

the paper, they have been not been taken from any text in English or any published translation thereof]

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derives from two beings who, it would seem at first, could have been others and could have made me other” [VI, p. 409]. This presence of the unpredictable and improbable that goes through all the reality undermines the will to reduce reason to an ability of universal explanatory sovereignty because it is restrictive, based on the homogenization of what is real and on formal a priori postulations of the subject or the intersubjectivity, as last criterion of what counts as rational. Being born is ceasing to be the ultimate criterion. It is evident that, even if genetics could explanatorily standardize me and get to the bottom of my biochemical formula, I would still be left with the question: “conscience, reason, will, are they contained in this formula?” [VI, p. 411]. Being-born, as it will be shown, is something that only concerns what is human and at the same time is a condition of possibility of the opening of existence as freedom which consists in remaining in the paradoxical course of what is unpredictable and unforeseen, i.e. being affected by events. The inexhaustible distance between self and oneself as ipseity is the sign of freedom, not resigned to an autonomy conceived as an abstract possession of itself. The expectation, eager for reality, for truth and for good, that constitutes the bodily-lived-self and that inevitably makes him determine himself in the singularity of what happens to him as event, means that the thing for which the freedom takes risks and demands the judgment of reason is a concrete totality, that is, a true reference point for the demand for happiness. Consequently, the philosophic rationality is devalued if it is gradually deprived of the reflective reference to the singular and the plural content of reality. The critical delimitation of a point of view in which the burden of experience is directed towards cognitive proportions is a methodological demand carried out analogically. A different issue is concealing the negative involvement of the freedom in the search for truth, because whenever someone deliberately censures both the desire to face reality and the hunger for meaning and sensitivity for truth, then an unsolvable problem arises. If we entertain reason in polishing “the” universal a priori method of all content, so as to raise it to some sort of apodicticity that is characteristic of that type of understanding that standardizes what is real in order to analyze it, and thus, is capable of concluding with absolute deductive transparency, even if real things are left out of it, then we are using reason in an unreasonable way. How can this happen? In the same way as it is only for a subjectivity – and this is exceptional – that birth can be a beginning and not a mere reproductive continuity since – as Ricoeur says – “it is only my subjectivity that makes me unique, and only a unique entity can be said to begin rather than merely continue another entity; yet, it is precisely subjectivity that misses the beginning” [VI, p. 409]. Only a self that is endowed with preeminence can commit the tragic lie of covering the gesture that gives

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him his very own exceptionality with the veil of obviousness, and, thus, satisfactorily settle in some sort of abstraction which, without being conceived as a methodical step, is projected as a guilty decision.

FACT, EVENT AND REASON

Certainly, in a sense, some things are not an event for a human existence, if by that we understand the surprising occurrence, in ordinary life, of what is unpredictable and unforeseen, the happening of an exceptional presence that, suddenly, displaces the obviousness of existence held by the pre-philosophic mindset, which also reaches philosophy to the extent that it definitely departs from its methodic difference with regard to its original poetic blood relationship. Nevertheless, in another sense, and precisely by virtue of such exceptionality, as happens in the exemplary fact of the beginning of a great love, suddenly everything within its scope is renewed as if it were a unique event, because the existence is not only re-centered around this attraction focus but also polarized in a creative tension in the light of that presence which reestablishes the world in its original surprising height. Due to that, everything becomes meaningful, inasmuch as, from a more profound otherness-oriented reference, implicitly indicated by birth, everything is rediscovered as beinggiven for such reference, in order to protect it, evoke it and follow it: all in conjunction. At the same time, the circumstances undergone receive profoundness, breath and strength of suggestion, from the marked presence of the event-princeps. The ways of appearance or phenomenality within the sphere of happenings are diverse. All the things that happen may take place in different ways. Thus, fact can be differentiated from event, according to four phenomenological criteria.2 Indeed, a fact is: (1) neutral, (2) intra-worldly, (3) subject to causal analysis, (4) part of a present that can be dated. At the same time, an event: (1) is something that surprises, (2) is inevitably followed by a transformation of the one to whom it happens; (3) reconfigures the existence and the world of such person because it occurs anarchically and, (4) is declared through a structural forwarding because it appears only retrospectively, that is, in the light of its future as an event, and progressively unfolds as such and changes life, re-initiating at the same time the never ending discovery by the very event-bearer. Now, it is time to correlate and differentiate the aspects which bring out the difference in the coexistence between the space of the fact and the scope of the event. (1) Whereas a fact occurs in an identical way for any of its witnesses,

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an event, on the contrary, moves an individual in a unique way each time. He who experiences it is thereby singularly involved in what happens to him; an event does not occur to me but in such a way that I occur to myself through it (to myself as another self), insofar as I myself, as such, am at stake in it, in my ipseity. Therefore, a phenomenology of the event is strictly inseparable from a renewed phenomenology of the one to whom the event occurs and who, above all, rediscovers it – as Romano redefines the Dasein in his works – as advenant: that is, someone ventured upon a horizon of totality and infiniteness, open to ends aimed at a type of identity of the bodily-lived-self that is not produced (in a programmatic and almost mechanic way, as the closure of growth in the achievement of a biologic fullness) but intervenes in the dramatic and open space of freedom, of that which is unpredictable and unforeseen. (2) Whereas each fact, even the unexpected, happens according to preliminary possibilities already outlined in the horizon of the world, the event, on the contrary, offers possibilities that are radically unpredictable, and in that way, it reconfigures the world as such. Here, by “world” we mean all of the articulated and ranked possibilities of l’advenant, from which he understands himself, interprets his situation and engages in action. Such advenant-world is impregnated by event in its innermost sense. A great encounter that lightens and brings hope to life, mourning, a serious illness, even in its diversity of meanings, are not limited to modifying isolated possibilities, but, reconfiguring certain possible courses, they cast a different light on what is possible in its entirety. As to events, they establish the world. They do not happen first so that afterwards, as a consequence, the world is transformed, but the event is this very same revolution, the more invisible and subterranean at times, the more profound and personal. With this, the very meaning of the world appears hovering over the event. (3) The fact is explainable from preceding facts and pre-outlined legalities within the world. But the event – at least considering that every explanation is grounded on repeatable regularities and on the forecast of future effects – does not give rise to an explanation as such and, consequently, the event transcends its own realization as a fact; the event is the origin of its sense for the one who needs to understand it in order to live. Obviously, every event can be considered a fact as well and is thus useful for explanation; but this causal search is not on a par with its own événementiale status, it is not likely to evidence what, in the unrepeatable singularity of the event, does not only transcend the causal explanation of it, but it also lights up its context diversely; that is, highlights, breaks and makes sense for the one who is to understand it, even searching for causes a posteriori. This novelty, this bonus of sense has an effect on the very nature of comprehension as well: the event only allows an interpretation that considers its singularity, from itself and its immanent sense. This sense appears as a

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surplus in front of any appropriation, because the event will be understandable only in the light of its future. It is here from where its paradoxical temporality stems: it takes place in time and it re-inaugurates the temporality of time, it temporalizes time, it withdraws time from the inertia of its going-by. (4) Whereas the fact can be dated and occurs in a present time that is fulfilled and definitive, the event, retaken in the way it appears, in the way it happens and in the “drama” it is, i.e., as establisher of a world, has a temporality that is structured by the “afterwards”, by the delay. This delay is not empirical but transcendental. The event is temporalized in a structural delay regarding all experience and comprehension, inserting a new horizon of experience and comprehension through the unfolded change. Since the event is inseparable from a transformation of the world, it is no longer possible to differentiate the fact that can be dated, on the one side, and its consequence, on the other: the event can be determined as such only with a delay, regarding the very history it opens and, therefore, in a retroactive way (due to the fact that the “counter-calculated” and, in principle, unexpected novelty of Beethoven’s musical greatness took place from his predictable deafness, I can try to get contextual explanations, so that it is the explicandum that supports the explicans). The event as such, as it was said, does not happen in time but rather temporalizes time in and through the waste of temporalization itself. The upcoming of the event is an upcoming in the departure of the own sense, because there is a delay in the impact that opens a new worldly-sense due to its its retrospective interpretation. Is it possible to find any meaningful echoes about the event in the philosophic tradition when this idea is apparently so strange to the essential work of reason? On the one hand, Aristotle already distinguished – Claude Romano remembers3 – “chance” (to automaton) in its broad and generic sense – as statement of the contingent sublunar world-, from “luck” (tukhè) or fortune (good or bad), which includes a reference to human ends, because only an entity capable of setting its own goals can see them enhanced, devastated or modified by the tukhè. For Aristotle only the man is exposed to the event (tukhè), whereas the entire physis is left at the mercy of chance and contingency. Now, the human exposure to the event entails assuming and enduring rhopèn tès zôès, “an utter twist in life” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1100 to 25), that means that we are exposed to a fate constantly capable of going from happiness to unhappiness. The very virtue would not know how to be left untouched by this impact: not even the virtuous person is safe from losing his virtue when he is exposed to the hardest sufferings. Therefore, the only stability to which human wisdom can aspire is unstable phronèsis. L’advenant must choose under changing and, very often, unforeseen circumstances, in which he is involved, inseparable from his journey to ipseity (adventure)-, loaded with immanent transcendental

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criteria that, on the impact of those circumstances, can be capitalized as synthesis of practical wisdom, as an experience (empeiría) full of criteria. On the other hand, phenomenology, with its purpose to return to the things themselves and start from the glory of appearing in order to remain in it, following it up to its vanishing point as a presence of the invisible in the visible, seems made to lodge the dimension of the event. When grabbing what appears to be the legitimate source of sense is assigned as essential task, without anticipating the sense of such appearance, it methodologically complies with the purpose of the event. This would be the most distinguished of the phenomena, since what characterizes it is the fact that it happens in such a way that it brings along the very own sense, that is, the very own hermeneutic horizon; thus being a source of intelligibility and not just an “object” offered to intelligence. Its meaning cannot be assessed with the measure of a preliminary comprehension but it claims, in defense of the objectivity of its sense, a constantly renewed comprehension. It may be said that the event is that distinguished phenomenon in which the sense of appearing cannot be separated from the very appearance of the sense, which must be lodged and listened. It is plain to see that, according to Husserl, the vanishing point seems to result definitively in the subjective donation of sense (Sinngebung) supported in the transcendental self, which has already anticipated every thinkable sense and, then, nothing can happen that he has not previously constituted. However, it must also be accepted that such constituting ground consists in being open, due to its very demand for sense, on an unblockable intentional horizon of totality and infiniteness. The conflict of the philosophic reason appears when an epistemological ideal is imposed while being unilaterally and, therefore, slantingly held, due to the fact that the event is always particular and there is no science but those concerned with universal matters. However, how should this be understood? In his paper of year 1911, Philosophy as a rigorous science, Husserl states that, for the purposes of Philosophy, it is not that what is singular is but that it has essence. This one can be validly applied to it but cannot establish it as a singular entity in a world of individual existence, therefore, what is singular will eternally be an ápeiron to Philosophy. In a certain sense, an irrational or, maybe, a supra-rational dimension. Philosophy can only objectively and validly recognize the essences and the relationships between them. That is enough for its purpose, because in this way, it definitely achieves what is necessary for a clarifying apprehension of any empirical knowledge and of any knowledge in general.4 This statement seems to render invalid every possibility of a phenomenology of the event and, thus, of birth as happening of the very singularity of what is human. It would seem that what is singular is destined to avoid the rational discourse and its a priori legalities that, in each case, fix the boundaries

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of its object and its method. This essentialist-reflexive delimitation, supported by the clean and transcendental interiority, in this more mathemático behavior adopted by the rationalist restriction of the philosophic rationality, seems more concerned about the formality of the sole method rather than about developing the agility of a reason that can adapt to any content, because none, insofar as it is real and falls within the scope of experience, is strange to it. Then it feels obliged to separate it from its realization, relating what has been experienced as event to that ápeiron lacking in limits and, thus, in methodic access. Reason is therefore entangled in a paralyzing irrational statement: How can that which takes place in a way that is always unique and exceptional – the event – ever get in contact with the rationality that constitutes the phenomenology and its theoretic-apodictic control of every valid piece of knowledge? And if, on the contrary, it got in through another way of methodic, reasonable and coherent discourse which is centered upon the historicity of experience and on a self consciousness of the very reason stuck as it is to the bodily-lived-self-in-action, what impact would it have on the transcendental phenomenology itself? Given the original purpose of phenomenology and its perception of the crisis of sciences, dislodged from the horizon of the truth of what is human and forced to prove their technical usefulness to power, inasmuch as they are governed by positivism as superficial thought, another possibility of epistemological opening may be explored, now without the separation of each field of content from its appropriate structural method. Then, the impact of the dimension of the event on phenomenology would be that of a decisive smoothing of the theme width and of the relevant methodic mobility of reason. Being the main instrument of the bodily-lived-self for its education in what is humanum, the reason is exercised, above all, as introduction into the whole reality and to the affirmation of all of its meaning, not only so as to take the amazement caused by the exceptional donation of real presences as standpoint but also in order to remain in such philosophic attitude through the explaining development. The original reason is open and polyphonic, when it remains close to the desire for truth, together with the freedom’s dynamism obliged to avow the signs correlated to the scope of the question for the sense of one’s destiny. Because it might be possible that within the dimension of the event, the reality that makes the ultimate position of attentive hope from the human reason and freedom reasonable can take place. The recognition of the transcendentality of time thanks to the constant consent to the birth and being brings us to that point. Then, the event that always takes place as a singular one admits a conceptual elaboration and requires some form of rational discourse. Because what is individual is not just excluded from the lógos, which provokes it and calls for it. What is real is always individual, in diverse degrees of existence and according

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to levels of consistency. What is individual is contrary to a borderless ápeiron since there is no fact that is not an exemplification of an essence, inversely, there is no essence that is not the essence of a fact. The notions of “essence” and of “fact” are rigorously interdependent and it is irrational to separate them. When the word “essence” is pronounced, it is also necessary to pronounce the word “fact” – reminds Romano-, in the same way as when we speak of generality it is necessary that this generality be referred to individuals with regard to whom it is a generality. Only violent ideological thought makes totalizations in the faceless generality and remains in it, in order to proceed unscrupulously. Such contrast, however, is the law of rationality itself, and its terms are as inseparable as the shadow from the light that enables its perception. Phenomenology has given us the sensibility to avoid expecting to skip the Urfaktum that, in the manner of contrast, presides our human perception of what is real in “actual experiences” (Erlebnis), from the original and asymmetrical coexistence of the transcendental self as pole of the clear and attentive intentional perception and the demand for freedom and communicable rationality, with the world of life (Lebenswelt) as pole of what is intended as actual totality from which and on which rationality always restarts its educational task in what is humanum.

EXISTENTIAL SELF CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL SELF AND THE EVENT

Upon recovery of the intrinsic connection between the order of what is singular, surprising and thought-provoking, and the order of essential rationality that takes off of what is singular its innumerable details in order to arrange it methodically in what is universal systematic, let us take a step further so as to perceive the transcendental height of the person that, upon birth, appears in the world. Let us look at the word: “I” which is a truth that affects us immediately as an unrepeatable singularity and as universal condition of possibility to access the essences of the things themselves. Indeed, as we recover the wisdom of Romano Guardini,5 we must notice that I am this one that exists and each of us is himself, insofar as I am for me what is absolutely given. Neither did I make nor am I making myself, but I am presupposed for everything else. From this decisive existential experience as Urfaktum, as transcendental a posteriori, I realize that I-am-given but at the same time I connect everything and move towards everything because in everything – at the level of knowledge, affection and action – I presuppose I am being given. All the innumerable richness of what is individual and plural, as well as the essential rules I discover in it, affect me significantly as soon as I let what is given show as it is, that is, as what

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from itself it is being-for-me in itself and which, only there, looks towards its fulfillment. The horizon of that being-for-me is the Lebenswelt. I can also try to do without myself and speak about things as if I did not exist. We are talking about a subjectivity that intends to avoid any interference brought by already forced meanings, while it tries to determine the essence of things through judgment. However, the original bond with the always presupposed centrality of the I-am-given is not cancelled. Because it is still me that tries, in that way, to go beyond myself as something obvious or as a prejudice. Whether I assume it explicitly or not, every act, every glance at something involves my own being. I am the living opposite pole in front of the world, but a world in which I did not exist is only an idea-limit in favor of the intentionality that constitutes the objective sense, in favor of the desire to be that constitutes me before any constitution of sense and of the demand to have access to the truth of things as they are in themselves, before any problem with the access to things. The situation is, then, imperative: once I exist there is absolutely no world in which I would not exist. My self has an inevitable nature of what is “almost” necessary. What is more immediate is the nearness to what is intimate and central that, at the same time, overflows my self consciousness into what is unlimited: me. But it is necessary to pay attention to the warning of this “almost” necessary nature of such Urfaktum. This “almost” is the sign of a spiritual energy that is capable of seeing the difference between my presupposed self in all access and the question who-am-I and by-whom and for-whom I am given. I cannot, logically, diminish my question to a lower level than the who dimension. It tells me that for me I am not only what is inevitable and immediate, but also what is surprising, unknown and problematic. Suddenly, in the question, I oppose myself and see myself, sometimes, as intense task suspended within the mystery, that is, rationally: in the real efficiency of what is incalculable. What does it mean, then, to be “myself”? It means that it is not just myself, but that I come from another being and that I must become myself, and that is why I am at the same time searching for another one and on the road to the selfhood: I am l’avènement. I do not know myself yet, but I am trying to know myself because I notice I am unfathomable and I can only recognize myself as self-in-action, through intentional relationships whose phenomenology shows a diversification that demands and makes the concurrent unity of my longing and my path to my problematic selfhood. Then what I call “myself” is, above all, something I am being given and only provided that I commit to it in its whole and unpredictable width will I get to really say “you” and, thus, be provoked by the call and the attraction of another one into the vigorous gathering of the intentional diversification of my own relationship with the world. This means that, on the one side, another one provokes me into being myself,

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into really being that inevitable intentional reference point, although it must also avail itself to be available; and on the other side, that as important as I am to such extent with respect to the world, my existence is not being given by essence. This means that both “me” and “you” are the most surprising nonnecessity-of-existence that, nevertheless, opens the horizon of sense and the ambiance through which reality manifests itself in the world. Consequently, in the temporal and essential beginning of my existence I do not make the decision that brings me into existence, and neither can I exist without the need of any decision-making. And the factual possibility of death as frustration of the intentional diversification in relation to the world enhances the urgency of that tension towards ipseity. That refers to the previous overflowing within the immemorial, remembering in the acknowledgement that in the beginning of my existence there is an initiative in my favor, that was not brought up by myself. This corporal centrality that I-am has been and is given to me moment by moment in an absolute way and under total risk, to carry out even the last determinations which do not exist more than once, that is, in me. This is the substantial particularity that wins over what seems to be the final control of nothingness, of the indefinite emptiness, of the realm of what is generic and ill-shaped. This unity, on the contrary, gives rise to a duty as attractive as irreplaceable: I shall want to be what I am, because I am also the possibility of rejecting it, blaming the finite and involving the you in that irrational rejection. Regarding the questions: Why am I the way I am? Why am I instead of not being? There is no any answer from my immediate self or from the immediate self that you are. There is no answer from the circumstance or from the world in general. It is a matter that establishes itself in the original bond of the selfhood and the Being: Da-Sein, in a sense of acknowledgement of the previous being-given and being-open to new things, that covers the existential course with attentive hope. Because “I” – as much as you – am, as such, a center that places itself before and transcends the world itself. It is being constitutionally referred to the being, as corporal (bodily-lived) asking about the being in the inexhaustible desire of the being that refers to another being, which, as such, transcends my capacity-of-being. On the one hand, all the attempts to explain ourselves as “I” through social, historical and biological presuppositions are unreasonable misunderstandings that have failed to notice the ontological level imposed by the who question. Since that which is answered by these “explanations” are questions referred to the general connection of the material, biological and historic causes regarding a bodily-lived-self. But that is partly valid on the condition that it precedes and enables these same causal explanations and, consequently, these connections that only occur, are

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generated and explained in connection with its bodily-livelyhood, implicit in the cosmos and pointed out in it. The living-body exposed through the desire of the “I” originally takes part in the event of the existence of the “I” as structural bond with the Being, in the infiniteness, which is not ápeiron but otherness that in its accessibility shows and hides itself. The who-question, which understood the Da-Sein as we have just explained, is not solved in universal-generic, abstract and standardizeable terms. I cannot explain it in purely essential terms because it is impossible to solve such event within a system of natural or historic laws, which are already transcended and constituted by the Da-Sein. This means that in my very selfness I am not part of the predictable sequence of what has been established in the necessity, but I am that event in which my parents, while expecting one child, were given the happening of me.

EVENT AND TRANSGRESSION OF THE TOTALIZATION IN THE FINITENESS

On the other hand, the decision to make subjectivity the transcendental foundation of sense, is in a certain way still latent in the fundamental ontology of Heidegger. If the Dasein, in its transcendence as totalizing and temporal comprehension of being, configures a world from the factual being-thrown as finite ontological project and succeeds in the possession of itself as resolved anticipation of its being, as being-for-death, as factual possibility of what is no longer possible, then, it may be said that the subjectivity that grounds every sense reappears, but now in opposite, anti-modern and radically finite terms. The Dasein is, thus, the condition of possibility of every horizon of possibility and it is only in the field of its being-possible that the sense of the being-inthe-world is defined. On the contrary, the dimension of the event refers to a hermeneutics of what is human that believes the existence – the adventure – is suspended from possible courses it did not originally make possible. The existence is immerse in a sense that precedes it and that it would not entirely know how to elucidate, because it is pierced by a history of which it is not the origin and which is essentially constituted by founding events that precede it and exceed it. Indeed: “Here, the horizon of sense from which every interpretative project is possible, is not the world as context: the significance of the world seems rather insignificant in understanding the sense of a true event. The horizon of interpretative possibilities from which the comprehension project can be fulfilled, is only that which has been opened by the event, opening possibilities that are not anticipated in the world in any way (. . .). The world with which l’advenant must deal, then, is one which stems from the event, inasmuch as it

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is announced free from its context and as its own origin. We have named this world that occurs with the event and because of it – says Romano – the world in its événemential sense” [EM, p. 89]. This événemential comprehension is in itself the in-between-worlds and, therefore, immediately involves the meta-categories of totality and otherness. Unlike the mere “fact” that occurs in the world and modifies certain possible courses of the Dasein but may be explained from a causal previous horizon, the “event”, while modifying certain possible courses, totally subverts what is possible time after time. What is the totality? It is what the event reveals while moving life and reason: e.g. in the thaumazein from where the poet and the philosopher start and remain together, through different ways, surprised by the luminous impact of being on something that, coming through in its unity, makes everything be born again in its singularity (a child that is born, a free and quiet witness of truth in front of the power). The event bursts in from outside the world’s sense, breaks its obviousness and shows its essence: the cohesion of possible courses [cf. EM, p. 92]. The world itself as structural, hierarchical and meaningful totality goes into crisis because the cohesion of possible courses is disarranged. This also shows that by virtue of an event the “subjectivity of the subject” occurs historically. The category of otherness is inherent in the event; the latter reconfigures the world because it reveals the world as a whole beyond its parts and it introduces possible courses that are unprecedented with regard to the previous world, thus altering the sense of the possible courses of the previous world from top to bottom. “Because not only is the world originated in the event, but also it ‘is not’, strictly speaking, different from it. On the one side, the event is nothing more than the metamorphosis of the world and its sense; and, on the other, the world ‘is nothing’ but the occurrence of its own event, which occurs or takes place in the world through this metamorphosis of the possible courses: the event in its pure sense” [EM, p. 93]. The événementiale dimension of the event is the very transition from a sense of the world to another. Characterizing the human that exists as l’advenant is affirming that s/he is born from this metamorphosis of sense, which is its delivery, and all of this equates to saying that the sinking of the world as context makes the événementiale world shine. However, isn’t it true that trying to remain theoretically here implies changing the philosophy into literature and reducing it to biographic narrative of the adventure of l’advenant? Above all, the event is tested if it triggers a constructive process, if it opens and moves the development of reason and freedom. Then, apart from that verification test, it does not depend on our good will to state whether a fact is an event or not. A great encounter that opens life, a serious illness that seems to close it, seem to

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be crises and possibility of a new beginning and a development for all human existence. In a completely universal and objective way they trigger a collection of typical reactions that range from initial happiness to deep joy, and to definite satisfaction; or from initial restlessness to total rebellion, and to definite acceptance. The universal form of the event and of a certain number of recurrent attitudes towards the crisis of existence may be described, without exclusion of the singularity with which each person relates to what happens to him and responds to it. What is more, this singularity in the answer is precisely a typical, universal, necessary and objective characteristic of every event. Its événementiale complexion consists in the idea that, whereas as “fact” it appears prefigured among the possible courses of our world (we have always “known” that the beautiful day of a great encounter may take place or sickness and death may happen to anyone, anytime and anywhere). Nevertheless, when this precise encounter or this apparent disgrace strike singularly, the first reaction is that something seemingly impossible is happening: “it is not possible that this be so”, we tend to say. Consequently, as “fact” it is explainable from the multiple possible courses in store within the world. But as “event” it alters the very foundations of the world of the being to whom it occurs: it is not this or that possible course, it is the face of what is possible or the very face of the world that, to such being, appears to have been altered. And as the possible courses articulated in that world that has been altered by the event are also those from which we understand the beings and the things, the event is not only what occurs before it is possible, but it also is what brings along its own horizon of intelligibility: it is a real revelation of sense that stirs the foundations of the world and, from what is impossible, opens a new possible horizon. This delivery occurs for a fact of the world that is excluded from other facts. Because it is not only apparently comprehensible from the being-possible of its background but it also opens the hermeneutical dimension of its own retrospective intelligibility. The event exists solely for the one who is embarked on an immensurable purpose. It only happens to whom is coming to himself through it, because it is the self in full, open to infiniteness that is at stake (ipseity). L’advenant lives the very humanity of the man as measureless exposure to the events, starting from birth as founding event.

ONTOLOGY OF BIRTH, BROADENING OF REASON AND EXPANSION OF FREEDOM

Before finishing the matter of birth a previous ambiguity with which it is directly concerned should be dealt with: if the “fact” takes place in

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a world and the “event” establishes a world, on which side would the coming-to-the-world be if the worlds in question are not the same one? According to Romano, to the événementielle notion of world, in the way of Heidegger, as articulated totality of essential possible courses available to l’advenant the événementiale notion is not opposed, as a “subjective” world that is different from the empirical, real world in which the facts take place. The world in which the facts occur is horizon of not only every current sign, but also every possible sign. The possibilities depend both on the expectations of l’advenant and on his daily temporal anchoring in the world, the place where everything that happens actually happens. L’advenant, as practical and embodied agent is not outside the facts of this sort of “first world” as intraworldy context. The provisionally called “second world”, that of the event, is the same world that has been redefined by the appearance of the exceptionality. Just as the event is inseparable from its appropriation by l’advenant, the world, which is open by and from founding events, is not a closed and solipsist field but the only and singular way in which l’advenant appropriates a single and same world, the world he shares with others. In such sense an événementiale hermeneutics, under the common thread of the event of birth, expresses the appearance of what is more real than all reality, more exterior than all exteriority, which prevents existence from getting closed in itself, in its possible courses and in its sense, which may be the beginning of an authentic “realism”. Indeed, in this beautiful text that says it all, the concept of a personalized sense of what is real is denoted, which is emphasized by a hermeneutical phenomenology: “From birth, original event, human existence is suspended from the abyss of what is new, surrendered to those critical items of agitation, capable at all times to transform it from top to bottom. The humanity of man has this price, and this is the risk. The renovations led by the event are not exterior to the ‘life of the spirit’, they are that life indeed; or, more precisely, the very spirit. Of all animals, the man is the only one to which something can happen, the only one that may finally be transformed after facing that experience and its inner risk. It is impossible to get used to the event or adapt to it and even less to adjust to it. Alien to the daily travails, the event opens a time that is not the one of our routine. We appropriate an event temporarily, in a manner of speaking, singularly each time. It marks the singularity of each one, from its exteriority it creates the appropriation of oneself. Interpreting a man in the light of his receptiveness with regard to the event, is putting the spotlight on the problem of the renewal of the self as definition of the being-self, the ipseity. Being oneself, is being able to respond for what reaches us. Freedom is the power to become oneself under the urgency of what pierces us”.6 Is the event a parallel time to the daily routine or does it mean the resurrection of

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the very routine? We should hold this question now and it will be answered progressively. Arriving-in-the-world is the inaugural, original and founding event, from which the sense of l’advenant and his world are decided. Properly speaking, only one who came as an event has been born, because being born is the first opening of the world of he who is an advenant, precisely because he can be affected by other events that may reconfigure that world. For that very same reason we are not dealing with a tranquilizing but displacing condition. “For l’advenant, being born means, above all, and originally, not being his very own origin, not happening to himself but according to the postponement and the delay that this inaugural event brought to the adventure, completely determining it. Birth is (. . .) this rigorously in-comprehensible event, as it precedes every context and every hermeneutical project and it introduces by itself, into the world, a sense that cannot be assimilated by the one to whom it happens”.7 It opens a hiatus in the origin, which will never be fulfilled, because the newborn child is not the origin of his own adventure or of the possible courses it articulates. “The comprehension thanks to which a sense for l’advenant happens cannot occur, at its time, but because there was birth first, that is, because he is originally open to a bottom-less sense that precedes it and that has always exceeded it” [EM, p. 109]. Therefore, being born is that gift of being that essentially exceeds every appropriation power, in the sense that, if, on the one side it concerns me, on the other, this coming into the world “cannot be experienced as such, it points out an event that has never taken place in the sense of an intraworldly fact [confirmable by me, af.], consequently immemorial in a positive sense” [Ia, p. 109]. In addition, this gift is constantly felt, tried, because that immemorial past opens l’advenant to a future beyond any project and, thus, goes right through the foundations of the future as well: “it gives him what we might call a ‘task’. If every task exceeds our own being-able-to-be and calls us after a future that we do not project, that is so because birth, from the origin, opens the existence to more than what it may assume or enable, lending it a sense that it does not obtain from itself” [Ia, p. 109]. Every birth heralds a sense that does not only question the forced totalization of the finiteness of Heidegger but also, without returning to the transcendental husserlian vetero-subject, gives back to the bodily-lived-self its original breath in what is immensurable but from the otherness, from which it lives and suffers, desires and thinks, receives and acts in its very own événemential dimension. Such displacement has a highly important consequence. If by ipseity we have to understand the “ability of l’advenant to stay open to what happens to him and be free for whatever happens to him, thus coming freely to himself”

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[EM, p. 102], or also, “the ability to appropriate by myself whatever takes place for me, birth is what I will never be able to appropriate entirely, that makes every appropriation of oneself a task that, in itself, cannot be finished” [EM, p. 105], then, it may be said that the ipseity is an exigency as constitutive as impossible from the very being-possible, that is, seen from the logic of the appropriation as original position, as selfness without ipseity, as this implies the untameable precedence and interference of the otherness. This is the one that throws the unpredictable dimension of the event in the opening of the self as l’advenant. “Being born is being subject to the abyss of a radical im-power in relation to this primal event, un-graspable as such, which goes through the projected adventure and, shaking it from top to bottom, opens it to more than it can, to the impossible, or also: to the event in general” [EM, p. 101]. Ipseity implies total and unpredictable exposure to the event in its maximum exceptionality: to which, for the bodily-lived-self is as necessary as impossible: capturing its identity, achieving the synthesis of oneself by oneself. Actually, the event of being born is assigned, destined and given to-me as “the heteronomy of a gift, the gift of the world that distinguishes and precedes me radically, and which I cannot in any way anticipate or prepare to welcome. Consequently, a gift destined to be mine, before any appropriation power over this event, that is, before any ownership over myself and from any ipseity” [EM, pp. 101–102]. I understand ipseity as it is understood by Blondel and Ricoeur, that is, as the sighting of the synthesis in a living you, that impacts as something exceptional and reveals itself as sole bearer of a real promise in order to live in the world, a hypothesis to be verified in its ability to fulfill that structural disproportion that constitutes the bodily-lived-self, anticipating it and leaving it more specifically open. The point is the dialectic of finiteness and infiniteness in l’advenant, crammed up with the desire-to-be and present in all human expressions. Synthesis in and from another one who matches it, because it concentrates, satisfies and brings that same disproportion back to life. Two matters are raised here from the bond between otherness and birth: (1) the relationship with the history; (2) the relationship with my history and the articulation between both instances. On the one side, as Ricoeur indicated, birth links an immemorial history, older than all my history. It is the history of the others which, from those who generated me, has launched me, through birth, out of my own origin. Thus, being born is – for Romano – “having a history before having his history, a pre-personal history, literally untakeable [in terms of an appropriation that can be settled, in my opinion, af.], that introduces an exceeding sense in the adventure which is immensurable to my projects and, as a consequence, also radically inexhaustible” [EM, p. 103]. Existing

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as l’advenant is receiving the sense from outside of the own adventure, which is tantamount to saying: being born is “being under the rule of destiny” [EM, p. 103]. I cannot just appropriate destiny or take it entirely as if it was a transparent objective to me. Then the question comes to mind: does this mean that we are passing over the first and positive experience of that relationship that has been immediately given or, upon lack of it, searched and somehow found, of father-motherhood-filiation, which speaks about the goodness of this destiny? True, the presence of maternal otherness, usually good, accompanies every birth: we are neither born alone nor thrown into a nameless reality, but instead arrive in a specific relationship of familiarity. Still, which is the sense of such otherness? It must be remembered that birth is, above all, the event of the gift of the world, of which the other one is not the source. To Romano “it is not the other one who opens the world to me but, actually, from the neutral event of birth, the other one can, at the same time, enter my horizon, as my parents can do it as well. Far from being subordinate to some previous otherness, the event is its own origin, because it only receives its sense from that by which it is ‘preceded’ (That other one) has also been born and, having received the world to share it, may only ‘transmit it to me’, make me part of that sharing. For the other one his entire adventure derives from this neutral event as well: the other factually brings me to the world; he, however, does not open the world as such for me. Birth and only birth, in its neutrality as an event, is ‘capable’ of such a wonder” [EM, p. 110]. This insistence of Romano on the “neutrality” of the event seems problematic to me, but I perceive that with it, he points at a greater ontological radicalism, which does not stop in the intersubjetive instance. He intends to get to what this one entails in terms of a constitutive relationship. Nevertheless, when getting to that threshold he realizes that he is unable to decide a priori the way or the face brought by the unpredictable, from the immemorial, when it bursts in opening a world. On the other side, if the event is always inaugural with respect to the totality of possible courses that have expired in the obvious world, “if every subsequent event is always the possibility given to l’advenant of being reborn, undergoing a transformation by his decision and taking the possible courses that he receives, the matter raised is knowing how to think about such ‘rebirth’. Evidently, this is not about–C. Romano warns – a ‘second birth’, but about this ability to face the experience of the event as a risk of a radical transformation of my possible courses and of myself, which is the original phenomenon of ipseity” [EM, p. 112] Here lies the essential question: which is the partner of what is neutral-immemorial regarding the future of the one who has already arrivedinto-the-world, if the being-for-death of Heidegger has been removed as an entity conceived like a radical abolition of the unpredictable event, due to its

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foreseen end? “The temporality of the existence is originally temporalized in a past and a future that are radically heterogeneous, non-sincronizable, nontotalizable, because of the fact that the archi-event of my birth which has never occurred (as intraworldly experienceable event) is thereby yet to come: I never finish being born, that is, happening to myself as something that reaches me and through which the event that unpredictably reaches me without coming from me, I occur to myself as another one” [Ia, p. 110]. The absolutization of the finiteness stated by Heidegger finds, at this point, its authentic formal reply, in the dimension of the event that filters the otherness-oriented sense of ipseity. I cannot close the total horizon of my future to what has already been foreseen because I am the subject of events coming from another shore, that is, from destiny, a plan which I cannot project. Neither can I close the événementialité of what is impossible, as that would involve getting rid of what is indicated by experience. CONICET - National Council of Scientifics and Technics Research Catholic University of Santa Fe, Argentina

NOTES 1

Paul Ricoeur, Philosophie de la volonté, 1. Le volontaire et l’involontaire (Paris, AubierMontaigne, 1967), p. 407. [hereinafter, VI, p. . . – reference is made within the body of the paper-] 2 Cf. Claude Romano, L’événement et le monde (Paris, Épimethée, PUF, 1998), pp. 56–69. [hereinafter, EM, p. . . – reference is made within the body of the paper-] 3 Cf. C. Romano, Il y a (Paris, Épimethée, PUF, 2003), pp. 29–38. [hereinafter, Ia, p. . . – reference is made within the body of the paper-] 4 Husserl, Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft (1911), La filosofía como ciencia estricta (3rd ed., translation by Elsa Tabernig, Buenos Aires, Nova, 1973), p. 80. 5 Cf. Romano Guardini, Die Anname Seiner Selbst (Würzburg, Werkbund-Verlag, 1960), La aceptación de sí-mismo (translation by J. M. Valverde, Madrid, Ed. Cristiandad, 1970), pp. 15–39. 6 C. Romano, “Acontecimiento y Mundo”, en: Persona y Sociedad (presentation by the Author of the first translation into Spanish of one of his works, Santiago de Chile, Revista de la Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Vol. XXI, No. 1, 2007), pp. 112–113. 7 C. Romano, L’événement et le temps (Paris, Épimethée, PUF, 1999), p. 274. [hereinafter, ET, p. . . – reference made within the body of the paper-]

REFERENCES Guardini, R. Die Anname Seiner Selbst. (Würzburg: Werkbund-Verlag, 1960), La aceptación de sí-mismo (translation by Jose Maria Valverde, Madrid, Ed. Cristiandad, 1970). Husserl, E. Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft (1911), La filosofía como ciencia estricta (3rd ed., translation by Elsa Tabernig, Buenos Aires, Nova, 1973).

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Ricoeur, P. Philosophie de la volonté, 1. Le volontaire et l’involontaire, -ref. VI- (Paris, AubierMontaigne, 1967). Romano, C. L’événement et le monde,- cit. EM- (Paris, Épimethée, PUF, 1998). Romano, C. L’événement et le temps, cit. ET (Paris, Épimethée, PUF, 1999). Romano, C. Il y a, -ref. Ia- (Paris, Épimethée, PUF, 2003). Romano, C. “Acontecimiento y Mundo.” Persona y Sociedad (translation by Patricio Mena y Enoc Muñoz, Santiago de Chile, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Vol. XXI, No. 1, 2007).

SECTION III

SIMEN ANDERSEN ØYEN

INTERSUBJECTIVITY–AN EXISTENTIALISTIC, PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND DISCOURSE

ETHICAL

APPROACH

Nothing – not even wild beasts or microbes – could be more terrifying for man than a species which is intelligent [. . .] and which can understand and outwit human intelligence, and whose aim is precisely the destruction of man. This, however, is obviously our own species as perceived in others by each of its members in the context of scarcity. Jean-Paul Sartre

ABSTRACT

This article examines the phenomena of intersubjectivity with an existentialistic, phenomenological and discourse ethical approach. The main hypothesis is that the concept of “intersubjectivity” in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Jean-Paul Sartre is foremost an epistemological and an ontological one as opposed to Jürgen Habermas which has a concept of “intersubjectivity” which to a greater degree contains normative implications. The phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity, represented by Edmund Husserl is based in the concept of “the body” and the experience of another body as like our own which is the foundation of the experience of another self. Sartre’s theory of intersubjectivity is founded in a phenomenological ontology and is revealed in the experience of “the look” in and through which the self is initially constituted. Habermas’ theory of intersubjectivity is communicatively based, and presupposes a community of investigators who endeavour to perform their common task communicatively in which the linguistic domain is the only place where the validity claims of speech acts can be clarified. Then the communicative community can reach a mutual recognition and normative self-legislation. This article will suggest that the phenomenological concept of “intersubjectivity” has influenced the existential and transcendental-pragmatic understandings of intersubjectivity.

193 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 193–207. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_12, 

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INTRODUCTION OF THE PROBLEM TO THE DISCUSSION

The main investigation in this article will be to examine the phenomena of intersubjectivity and review and compare this topic on a level of ontological analysis, on a level of moral analysis and on a moral-practical level of analysis. The matter of intersubjectivity is approached in this article in an existentialistic, phenomenological and discourse ethical manner in which Jean-Paul Sartre, Edmund Husserl, and Jürgen Habermas are exponents of these philosophical movements and where existentialism and transcendental-pragmatic is representatives for the various directions the understandings of intersubjectivity has developed in since Husserl. The main hypothesis in this article is that the concept of “intersubjectivity” in the philosophy of Husserl and Sartre has foremost an epistemological and ontological status as opposed to Habermas who has a concept of “intersubjectivity” which to a greater extent contains moral and political implications. A premise for this hypothesis is that these three orientations are basing their investigations on the same concept, namely “intersubjectivity”, and that this concept has the same epistemological value, but has different implications in regard to morality and moral-political questions. This article suggests that the phenomenological concept of “intersubjectivity” has affected and had an impact on the development from an epistemological and ontological level, through a social or sociological level with the philosophy of Sartre and at last where it reaches moral and moral-political consequences with the introduction of Habermas’ philosophy. Then one of the main goals of this article can be seen as an investigation of the aspects of the variety of conceptions which are connected with Husserl’s notion of intersubjectivity and to investigate the degree to which each one of them refers back to it. A premise for this claim is that one of Habermas’ fundamental philosophical projects is an intersubjective transformation of the transcendental philosophy.

INTERSUBJECTIVITY AS AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEM

The epistemological problem of the other or intersubjectivity can be summed up as two questions: “How can I know and experience the existence of other people and their consciousnesses?” and “How can I know and experience the different experiences other people have?” The moral implications of a concept of “intersubjectivity” are far more complex and are questions I will return to. The concept of “intersubjectivity” in an epistemological sense can be defined

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as that which several or all subjects have in common, understood as a common experience apparatus, or negatively defined; that which can not be perceived or experienced by others, can not be objective nor have epistemological value. This definition does not ignore private experiences and the unique way in which my consciousness is given for me, but it is a premise for this. It is exactly the irreducibly difference my own consciousness express compared to another person’s consciousness, that makes it even possible to introduce a concept about “intersubjectivity”. In this sense intersubjectivity can be understood and defined as a plurality of subjects in its full universality. A philosophical discourse on morality may not necessarily get entangled with ontological problems, the ontological aspects of intersubjectivity and a concept of “intersubjectivity” as a precondition for a system of moral. But at the same time, this does not mean that ontological problems and an ontological concept of “intersubjectivity” are irrelevant to moral discourse.1 This has to be seen in connection with the tendency that moral-philosophical discussions have moved away from a philosophy of subjectivity towards a philosophy of alterity and intersubjectivity.

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT O F “I N T E R S U B J E C T I V I T Y ”

The phenomenological concept of “intersubjectivity” is based and has its starting point in the principle of intentionality and that every perception is perspectivistic. According to the principle of intentionality the objects and phenomena of the world appear and present itself for a consciousness, and this imply that the entire perceiving subject is self-present in the room. The subject is given and situated as a body where the body is like a centre around where the rest of the spatial world is arranged.2 A consequence of this is that any experience is made possible and is arranged for our bodyness. In a wider sense this will say that the body is with-experiencing qua an unthematized experience of the body’s position and movements, a kinaesthetic experience which the perceptional experience is correlated to. This is the foundation for Husserl’s approach to the problems of intersubjectivity. The principle of intentionality contains a kinaesthetic experience of a bodily self-consciousness which is unthematized and which functions as the converging point of all experience. This concept of “the body” is the preliminary theoretical paradigm to the understanding of the concept of “intersubjectivity”. The concept of “intersubjectivity” is dependent on the body and the total condition of the experiencing subject because it is precisely the experience of another body as similar to our

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own which is the foundation of the experience of another self. The body is given first and initially, but the body provides the location of the other’s consciousness and this recognition of the other as being similar to me is ultimately the experience of intersubjectivity. The other is constituted through my relation with the ownness of my consciousness and the connection between that ownness and my body. The other and intersubjectivity is perceived and discovered through this duplicity.3 The body of another signals intentional acts, and it also express a content of thought through the spoken language which more generally expresses conscious life and this again provides other perspectives on the way things are which leads to the recognition of the epistemological value of intersubjectivity.4 In this context the objects is intersubjectively common in that it has validity for all individuals and that the objects are or can be given intersubjectively. The objective determination is established through an intersubjective community where the “physicalistic” thing have to appear for every member of the communicating society which constitute the same thing and which must constitute it in rational and mutual understanding. The objects are intersubjectively possessed. It is a process that can be classified as an intersubjective identification.5 We have to keep in mind this specific theme when we in the next section are going to examine Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of “intersubjectivity”.6 As we have seen, Husserl’s concept is foremost ontological and epistemological.7 It is ontological because it processes on the transcendental level, and it is a structure of consciousness which does experience possible. The objects of the world are constituted in a rational and mutual understanding, but not as a reflective understanding, and the other Ego is given us directly as lived experience. As member of a social nexus, however, the other Ego has a more complex epistemological status, but has not in the same degree as Habermas’ philosophy normative constitutive implications. It is epistemological because it is concerning the experience of the objects. Though the experience is concerning for instance the physical objects the experience also contains the perception of abstract phenomena as values, but this is still constitutive and do not in the same degree contain elements of judging or taking a moral stand. Husserl’s concept of “intersubjectivity” is mainly concerning the relationship between the intentional acts and their correlates. The intersubjectivity is first taking place on the level of the consciousness and even out of reach of the conscious mind, and not on the level on the relationship between different consciousnesses. This makes normative implications of the phenomenological concept of “intersubjectivity” difficult. A premise for such implications as we will investigate further in Habermas philosophy can be that constative, normative and subjective or aesthetic-practical judgements rests on the same

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epistemological prerequisites; communicative dispositions and that they are in the same way reasonable. Then the communicative aspect are the intersubjective fundament which in objective, normative and subjective matters can make possible every speaking and acting subject to reach an agreement when it comes to objective as well as normative controversial matters. These premises and prerequisites are not at least obvious and clear in the philosophy of Husserl in the same degree as in Habermas’ philosophy.

S A R T R E ’S C O N C E P T O F “I N T E R S U B J E C T I V I T Y ”

Sartre as Husserl will say that when we introduce the presence of other persons and include the dimension of intersubjectivity, the identities in the objects take on a deeper objectivity, in the fact that someone else sees the same objects from another perspective. But Sartre will to a larger extent add a social dimension to the concept of “intersubjectivity”. First of all Sartre describes intersubjectivity as a more theoretical problem than an epistemological phenomena which is cognitive accessible with an apodictic certainty. Central in Sartre’s theory about intersubjectivity is the look and that the social constitution is taking place through what he describes as the look. Through the look the experience of the Other is possible, and to be observed by the Other or in other words; this beingfor-others, is the fundamental existential relation to other human beings. The look is the other subject’s awareness of me, instead of an object monitoring me. But this transformation, where I recognize the Other as a subject, is not a reflective experience. My relation to the Other is like the intuition; a first and fundamental relation taking place on a pre-reflective level. It is a relation which is not an object for knowledge or reflection but a relation in which we exist. It is an existential relation. In this sense being-for-the-Other is a prolonged ontological structure.8 As with Husserl, this central epistemological role that intersubjectivity occupy, will implicate that the constitution of the world and its objects no longer is independently or superiorly determined by the transcendental ego or the consciousness alone, but the experience is determined by an intersubjective dimension where the experience is formed in the meeting between my consciousness and the Other’s consciousness. This implicates further a doxic mode of an intersubjective character. But Sartre in contradiction to Husserl will not found the intersubjective constitution in the experience of the body. It is based on the structures of the look. Sartre illustrates this with the feeling of shame. Here we are dealing with a mode of consciousness that has a structure that is intentional. Through shame we discover an aspect of our being through

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the Other. The Other is the mediator between myself and me. I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the other.9 This experience of shame is intersubjectively constituted and has some bodily aspects without having it’s origin in the concept of “the body” like in Husserl’s philosophy. The intersubjectivity and the relation to another person are in Sartre’s philosophy characterized by a paradox. It is an interaction and interplay between respectively subject and object orientated attitudes and here there is a theoretical aporia in Sartre’s philosophy that deserves further investigations. This paradox consist in that we experience the Other as an object amongst other mundane objects, and are ourselves experienced by the Others as an object. It is a mutual objectification and the intersubjectivity has the character of being a conflict.10 The subject can only assert oneself by being in opposition to another. It is a consciousness of that I have my foundation outside of myself. I am for myself as I am a reference to the Other.11 One of the modalities of the Other’s presence to me is objectivity, but if this relation is fundamental between the Other and myself, then the Other’s existence remains purely conjectural. I am imprisoned by the look of the other, yet through the look of the other I am aware of myself as a subject, and in the same way the Other is not a pure object to me.12 The objectification of the Other would be the collapse of his beingas-a-look. The objectification is only one of the possible manifestations of the Other’s objective being; because I can not look at the Other as I look at for instance my computer. The Other must consequently be given to me directly as a subject and this is the fundamental relation to the Other.13 This theoretical problem in Sartre’s philosophy indicates that there is no direct connection between an ontological and an epistemological concept of “intersubjectivity” on the one side to a moral one on the other side. The opportunity to choose which in Sartre’s philosophy has a ontological independent and superior position will in the meeting with the Other meet it’s limitations. We exist always in a situation that already is interpreted by other people, and this is characterized by a conflict.14 My existence will therefore in an important manner be determined by the Other and his transcendence will represent an alienation of my own possibilities. This central theme in Sartre’s philosophy represents both the limited freedom in the meeting with the Other and the conflict and ultimately a theoretical aporia in Sartre’s philosophy.15 The being-for-others is the fundamental existential relation to other human beings and to the world and its objects. This is mediated through the look which has the same epistemological value as the body in Husserl’s philosophy. But Sartre rejects Husserl’s notion that the Other is known by analogical reasoning from my own experience because the Other is given to me as a concrete presence whish I can in no way derive from myself or expose to a

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phenomenological reduction.16 This circumstance or condition do not immediately exclude normative implications, but represent another direction of the theorization of intersubjectivity. It is a direction which constitutes relationships between consciousnesses and which represents a double apprehension i.e. an epistemological and a sociological without reaching moral implications. However, in the same manner as Husserl, Sartre’s concept is an ontological and epistemological one constituted out of reach of the reflective consciousness, but this Sartrian concept has sociological and social aspects which represent an experiential conflict and a theoretical aporia and are mediated through feelings of shame, the feeling of being objectified and the like. There are to a higher degree some normative aspects in Sartre’s understanding and theory of the choice and responsibility but the concept of “intersubjectivity” in Sartre’s philosophy does not contain to the same degree these aspects. Husserl and Sartre have as a common theoretical foundation the presumption that the introduction of a concept of “intersubjectivity” will increase the epistemological richness in regard to the world and its objects. But what philosophical position can we adhere to the meaning of human events and moral situations? It is now time to see how intersubjectivity can have strongly normative and political-theoretical implications represented by the philosophy of Habermas and how intersubjectivity implemented in a practical setting can transform in a consensual way and finally how intersubjectivity allow an authentic relationship to the Other.

H A B E R M A S ’ C O N C E P T O F “I N T E R S U B J E C T I V I T Y ”

Habermas’ concept of “intersubjectivity” in regard to its epistemological value is based on the concept of “communicative action”. This is related to the communicative practice that is intersubjectively constituted and oriented to achieving consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims. Foremost, is the concept of “communicative action” an approach or an entrance to understand rationality, how we can speak of an intersubjective rationality and how to come to agreement in the objective, social and subjective world. The foundation of this intersubjective rationality is the ability to practice language and communication. Rationality is in this sense understood as a disposition of communication, and the central presupposition of Habermas’ communicative rationality is that statements can be defended against criticism. Different participants possess the mutuality of rationality which assures the unity of the objective world and the intersubjectivity of a lifeworld. This

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communicative practice guarantees and refers to an intersubjectively shared lifeworld.17 An assertion or a statement can be called rational only if the speaker satisfies the conditions of reaching an understanding about something in the world with at least one other participant in communication. In this context rationality also include providing grounds for established norms and thereby justify action and consequently following established norms.18 Normatively regulated actions have the character, like constative speech acts or assertions, of being meaningful and can then be seen as cognitive expressions in the sense that they are connected with criticisable validity claims. Their reference is to norms and to a normative context recognized as legitimate rather than to facts or states of affairs. Here the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims and the validity of norms through an argumentative praxis, are crucial. It contains intersubjective aspects just because it is a validity claim that refers to something in a common social world. Habermas’ concept of “rationality” is a communicative and intersubjective concept which makes possible the discourse, the force of the better argument and the consensual aspect which implications indicates norms and principles for moral and political behaviour. The discourse is the place where assertion can be criticized and where a hearer can contest the truth of assertions by arguments. Habermas presents the discourse as the place for proponents and opponents to reach understanding and in normative matters make a theme of a problematic validity claim and test it with reasons whether the claim stands or not. The communication between proponents and opponents is a dialectic practice but is not to be understood similar to the object and subject orientations in Sartre’s constitution of intersubjectivity through the look. It is not a conflict in the same degree but a cooperative search for truth. The condition for a well functioning discourse is truthfulness, that the discourse is an open and continuous process and protection against repression and inequality.19 At last the process of stating reasons and grounds for norms will demand an actual discourse and this is guaranteed or provided by the discourse principle: A rule of action or choice is justified, and thus valid, only if all those affected by the rule or choice could accept it in a reasonable discourse. This principle and its foundation in the communicative and intersubjective rationality have, as we are going to see, further moral-political implications. Habermas’ philosophy is based on an ontological view where reaching communicative understanding is central. The communicative dispositions are oriented against consensus, but speech acts take also on the function of coordinating action and building up interactions.20 These processes represent a pretheoretical knowledge of competent acting and speaking subjects, who have

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the ability to influence upon others and come to an agreement. Speech and understanding are therefore in a reciprocally relationship.21 In the same way as Husserl’s and Sartre’s concept of “intersubjectivity”, Habermas’ concept is in this regard an ontological and epistemological one, and it is in the same way constitutive before the conscious reflection. It is epistemological because knowledge is accessible through language, and this is an intersubjective disposition in every speaking and acting subject. Like Husserl it is a prerequisite to constitute the phenomena and the objects. The phenomena have a necessary intersubjective aspect. Like Sartre it has sociological and social implications, but instead of turning in the direction of conflict it is directed against the ability and opportunity of making consensus. In the continuation or extension of these objective and sociological dimensions the concept of “intersubjectivity” in Habermas’ philosophy has normative implications where normatively regulated actions have the character of being meaningful expressions, and moral and moral-practical speech acts are in the same way as constative speech acts or the validity claim of a proposition, embodiments of rationality. In the interaction with other subjects, statements have to be accepted or presupposed as valid by the participants in a discourse. Their reference is to norms and something in a common social world.22 This makes possible the transference from propositional truth to normative rightness and the intersubjectivity of acting and speaking subjects’ lifeworld where coordinating actions combine individual acts oriented to an intersubjective consensus and an interaction complex. This is the theoretical foundation when we now will look into the intersubjective aspects within the political sphere because the effectuation or realization of this condition must happen in a real discourse and in a free and public deliberation in the public sphere.

THE MORAL-POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Habermas theory is grounded in that the communicative community can reach a mutual recognition and normative self-legislation by way of argumentation and a rational consensus, and where the disposition of communicative- and acting-competence is a foundation for the participation in a moral and political discourse. This communicative theory lays the foundation for the discourse ethics which presupposes that normative validity claims have a cognitive meaning and that the grounding and validity of all norms is tied to an actually discursive opinion- and will-formation and in the last instance is not possible monologically. Here Habermas converts his discourse ethics into democratic theory and institutionalizes the rational discourse through a system of rights

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and law-making. This represents a tension between facticity and validity and is exemplified by the question of how to transform communicative power into administrative power. Foremost Habermas suggest that only through open public argument and discourse, complex societies can engage in moral and political decision-making. Moral and political decision-making can only be validated through open and intersubjective argumentation where according to the discourse principle only those norms that can meet with the approval of all affected parts, can claim legitimacy. This will in a political context be formulated so that only those norms or statues may claim legitimacy that can meet with the assent of all citizens in a discursive process of legislation that in turn has been legally constituted.23 Politics must therefore be understood as a process of collective opinion- and will-formation, characterized by reasoned dialogue and of self-legislation according to which the addressees of law are simultaneously the authors of their rights – and not the simple aggregation of subjective preferences through popular voting. This opinion- and will-formation is most importantly diverted through the public sphere. The public sphere can best be described as a network for communicative interaction and has in the philosophy of Habermas the position of being a warning system with sensors that detect and identify problems but also influentially make a theme of them in such a way that they are taken up and dealt with by parliamentary complexes. Then the communicative approach to politics and deliberative politics can be seen and is intended to translate the strong normative assumptions of democratic theory into the complex framework of contemporary societies.24 In Habermas’ philosophy it is mainly through the communication, filtered through the channels of a public sphere, that the democratic process can confer legitimation to the political decisions of state institutions.25 The democracy is not focused in one concrete point in the political-institutional structures, but is according to Habermas’ approach possible to find in the intersubjectivity which is taking place in the communicative arenas in and outside parliamentary organs where more or less rational willand opinion-formation happens.26 Communicative actions in its epistemological form and prior to any institutionalization are oriented toward mutual understanding in the same way as the process of democracy. The public use of communicative freedom needs according to this fundament legal institutionalization discursive processes of opinionand will-formation against the background of intersubjectively recognized normative principles and rules.27 Habermas’ political approach will preserve the principles of the discourse and the communicative forms in a democratic opinion- and will-formation and the institutionalization of the conditions of communication, as well as on the interplay of institutionalized deliberative

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processes with informally developed public opinions. The transformation from an epistemological concept of “intersubjectivity” to a philosophy of moral into a political context is now more obvious. Processes of intersubjectivity are taking place through democratic procedures or in the communicative network of public spheres. The transformation from communicative freedom and power to administrative power is seen in the flow of communication between public opinion-formation, institutionalized bodies and legislative decisions, and the normative implications herein in accordance with the discourse ethic are expressed in the socially integration which are indirect consequences from communicative action, but are taking place through autonomous public spheres and through procedures of democratic opinion- and will-formation.28 Based on Sartre’s concept of “intersubjectivity” Habermas’ approach to these questions can be criticized for ignoring the more existential or concrete aspects of human existence.29 It is a question if it is possible to reach the better argument when distracting existentialistic elements are at play and considering that intersubjectivity can appear as a conflict, it is a question if it is possible to achieve consensus. Habermas will introduce a distinction where there is on the one side an ideal speech situation and on the other side the pragmatic discourse. The pragmatic discourse is exemplified in the political deliberation and in these kinds of situations we are always deliberate under for instance the pressure of arriving at decisions in time. There will not of course always be possible to engage in deliberation to reach unanimous agreement or consensus and negotiation, elections and bargaining will have to supplement the superior of the force of the best argument. At the same time the discourse approach to democracy can be seen as setting goals that can too easily be denounced as unrealistic, and at the same time operating with a totalising unity.30 For Sartre recognition has a central status in his ontological concept of “intersubjectivity” that appears in the interplay between object and subject orientated attitudes.31 Recognition in the philosophy of Habermas is a presupposition for collaboration among subjects who recognize one another, in their reciprocally related rights and duties, as free and equal citizens. This mutual recognition is constitutive for a legal order and the intersubjective meaning of legally defined liberties. Even in the stringent ontological system with its moral and moral-political implications a more grounding principal has to be adjourned: a moral stand requires participants to mutually take the perspective of all the others.32 This principle can be seen as fundamental in the theories of “intersubjectivity”, and is maybe applicable to also Sartre’s and Husserl s concepts of “intersubjectivity”.

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The concept of “intersubjectivity” has in the philosophy of Husserl foremost an ontological and epistemological status. This concept is deduced by the duplicity of the body. The experience of our own body is leading to the experience of another self, and this recognition of the other as being similar to me is ultimately the experience of intersubjectivity. Sartre’s concept of “intersubjectivity” is in the same way as Husserl’s an ontological and epistemological concept where the dimension of intersubjectivity gives the surrounding objects a deeper objectivity or gives experience more perspectives – this opposed to a solipsistic knowledge or cognition. This concept has a social dimension which is revealed through the look where the interaction between people is conflicted. This circumstance in Sartre’s philosophy represents a theoretical problem and an aporia. Habermas’ concept of “intersubjectivity” is communicatively based. He presupposes a communicative practice that is intersubjectively constituted and oriented to achieving intersubjective consensus in the recognition of criticisable validity claims. This will give normatively regulated actions, to the same degree as constative speech acts or assertions, the status of cognitive expressions. Their reference is to norms and the potential agreement of everyone else. The starting point of social integration is how social order and processes is supposed to emerge from processes of consensus formation and of communicative action. Then, by way of argumentation and a rational consensus the communicative community can reach a mutual recognition and normative self-legislation which leads Habermas to moral-practical questions and to the discourse democracy. The connection between an ontological and epistemological concept of “intersubjectivity” and a moral one is that normative validity claims can be treated as analogous to constative speech acts. This is provided through that both can be tested discursively. Politics is in the same way as moral questions a process of collective opinion- and willformation, characterized by reasoned dialogue and of self-legislation where the background is intersubjectively recognized normative principles and rules oriented toward mutual understanding. Habermas is here making a communicative turn which makes the moral-practical theoretical field possibly and a corresponding direction is absent in Husserl’s and Sartre’s theories about intersubjectivity. A fundamental condition for such a claim is that the notion of the subject in Husserl, through Sartre have influenced post-phenomenological theories of subjectivity as fundamentally intersubjective as in the case with Habermas’ concept of “intersubjectivity” where the constitution of the transcendental ego has made possible the rising of intersubjectivity as a theoretical tool to understand the subject, rationality and the coordination of different

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subjects interactions. This is a development which springs out of the Husserlian understanding of intersubjectivity where it may serve as the basis for the formation of the Habermas’ concept and understanding of communication because it anticipates a specific understanding of the ego as intersubjectively constituted, which is also the main precondition for communication.33 But neither Husserl nor Sartre stretch the borders of intersubjectivity to such an extent that he actually enters the field of communicative action.34 In Habermas’ theories we see opposed to Husserl and Sartre how the communicative action makes possible interactions woven together and forms of life structured. Both Husserl’s, Sartre’s and Habermas’ theoretical background is an intersubjectively shared lifeworld, but where Husserl and Sartre just find a common basis and understanding when it comes to the objects in the world, Habermas finds a fundament which build upon an understanding when it also comes to the social events, human interaction and political coordination of actions. The centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen

NOTES 1

H. Turan, “The Existence and Communication: Challenge of the Times” in A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Volume LXXXIV (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer, 2005), p. 178. 2 E. Husserl, Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenonology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, translated by R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (2nd ed., Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1998), pp. 169–170. 3 Kelly Oliver, The Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity in A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Volume LIV (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005), p. 118. 4 Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (1st ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 154. 5 E. Husserl, Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenonology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, translated by R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (2nd ed., Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1998), p. 92. 6 Maurice Merleau-Ponty will go even further giving the body an epistemological status. The human existence is already an existence in a socially imparted lifeworld and Merleau-Ponty will maybe emphasize the necessary dimension of intersubjectivity in a higher degree than Husserl. 7 This do not restrict the opportunity to derive or deduce a moral philosophy in Husserl’s philosophical theories, but Husserl’s concept of “intersubjectivity” has some limitations in regard to it’s moral implications on the one side. On the other side, Husserl’s theories of intersubjectivty and the implications of this concept are extensive: There are three volumes in the Husserliana entitled On the Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity, and Hussserl’s theory of intersubjectivity is central in especially the fifth Meditiation of the Cartesian Meditations and in the Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology.

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Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness – A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, translated by H. E. Barnes (2nd ed., New York: Citadel Press 2001), p. 100. 9 Ibid., pp. 197–198. 10 This central theme in Sartre’s philosophy has it’s clear parallel to Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. It is a dialectical movement in the same way based on an understanding of how the subject’s consciousness comes into existence in a social dialectic process. This has also an analogy to Beauvoir’s theoretical approach to the differences between the sexes. 11 Ibid., p. 236. 12 Kelly Oliver, The Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity in A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Volume LIV (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005), p. 133. 13 Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness – A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, translated by H. E. Barnes (2nd ed., New York: Citadel Press 2001), p. 244. 14 Here Sartre will say that our freedom consist in the fact that we can always choose freely how we will interpret and act upon the situation. 15 Sartre introduces a solution to this conflict in the concept of “the appeal”. The appeal contains a form of reciprocity but at the same time represent a recognition of diversity. This must not be understood in the sense of the law of an eye for an eye, but in the sense of a form of help. 16 Kelly Oliver, The Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity in A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Volume LIV (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005), p. 133. 17 Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, translated by Thomas McCharthy (1st ed., Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 10–13. 18 Ibid., pp. 68–70. 19 Ibid., pp. 25–26. 20 Ibid., p. 278. 21 Ibid., pp. 286–287. 22 Ibid., p. 15. 23 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, translated by W. Rehg (1st ed., Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999), p. 110. 24 These themes I have discussed with Habermas himself the autumn 2005 and published as an interview in the academic journal Replikk, 2006. 25 Jürgen Habermas, Argumentets tvangløse tvang, in Replikk, interviewed by Simen Øyen (Bergen, 2006), pp. 8–9. 26 Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, translated by W. Rehg (1st ed., Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999), p. 359. 27 Ibid., p. 106. 28 Ibid., pp. 298–299. 29 A relevant question here is whether Habermas adequately explain the motivation for engaging in a public sphere. This I have discussed elsewhere (Simen Øyen, Intersubjectivty, Moral and Human rights – an existenialistic and discourse ethical approach, (Bergen: Bora, 2006) and suggested that Sartre’s understanding of an engaged existence can supplement Habermas’ theories of the public sphere and the motivation to at all engage in the public sphere. 30 Jürgen Habermas, Argumentets tvangløse tvang, in Replikk, interviewed by Simen Øyen (Bergen, 2006), pp. 9–10. 31 Sartre comment the phenomena of recognition in moral context for instance here: “Each one in turn is the subject of rights; that is, there are two distinct moments: 1st, when he recognizes through his demand to be recognized; 2nd when he is recognized in order to recognize.” (JeanPaul Sartre, Notebooks for an Ethics, translated by David Pellauer (1st ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

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Jürgen Habermas, Argumentets tvangløse tvang, in Replikk, interviewed by Simen Øyen (Bergen, 2006), p. 10 33 Elle Buceniece, How can we be together: Intersubjectivity and Communication in AT. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana Volume LXXXIV (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer, 2005), pp. 120–121. 34 Ibid., p. 124.

IHOR KARIVETS’

IS THE PHENOMENON OF NON-INTENTIONAL “S E L F - O T H E R” R E L A T I O N P O S S I B L E ?

ABSTRACT

This article is dedicated to possibility of overcoming the subject-object ontology, which is based on intentionality. The author proves that such dualism is rooted into the transcendental level. The transcendental level makes possible our empirical experience on the basis of subject-object relations. The author considers Parmenides’ famous sentence “For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be” and Husserl’s well-known claim “Back to things themselves!” as essential for possibility of discovering non-intentional relation between Self and Other, between human being and nature/cosmos. There are the division and the rupture between subject and object in a natural attitude. Parmenides and early Husserl show the way to the truth as a wholeness without subject and object. The fundamental concept of Husserl’s phenomenology is the concept of intentionality. The intentionality is a characteristic of consciousness, which defines its tendency towards objects. Consciousness does not exist with any relation to other objects. Before introducing the concept of intentionality by scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages (Brentano in the nineteenth century and Husserl in the twentieth century), the concept of will was widely used. The meaning of the last absolutely coincides with the meaning of the concept of intentionality. If we long for something or somebody, we want to seize an object, namely an intentional object. As well as “will” intentionality connects Self with objects, which may be found in the world. Such connection we can define as relation between Self and Other. That is why a relation is always the intentional connection, namely the “subject-object” relation. It is known the reaction of Sartre and Heidegger to idealism of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. They used the concept of intentionality for creation of their own social ontologies of “Self-Other” relation. In his work Being and Nothing Sartre deeply analyses the “Self-Other” relation. Other is always a threat for Self. Other encroaches on freedom of Self. It is 209 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 209–220. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_13, 

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impossible to establish normal relationships with Others. That is why relation with Other is always doomed to struggle and hatred. We find in Heidegger’s Being and Time a modified repetition of intentional social ontology. The “Self-Other/Others” relations are unreal in everyday life. The unreal existence with Other/Others is an anonymous existence. In everyday life Self as Dasein always loses himself/herself and Others take away its being. The possibilities of Daseins’ everyday life are determined by Others. Others are the mode of existence of common sense in the world, which lost personal identity, namely Das Man. Thus, neither Sartre nor Heidegger could create positive social ontology of “Self-Other” relation on the basis of intentionality. The founders of philosophical hermeneutics and philosophy of dialogue set this task. Here we can include the attempts of Levinas, who formulated phenomenology of face without using concept of intentionality. Levinas also ethicized Heidegger’s social ontology. Gadamer, Buber, Levinas, Frankl and others tried to create social ontology of “Self-Other” relation beyond intentionality. In order to create non-intentional social ontology they decompose intentional model of “Self-Other” relation. After such decomposition we find the sphere of being-between in which Self and Other meet one another. Exactly in this sphere of being-between Self perceives Other as Thou and vise versa. The positive experience of philosophical hermeneutics and philosophy of dialogue, which are rooted in early Husserl’s early phenomenology, when he called “Back to the things themselves!”, lies in its dialogical principle. This principle takes its origin not from transcendental experience of pure Self, but from phenomenological experience of Self as being-between. Such experience is ultimate. Is the non-intentional relation “Self-Other” relation in the sphere of beingbetween a new utopia? No, it is not. We deal with ultimate experience beyond everyday life, which is based on intentionality, egoism and pragmatism. As Plato and Buddha said many years ago before Buber the human being is beingbetween, metaphorically saying, between Heaven and Earth. Contemporary phenomenologists and existentialists might return human being to the middle position and therefore help to re-find our own identity in the globalized world. In the following text we would like to present some reflections on nature of non-intentional relations. Those reflections are not presented systematically because they still remain unelaborated. We only get close to understanding of non-intentional relations between Self and Other, between Me and the world. Fixation on concepts they call “knowledge”. Such fixation implies the formation of idols. In fact, man can be devoted to certain conceptions which “explain” the world and a human being. But such explanation is only an island

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in boundless ocean of cognition. Gradually this island is absorbed by ignorance and then man falls into an abyss of uncertainty. Falling man grasps constructed concepts. And therefore the process of cognition lasts infinitely, the knowledge is doomed to turn into ignorance. Why does it happen? We can expend our knowledge endlessly, but it always remains incomplete. The sphere of ignorance is bigger than the sphere of knowledge. This incompleteness of knowledge is connected with the fragmentation of human cognition and its specialization. An individual always cognizes something and: goes over the surfaces of things and experiences them. He brings back from them some knowledge of their condition – an experience. He experiences what there is to things. For what they bring to him is only a world that consists of It and It and It, of He and He and She and She and It. I experience something.1

On the other hand, the human knowledge is limited and those limits are connected with the innate structure of cognition of the human being. Thus, a human being can expend the limits of his/her own cognitive structure, but he/she always remains inside those limits. It is not enough only to expend limits of knowledge in order to overcome the doubt. Kant in his Critics of Pure Reason showed that human cognition depends on certain built-in pure conceptual schemes of common sense: . . . the categories, without schemata are merely functions of the understanding for the production of conceptions, but do not represent any object. This significance they derive from sensibility, which at the same time realizes the understanding and restricts it.2

Such dependence of the cognitive process prevents from obtaining knowledge. We as human beings capable of both thought and perceptual experience, but these capacities are inextricably interrelated. Husserl’s phenomenology makes an attempt to transcend that dependence. Husserl emphasizes the importance of contemplation, but not cognition, because we can contemplate a things’ essence. His claim “back to things themselves!” means that we should return phenomena back to their source. If the world (worlds) where I (we) live is (are) conditioned before, then what is the mechanism of such a conditioning? The world is conditioned as Lebenswelt, and it is not in my power to change it. The conditioning of Lebenswelt is comprehended by contemplation. Contemplation helps man to return to essence. When human being lost himself in the world he/she wants to change it, because he/she cannot live in non-sense and absurdity. The conditioning of the country where I was born, the conditioning of family where I was brought up, the conditioning of the culture where I grew up, the conditioning of the language which I learned to communicate and cognize the conditioned world, the conditioning of events which took place and which will take place

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in my life, we cannot explain but through reincarnation. The conditioning of Lebenswelt may be considered as task to be solved in the given incarnation of god-self. But Husserl’s transcendental Ego is not god-self. Husserl says about contemplation of transcendental Ego, but he never said that transcendental Ego is the Other within Me. God-self is ultimate selfhood of human being. Such ultimate selfhood is human being. The Other which reincarnates, which is allotted to the superior capacity to contemplate. The essentials of Lebenswelt come into light through contemplation (in Ukrainian the word – “svit” derives from the word “light” – “svitlo” and therefore the world is illuminated, it is not dark). If my eyes are light then I look at the illuminated world and see ´ ηθ ´ εια. Physical eyes turn into the eyes of godits truth as unhiddenness – αλ self, thus they grow light. The physical eyes in the contemplation can only be light because the god-self looks through them. Then the world shines in its clearness. But what is connection between the conditioning and clearness, illumination and darkness? Without contemplation the world is not illuminated; it is dim and unclear, but these are my eyes and my reason clouded, the reason which did not turn into god-self’s reason. The light is always essential, i.e. it is not casual. It is immanent to the world, and when we contemplate, this light illuminates an individual, which is indivisible from inside, not from outside (in Ukrainian “from inside” – “z seredyny” means “from the middle”). The middle is the being-in-between. Thus, an individual illuminated from inside or from the middle of its inner space realizes itself as being-in-between. In the state of such illumination the visible manifests itself as the truth, which is unhiddenness. This truth discovered by thinking, because the one who thinks is being-in-between. According to Heidegger, Lichtung of being becomes evident when truth of mine being-in-between is opened and human being is this ray. To be in Lichtung of being, as being-in-between, means to be illuminated from inside by god-self. But contemplation is impossible without passionlessness. Contemplation is based on it. Freud showed that despite technical progress of society and growing welfare civilized person remains a savage on the emotional level. Everything irritates him/her, he/she constantly feels offended, flies into a passion. Those passions do not allow a man to contemplate the beauty of the world and a human being. Did not Jesus teach to be passionless saying: But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on you right cheek, turn the other to him also [Matthew 5:39]. But I say you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you [Matthew 5:44]. We can see that passionlessness permits to stop the violence, that is, tearing the vicious circle of violence. Also Buddha says that our relationships with others are not

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accidental. They have a deep meaning, because are determined by karma. We should make a good to all people who meet in our life. This is possible only in the state of contemplation. When it is achieved then there are consciousness, conscience and freedom. When they appear simultaneously then it is love. During contemplation the representations of things are absent. We have immediate sight/vision of things as things without any representations or images. Contemplation is not a part of cognition. When we cognize things then they become objects. We cognize through representations. But what is the connection between contemplation and thinking? Undoubtedly, thinking is thoughtless, because thoughts are representations of things. Here we follow Heidegger, who said: “thinking keeps thing in it essence”.3 The essence of thing is being. Thinking is not reflection. Reflection always forgets about essence of things. In the state of contemplation we can see the essence of things, which become obvious on the crossroad of Earth and Heaven, eternal and temporal. That is why Heidegger searches primordial language, which can make obvious essence of things. The things are met only at the middle way, because a human being is a middle way. Thus, phenomenology is laying the middle way. When Kant said about “thing in itself”, he wants to say that speculative philosophy can say nothing about thing, but about an object. As soon as a human being loses the middle, then it begins to reflect, seeing only objects, not things. The task of phenomenology is to bring a human being into the state of contemplation. Contemporary philosophy is speculative and analyzes only objects, because is grounded on reflection. Its sentences are analytic. Scientific cognition and analytic philosophy discover only objects, not things, because they are intentional. Thus, Buber writes that: In our time there predominates an analytical, reductive, and deriving look . . . This look is analytical, . . . since it treats the whole being as put together and therefore able to be taken apart – not only the so-called unconscious which is accessible to relative objectification, but also the psychic stream itself, which can never, in fact, be grasped as an object. This look is a reductive one because it tries to contract the manifold person, who is nourished by the microcosmic richness of the possible, to some schematically surveyable and recurrent structures.4

Beyond the reflection and analysis is thinking. Only common sense reflects, but reason thinks. Does thinking lose common sense? Obviously, no. We only want to say that contemporary science and philosophy are based on reflective common sense. Probably, here is a core of its crisis. Reflective common sense cognizes a surface of reality; it does not pose a question about the essence of reality. Common sense is corporal, because it takes care of its own security. An individual as a physical body with the psychic reactions on the exterior irritants preserves himself as body. Here is the logic of common sense. Common sense is always intentional, because it strives for objects, which it snatches away from

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space in order to use them. Common sense neutralizes everything that leads a human being upwards. Cognition is grounded on subject-object relation, therefore it is fragmental and partial. Contemplation helps to comprehend a wholeness of subject and object and its common essence. Cognition grasps only outer characteristics of objects. Individual is intentionally connected only with a few objects. Intentional connection is selective; it does not include all variety of objects. So intentional act of cognition is fragmental and cannot comprehend plenitude of reality. It is true that private property emerges on the basis of intentionality. Private property is the closed significative sphere. If an individual comprehends wholeness then he/she does not have a sense to appropriate anything. Therefore intentionality alienates a man from wholeness and makes individuals fragmental. As Buber puts it: Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. The purpose of setting oneself apart is to experience and use, and the purpose of that is “living” – which means dying one human life long.5

Transcendental reduction looks like meditation, but meditation is the observation, which includes all phenomenon of life. In the state of observation you are contemplating wholeness of being. After phenomenological reduction you become transcendental Ego, which is a spring of all senses and all phenomena. In this state Ego becomes stronger; it strengthens its power and nothing will make it to accept others. On the other hand, we can interpret transcendental Ego as an observer, which stands before the observable. In the state of transcendental reduction the observable is a product of transcendental Ego. Husserl in the beginning of his philosophical activity claimed “Back to things themselves!” It is true, that in meditative state we come back to things themselves, that is, to essence. We know about Sartre’s critique of Husserl’s transcendental Ego in the essay The Transcendence of Ego: An existentialist theory of Consciousness. Consciousness does not contain any ego-centered elements. It is spontaneity. If consciousness does not contain any Ego, I and Me, then it is beyond subject and object, which form the intentionality; it is beyond the observer and the observable. Consciousness is non-intentional, because it encloses everything. It is an undivided field, which belongs to world (as a human being is beingin-world, then it cannot separate itself from world). As Robert Kirkpatrick and Forrest Williams put it with regard to this: On this view, the character of the object of any consciousness regains its independence for phenomenological investigation and becomes analyzable in its own right (as in the original phenomenological theory of intentionality).6

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Intentionality comes into being when takes place a division. The division rises, when we objectify world and become egos. As formulated by William Desmond: We need equilibrium beyond objectifying science and idiosyncratic individuality. We need a certain doubling of existential and systematic thinking. This is true task for philosophy as phenomenology of being-between.7

Is there a possibility of non-intentional relations with Other? Such possibility exists, when subject-object relations are overcome. Marcel, Buber, even Sartre try to transcend subject-object relations. It is quite difficult to explain the nature of non-intentional relations, because they represent some kind of wholeness. The wholeness cannot be objected. Here we have deal with mystery (G. Marcel). We agree with Wittgenstein that if we cannot speak about something, then we should be silent. Intentionality which establishes subjectobject relations are ontic, not ontological, in Heidegger’s sense of word. The ontological is more fundamental then the ontic. On the ontological level we can contemplate phenomena themselves. The phenomenon cannot be an object of experience. The contemplation of phenomenon is not experience, because phenomenon is not an object. We can experience only objects. Since Francis Bacon the contemplation is announced as passive. But contemplation as Greek theoreia is the highest level of human being. On contemplative or theoretical level a human being has a pious observation of everything. Wholeness becomes hidden when the observer (Me) and the observable (object) come into being. They are united intentionally. This means, that the observable exists due to the observer. The latter is a source of sense, because it brings sense into the observable. The observer does not allow the observable to reveal itself, to show its own sense. Due to that intentional relation between the observer and the observable, the latter is always an object, but not a phenomenon. Intentional relations are bipolar relations. Every pole of intentional relation considers itself as separated absolute. How can a human being stop to produce bipolar relations? Only if it stops to objectify himself/herself. In the history of philosophy we see many attempts to come to non-objective being, which would be unity of subject and object in Oneness, for instance, in Plato’s and Hegel’s works. But speculative philosophy never comes to it, because: “Thoughts” and “things” are names for two sorts of object, which common sense will always find contrasted and will always practically oppose to each others.8 It is true that speculative philosophy is based on hostile opposition of the subject-object schiasm. This hostile opposition comes from everyday life, which is based on natural attitude. Natural attitude always accepts world as

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object-world and subject as oppositional pole to the object-world. It is not harmony, but the hostile opposition of poles that reciprocally challenge each other to combat. Can we transcend opposition of poles, that is, opposition between subject and object? Can we obtain state which contains neither subject nor object? Even unity of subject and object on transcendental level remains intentional, as philosophers of dialogue have shown. The subject-object division is based on more fundamental division between thought and being. We need new ontology beyond old subject-object ontology. This new ontology will be based on unity of thinking and being, as Parmenides said: “For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be”.9 Parmenides’ words appear strange nowadays, as there is no other ontology except subject-object ontology. Subject cognizes object through representations. It brings into the world its own view of the world. It is well known that Husserl set a task to avoid this subjectivation of cognition with the help of transcendental reduction. As a result of such reduction an individual goes up to the transcendental level, that is, the level of Pure Me. The Pure Me is devoided of any psychic phenomena: emotions, representations, images. The Pure Me or “pure consciousness”, according to Husserl, may be associated with consciousness-power, which does not include any material things (Sri Aurobindo); it may be also associated with Logos, Divine Word, the seed of which is in every heart (Annie Besant); it may be identified with unity of Atman and Brahman as ultimate liberation (Vivekananda); it can be compared to grace of “the poor in spirit” (Jesus Christ). But all these associations, comparisons and identifications do not correspond to the result of transcendental reduction. The ultimate liberation, the grace, the germination of seed in a heart in the state of transcendental reduction is impossible. It is connected with fact that transcendental reduction brings individual to Me, which maintains its power and bids for absoluteness. The Pure Me tends to become its own idol. It remains intentional in its absolute power to attach the significance to phenomena from higher, transcendental point of view. Let us return to Parmenides’ words: “For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be”. These words do not mean identity of thinking and being, that is, that thinking subject is correlative with being as object; Parmenides does not speak of the sameness of subject and object, he does not even speak that subject dissolves in the object. It is impossible to comprehend the meaning of Parmenides’ words in terms of subject-object ontology. Any relations between subject and object cannot reveal meaning of this sentence. Does it mean that we should go beyond dualistic paradigm? If we try to go beyond this subject-object ontology we go up to the transcendental level. As we have mentioned above, this will not bring any changes, because the

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transcendental level constitutes the pure observer, which is in the basis of Empirical Me, that is, in the subject. The transcendental is not the abstract. The transcendental immediately creates Empirical Me. If we speak of the elements of cognition, then the abstract element is not used in the everyday life. For instance, “Commandments of God” are abstract and are not followed in empirical life. An individual may be well-informed about them, but they do not mean anything in his/her life. So the abstract element of cognition is empty. The transcendental element is actually cognizable and gets immediate application in empirical life and professional activity. Thus, the transcendental and empirical are interconnected. The transcendental leads a man out of the state of uncertainty, because it brings some direction into life, but only in the limits of subject-object ontology. That is why the transcendental attitude is pragmatic, that is, it is oriented towards result, which we obtain in the process of selfmaintenance of Pure Me. But this attitude of Pure Me does not overcome the rupture between the given and the ideal. Pure Me tries to get rid of the given; it begins to protest. The conflict between the given and the ideal causes revolutions and wars in the name of ideals of Pure Me. The idealism, which is connected directly with the transcendental level, Pure Me are not sincere but hypocritical, because the majority of idealists who try to maintain purity of Me, its ideals, become dictators and cruel tyrants. Another situation is possible, when on the transcendental level an individual discovers for himself/herself the preconditions of moral order, that is, certain moral principles. A man is creature that submits to the transcendental dimension of everyday life. The transcendental dimension of everyday life forces a man to act morally, so it is repressive. The transcendental causes are the moral imperatives (Kant). Kant supposed that a man becomes mature, when he/she submits to the moral imperative: “Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation.”10 The transcendental level establishes the moral order. Thus self-willed man becomes a man of good will, so far as he/she overcomes the improvidence of his/her own behaviour. When we speak about the transcendental conditioning of life, we mean that it is constitutive for experience and makes an individual awakened but not conscious.11 In order to become conscious, an individual should understand that, in fact, neither observer nor the observable exists. Consciousness appears when thinking and being are together. Let me give you an example of identity of thinking and being. In the French film “Button Rouge” a man comes into the room, in the middle of which there is a red button. Different phantasies enter the head of this man when he looks at the red button. He imagines that when he pushes it, an explosion follows. He also imagines that this button may be a signal

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for waiter that will bring him dinner etc. Finally he decides to push the button and what happens? The button switched on the light. The individual gives reign to his imagination in this situation bringing into it something impossible. Thus images, representations, associations, opinions separate an individual from being. When thinking and being are together, then there is a clear vision of the truth: a simple button for switching on the light. We have already mentioned that thinking is thoughtless, while thinking and being are together; in this case thinking does not include any images, it does not make any associations, it does not trace any analogies, it does not compare anything. And Parmenides, not without reason, names this way – the way of truth. Because the truth is that the red button serves for turning on the light, and that is its only function. Otherwise, an individual goes the way of assumption, opinion. We may conclude that cognition obtains knowledge, assumptions because it is based on the subject-object ontology, which takes its origin in the transcendental sphere. The transcendental sphere is a domain, which gives the possibility of subject-object division a priori, though, in fact, there is no such division. This sphere makes it possible to mould one’s views, since it refers a subject which views the world to an object. Pay your attention to the fact that Kant in his works does not mention the truth; he writes only about knowledge which is formed as a result of synthesis of a priori commonsensual schemes and sense data. In the words of Kant: Thus, the schemata of the pure conceptions of the understanding are the true and only conditions whereby our understanding receives an application to objects, and consequently significance. Finally, therefore, the categories are only capable of empirical use, inasmuch as they serve merely to subject phenomena to the universal rules of synthesis, by means of an a priori necessary unity (on account of the necessary union of all consciousness in one original apperception); and so to render them susceptible of a complete connection in one experience.12

Simultaneously, in the practical sphere the moral imperative is proclaimed as the law of behaviour. For transcendental philosophy the truth is “thing in itself”, that is why Kant does not mention it. But the question arises: why did ancient Greeks consider the truth to be unhidden? Because thinking and being are identical. So, we may conclude that man does not think and he/she is not Homo sapiens. The truth is not knowledge that appears on the basis of full or partly transcendental synthesis of commomsensual schemes and sense data. It is this transcendental synthesis that hides the truth and prevents from the contemplation of it. The majority of scholars consider that thinking consists of representations, opinions and images, but it is not thinking, which is not being. How can we name the thinking, which excludes representations, opinions and images? It is contemplation. What can we contemplate? The truth, which is not conditioned by anything. It merely is (is derives from to be).

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When an individual contemplates the truth then the division between “practical” and “theoretical” knowledge does not appear. Because the truth is simultaneously an action. Thus the truth liberates an individual from doubts, hesitation, from the division into “theory” and “practice”. The contemplation of truth makes an individual conscious. What is consciousness in esotericism? The consciousness does not need the observer and the observable, that is, the subject and the object. We can compare phenomenology and esotericism only in those limits, in which phenomenology tries to overcome the rupture between Self and world, tries to come back to thing themselves, that is, to the sense and the truth, which is the same for Gods, angels and men: “What is true is absolutely, intrinsically true: truth is one and the same, whether men or non-men, angels or gods apprehend and judge it.”13 In other aspects they differ, because phenomenology stops on the transcendental level, meanwhile as esotericism goes ahead, to the transcendent level, where the strange things happen, which seem to be absurd for transcendental phenomenology and naturalistic sciences. For example, the contemplation without the observer and the observable, the thinking and being are the same things, the wholeness, which does not include neither subject nor object. I would not like to make categorical conclusion, as there is a certain task for an individual, the task of development. We can suppose that human being is unfinished being. Thus the transcendental level of cognition is transitional. But nobody can force an individual to develop. The phenomenology may discover the structure of individual up to the transcendental level and shows conditioning of our behaviour and knowledge, the mode of reflection where there is no freedom. And if an individual wants to remain on this level this is up to him/her. But those of us who decide to go ahead, should understand that freedom is not given gratis; it demands the radical changes and the one, who is afraid of them will not go further then the transcendental level. Philosophy Department at Lviv Polytechnic National University

NOTES 1 2 3 4

Martin Buber (1970), Introduction Walter Kaufmann and trans. Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 55. Immanuel Kant, http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/cprrn10.txt. Martin Heidegger (1962), trans. Macquarrie J. and Robinson E., p. 39. Martin Buber (1965), ed. Maurice Friedman and trans. Maurice Friedman and Ronald Gregor Smith, pp. 80–81. 5 Martin Buber (1970), Introduction Walter Kaufmann and trans. Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 112.

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Translator’s Introduction in Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness, translated and annotated with an introduction by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (New York: Octagon Books, 1972), p. 22. 7 William Desmond (1995), p. 45. 8 William James (1912), p. 1. 9 Parmenides, http://www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/parmenides/parmenides.on.nature.php. 10 Immanuel Kant, http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/critique-of-practical-reaso.txt. 11 We make difference between the notions of “awakeness” and “consciousness”. When a man does not sleep he/she is awake, that is, he/she is able to perceive the objects of the world and himself/herself as a subject that confronts these objects. But notion of “consciousness” means the overcoming of this confrontation and the perception of wholeness which is beyond subject-object relations. 12 Immanuel Kant, http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/cprrn10.txt. 13 Edmund Husserl (2000), trans. J. N. Findlay with a new Preface by Michael Dummett and edition with a new Introduction by Dermot Moran, p. 79.

REFERENCES Buber, M. The Knowledge of Man (New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1965). Buber, M. I and Thou (New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970). Desmond, W. Being and the Between (Albany, State University of New York Press, 1995). Heidegger, M. Being and Time (New York, Harper & Row, 1962). Husserl, E. Logical Investigations (London and New York, Routledge, 2 vols., Vol. 1, 2000). James, W. Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York, Longmans, 1912). Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/cprrn10.txt Kant I. Critique of Practical Reason. http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant/critique-of- practicalreason.txt Parmenides. On Nature. http://www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/Parmenides/parmenides.on. nature.php Sartre, J.-P. The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness (New York, Octagon Books, 1972).

PAWEŁ MALATA

TWO DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN BEING IN KARL JASPERS’PHILOSOPHY–EXISTENCE AND HERMENEUTICS

ABSTRACT

Beginning with outlining the basis of Jaspers’ philosophical anthropology, I focus in this report on a not well-known motif in his philosophy making reference to the connection between a human being as an existence and as an interpreter of cultural codes in the hermeneutical meaning. These codes named by Jaspers’ as The Ciphers of Transcendence have priority in his philosophy of culture. Self-discovering of a human being as an existence must be accompanied by a statement referring to his presence in the world of culture. Cultural subjectivity became a part of his nature. I am trying to present how this influences his existential activity in Jaspers’ philosophy. At the end I draw a conclusion as to the possible meta-philosophical meaning of Jaspers most important work “Der philosofische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung” in the context of his own theory of The Ciphers of Transcendence. The key idea of Jaspers’ philosophy is the idea of ‘existence’ which according to him, is peculiar only for a human modus of being. Existence as an unobjectivable source of subjectivity is the appropriate foundation of subjectivity. The Nucleus of subjectivity which is existence, must remain unknown because it cannot be presented as an object before comprehending the subject of epistemology and objectively set opposite to a subject. The “hiatus” characteristic for existential thinking, through which a human being recognize his own status as separated from an objective world, causing a need for searching a source of his authentic nature. Designed for freedom a human being searches his destiny and source of his freedom, which implies a necessity of taking attitude to the world of objects. Proper subject independent of the object recognizes his own authentic nature as a place where his “spring” can be realized in existential event named by Jaspers as “jump” or “spring”. Comprehension of our nature taking place in a front of “border situations”. A “jump” is a sign of symbolical transformations in which we achieve a status of self-knowledge.

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Apart from the objective dimension, “border situations” such as death, suffering and solitude in which an empiric human being meets his end, have a double meaning. First is the situation when human nature is being put on trial, secondly the impossibility of creating an appropriate idea for those situations. In border situations positive science shows its helplessness. A human being is driven to despair, devotes himself to the world of objects and considering himself as a part of nature, or decides on self-transcending of his empiric, surfaced nature and enters into contact with Transcendence through choice of freedom (which reminds a “step in darkness” in Kierkegaard version of existentialism). Common decision is the choice between two objective aims. Freedom is decision of self-standing, is choice of myself. In order to get a response, an existence unaware of its authentic nature must enter into contact with Transcendence. In the world of object there is no place for freedom1 that statement of Jaspers indicates that we are considering freedom as a state of being inside the sphere of free self-standing. Jaspers gets the idea of freedom derived from Schopenhauer tractatus “About freedom of human will”.2 From that point of view the clue of freedom is not in what we choose but in the very fact of choosing. Freedom already exists in problematisation of the objective world. An existence is a trans-historical peculiarity of a human being which expresses an ability to establishing in being. As a Jaspers student, outstanding philosopher Paul Ricoeur writes Existence is desire and effort of being3 that differs in conception of a human self from a pure cognitive subject. Existential freedom is incomprehensible, that is there is no appropriate idea for this on the level of epistemology. Freedom takes place in the inner space of auto-determination and the reference of surmising and estimating of an outside reality, which we can affirm or negate. Freedom only “exists” in taking choice as an expression of will of selfstanding in being. The inner choice is an expression of consciousness of that, which through my decisions I am not only active in the world but also create myself, my “essence” in a historical continuity. Freedom is given, but not as an accomplished gift rather like a task of auto-creation which stands before me. That attribute is completed by an instinct of searching for a general sense of presence in the world, which is determined by “feeling of nothingness inside me” which reveals in border situations. That second “conatus” is according to Jaspers, also essential for human being. On existence in its historical realization lurk two traps named by Jaspers expressis verbis as a threat of “lost in abyss”.4 From one side, which is the above mentioned consideration an existence by itself as a part of the objective world, from another “blind rush” of a human existence resigning from attempt of finding meaning outside itself, only self-determined in historical dimension by an arbitral decision. A condition of

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getting freedom is enter in contact with Transcendence which is sense-giving. A contact with Transcendence in order to prevent human freedom and tearing apart facture of reality must be mediated. Jaspers in spite of being a believer, rejects the possibility of Revelation in literal meaning as incompatible with the liberty of choice. Jaspers excluded the possibility of Revelation also from reason – that put Transcendence under rigor of the objective world and annuls freedom in a front of “stronger reality” of Transcendence. That in historical dimension this cannot take place. It is done in the medium of The Ciphers of Transcendence. A Cipher can be an every artefact of culture born from a human during his historical activity of culture creation. The most important part of the “Kingdom of Ciphers” are key-conceptions extracted from religion, mythology and philosophy referring to general meaning of human presence in the world and deciding of ultimate questions (Jaspers favorite example is biblical parabola about Hiob). Natural carriers of the Ciphers of Transcendence are symbols or myths as symbols expanded in time.5 According to Ricoeur thanks to symbols a human discovers himself as self-knowledge, as interpreter, using symbols to recognize his nature as interpreting through the “shuffling of mortal coil” of subjectivity. But there are three important differences between symbols and ciphers. Ciphers as condensed symbols, from its own nature are “selfexceeding”.6 The ciphers including component of infinity and their meaning is unexhausted. Cichowicz comparing Ricoeur and Jaspers and referring to Tillich describes them as similar to natural living being which live their own lives7 and the most important distinction difference: reader of ciphers is not epistemological, cognitive subject but historical situated existence. Ciphers are directed to a historical realizing existence and in its specific nature are intelligible only for an existence. They are “suspended”, opened, always ready to be fulfiled by the living marrow of an existence. Ciphers are points of orientation through I decide about myself and my position in the face to the world. They are guiding line in the inner sphere of activity. Ciphers are dignified,8 only symbols nobilited to the status of The Ciphers of Transcendence are able to exponing what is an ultimate for human being, “conjure” Transcendence and express in the form of speech directed to an existence. Jaspers often use a term “Speech of Ciphers”. A cipher is a tool which is used for directing from an unobjectivable existence to Transcendence. In Jaspers opinion a self-consciousness can be generated only in the immanency. Ciphers for an existence have the same function like objects for a consciousness, they determine natural context of co-appearing. We think in the split object-subject, in that polarization neither an existence nor Transcendence doesn’t have correspondent phenomenon, instead they have analogon, which

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for existence is freedom, for Transcendence – ciphers. Analogon is a form of symptom in the real world. The Relationship between an intentional object opposed to an epistemological subject is relevant to the relationship between an existence and its “objective correlate” – ciphers. Ciphers intensify my consciousness of being myself, they can be included through participation by my existence. Introjection of our individual historical existence in the knot of the ciphers. Metaphorically expressing is to see universal in particular and particular in universal. An aim of conception of The Ciphers of Transcendence takes advantage of the positive science for the “consolidation in freedom” instead of lost in the world of objects and is acknowledged as part of the objective world, being submitted to its rights. As an effect of process of transcending through ciphers, we achieve a point of “living in the Kingdom of Ciphers” which marks changing of a quality of our existence in which, all the world of culture get meaning for us, talking to us in a medium of ciphers. The Kingdom of Ciphers is a place of meeting over history, between “naked” existences in the common relationship to Transcendence. This is a fundamental paradox of Jaspers’ philosophy: to achieve unconditional state of an existence, in which we are inside depended only on Transcendence, we have to entrance an initial process such as in the hermeneutical circle acquiring and recreating new patterns of thinking and inner activity. Self-transcending, when we have found ourselves in a sphere of cultural conexistence and aquisited an experience of other existences, undertaking of possibilities showing by them and realizing during a creative interpretations can widen our own existence. Existence fulfils itself in a movement of decoding and recreating The Ciphers of Transcendence. The hermeneutical circle reveals here as participation in The Ciphers in which an existence discovers itself and through recreated patterns of self-realizations become conscious of his own status as existence and gain field of choice for inner activity. Existence by overcoming these patterns become subjectived in the meaning of “The Embracing”, recognizing nature of freedom as decisive reference to the world. A search in the world of symbols for The Ciphers of Transcendence is an adventure of thinking which opening us on infinity. The Main role plays here Transcending Ideas. To recognize its own nature as freedom, an existence through hermeneutical investigations of patterns of a engaged thinking and inner activity use The Ciphers in intention to liberate itself from fetters of world outlooks (die Weltanschauung). Every philosophy and a world outlook based on, operates special category, named by Jaspers as The Embracing (Die Umgreifende). That is ultimate point of reference, which is impossible to transcend within conception, for instance, substance in Spinoza philosophy, matter in Marxism,

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that is final “denominator” of thinking. That category is overcoming by The Ciphers in the shapes of Transcending Ideas in an example given by Jaspers himself, idea of personal God in Eckhart’s mysticism transcended in the direction of un-personal godness (das Gottheit). Transcendence in this aspect is The Embracing of Allembracings or The Allembracing (Die Allumgreifende). This is not the idea for a cognitive consciousness but a correlate for an existence which liberates from fetters of a concrete world outlook. Transcendence as “The Embracing of all Embracings” is containing being and nothingness similar to “Seyn” in the philosophy of Heidegger, evolves from itself the world and us, as a place of a polarization of subjectivity and objectivity. Nescio ergo arbitrio – that could be epitome of a connection between knowledge and an existence in Jaspers’ philosophy. History of a subject as an existence is a process of achieving its own “spring” which is Transcendence (through transcending in the World of Ciphers). Existence is continually open possibility which cannot be actualized without Transcendence. Lux et Splendor9 – light and shining, that scholastic metaphor is very accurate to describe relationship between Transcendence and Existence in Jaspers’ Philosophy. Procession and conversion (exit and return) “comprehensio” as a term of comprehension on the level of thinking mirrors that process of exit and return in reflections from and to Transcendence, which is as epistemology doubling ontology. If existence is a spring of subjectivity, Transcendence is unreachable in an historical dimension horizon which reveals the world as objectived with opposition to the world as The Embracing – an indirect form of appearing of Transcendence. Freedom is a temporal phenomenon. An existence in his temporal dimension as freedom aspirate to overcoming himself in front of Transcendence. In historical aspect it is impossible except by aberration – a variant of inappropriate “Fall” in the world of objects, when an existence annuls itself and considers himself as a part of the world of objects, which means aquisition defined world outlook and give away freedom which causes self-objectivation. Existence owing to its outword nature intend to fulfils its possibilities in Transcendence. An ultimate aim of his philosophy, Jaspers saw in so-called “up-clearing”. An aim of up-clearing is neither project of being, nor possession of knowledge as a effect of thinking but a methodical awaring of being Awaring is like a suspension which liberates that what is “sui generis” unconditional, in which a distraction from a basis is accomplished until the liberate status of suspension is not achieved in the world related only to unique support in Transcendence. At the end there is no support, no rule only suspension of thinking in a bottomless space versus asecuring in a system of thinking in which we hide and to which we are submitted. We remain rulers of our thinking, to be open for Transcendence and experienced owing to it, lack

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of condition in the world.10 Philosophy of Existence is direction of thinking which use and overcome a positive knowledge in order to a human being could become himself.11 The last task is to demonstrate the distinction between common relativism and a statement of Jaspers. In relativism points of view are changeable and the only criterion remains practice of living which arise from the world of objects and conceptions are only the claims of intellect. In Jaspers version of existentialism all conceptions, specially those originally formated in “epoch of Axis”, respective destiny of an human being and status of the world sustain its meaning with restrictions of becoming only a necessary step for existence in achieving itself. Concluding, we should point out the essential novum in the philosophy of Jaspers, which is the attempt of speculative obtaining Transcendence through the method of existential extrapolation. Transcendence is “essential” affined to an existence in its “abysmal”(das Abgrund) and its impossibility to be objectived. That what is the Embracing in an existence, in aspect of its ability to transcend all ideative horizons is corresponding on the side of Transcendence with retracting from ideative embracing. A metaphilosophical significance of Jaspers opus magnum “Der Philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung” is obvious. He drew in this work a project of reinterpretation all of deed of human spirit as a specific existential introduction. “Der Philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung” has a task of showing all achievements of metaphysics as a sui generis propedeutic for living historical existence in its process of obtaining itself. The last question remains to be answered, what is the status of Jaspers’ conception in self-referencial context of The Ciphers of Transcendence. I surmise that it is an existential and philosophical introduction creating context for different re-reading history of philosophy. Jaspers is occupying defined metaphysical position, which is only the beginning point in the way of thinking, on which subjectivity plays its role between two poles – an existence and Transcendence or individual “arche” and overindividual “telos” (using exact metaphor formed by Paul Ricoeur12 ). Within the game of these two poles of subjectivity plays a thinking adventure of human kind which is called Philosophy. Department of Philosophy of Culture, Jagiellonian University, Krakow

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NOTES 1

Karl Jaspers (1956, p. 183). Arthur Schopenhauer (2006, p. 37). 3 Paul Ricoeur (1969, p. 200). 4 Karl Jaspers (1956, p. 178). 5 Paul Ricoeur (1968, p. 153). 6 Louis Dupre (1972, p. 121). 7 Stanisław Cichowicz (2002, p. 42). 8 Karl Jaspers (1999, p. 187). 9 Ibidem (p. 7). 10 Herbert Schnadelbach (1984, p. 246). 11 Ibidem (p. 245). 12 Paul Ricoeur Existence and Hermeneutique in ”Le Conflit des Interpretations”, Ed. du Seuil Paris 1969 “Egzystencja i Hermeneutyka”, polish edition wyd 2 Warsaw PAX 1985, chosen and introduction by Stanisław Cichowicz, translation Ewa Bie´nkowska (et al.) (p. 204). 2

REFERENCES 1. Cichowicz, S. O refleksje˛ konkretna˛ (Danzig, Słowo Obraz Terytoria, 2002). 2. Dupre, L. The Other Dimension. A search for the Meaning of Religious Attitudes (New York, Doubleday et Company, 1972), “Inny Wymiar” polish edition Znak Cracow 1991, translation Sabina Lewandowska. 3. Jaspers, K. Existenzphilosophie (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter and Co. Verlag, 1956), “Filozofia Egzystencji” polish edition PIW Warsaw 1989, chosen and translated by Stanisław Tyrowicz. 4. Jaspers, K. Der Filosofische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung, “Wiara filozoficzna wobec Objawienia”, polish edition Znak Cracow, 1999, translation Grzegorz Sowi´nski. 5. Ricoeur, P. Existence and Hermeneutique. in “Le Conflict des Interpretations”, Ed. du Seuil Paris 1969, “Egzystencja i Hermeneutyka”, polish edition chosen and introduction by Stanisław Cichowicz Warsaw PAX 1985, translation Ewa Bie´nkowska (et al.). 6. Schnadelbach, H. German Philosophy 1831–1933 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984) published by Suhrkamp “Filozofia w Niemczech 1831–1933”, polish edition Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN Warsaw 1992, translation Krystyna Krzemieniowa. 7. Schopenhauer, A. Uber die Freiheit des menschlisen Willens, “O wolno´sci ludzkiej woli”, polish edition Zielona Sowa Cracow 2006, translation Adam Stogbauer. 8. Ricoeur, P. Finitude et Culpabilite in vol.2 “Le simbolisme du Mal”, Paris Gallimard 1968, “Symbolika Zła”, polish edition Warsaw PAX 1986, translation Stanisław Cichowicz.

RONNY MIRON

THE GUILT WHICH WE ARE: AN ONTOLOGICAL APPROACH TO JASPERS’IDEA OF GUILT

ABSTRACT

This paper suggests a phenomenological reading of Karl Jaspers’ writings regarding the issue of guilt. This reading aims to extricate from them an ontological understanding of guilt, at the centre of which stand the various appearances of guilt and not the subjective awareness of its experience. The discussed ontology of guilt does not exist in Jaspers’ thinking in its entirety, but rather is only implicitly interwoven in his ideas – some of them referring to the issue of guilt, but spread over his writings in a elementary and not systematic manner, while others, no less central to the phenomenology of guilt, are not exposed by him as referring to the idea of guilt, but according to the suggested interpretation are relevant to the ontology of guilt (for example, the idea of historicity). Although the suggested phenomenological-ontological reading contains a certain reconstruction of Jaspers’ ideas, the reconstruction itself serves only as a means for a thematic crystallization of a possible ontology of guilt based upon his thinking but not realized by him as he rejected the very idea of ontology from the outset.

INTRODUCTION

This article offers a phenomenological reading of Jaspers’ writings with a view to extricating his ontological approach to guilt. First, it is necessary to explain the methodology and the way Jaspers’ writings will be read and interpreted here. This will provide background for the specific phenomenological reading of Jaspers’ approach. The article will then expose and explicate three different manifestations of guilt that appear in Jaspers’ thought. The ontology of guilt discussed below is not treated explicitly in Jaspers’ writings, but is implicit in his philosophy. Some of his ideas refer directly to the issue of guilt, but they are undeveloped and scattered among his writings. There are also other ideas which the proposed interpretation shows are relevant to guilt and will refer to them as its manifestations. I contend that 229 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 229–251. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_15, 

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Jaspers’ thought expresses notions of guilt, but he identifies only some of them with guilt, and he does not explain the transitions between the various manifestations of guilt. The proposed phenomenological-ontological reading partially reconstructs Jaspers’ ideas, but the reconstruction is not the purpose of this article. It is only a means of formulating thematically the phenomenology of guilt derivable from his thought, which was not realized by Jaspers himself. Readers familiar with Jaspers’ writings deserve an explanation regarding the nature of the proposed project, since Jaspers is known in the history of philosophy as one of the existentialist thinkers who explicitly confronted the issue of guilt. Jaspers does indeed discuss it in various contexts, as I shall now demonstrate. In Psychology of World Views, guilt is discussed in the context of the perception of subjectivity. It appears there as an organon for the formation of a world view which itself was not constituted in relation to the reality external to the individual. In Jaspers’ mature existentialist philosophy, guilt is presented as a human experience which, when dealt with, helps formulate self-understanding. Guilt is also presented elsewhere as a “boundary situation” (Grenzsituation), along with other extreme forms of human experience, such as death, chance and suffering. In this context, Jaspers proposes a distinction between “avoidable guilt” and “inevitable guilt”. The former can be avoided by adopting a normative moral code of behavior. Inevitable guilt, the main subject of his discussion, relates to the foundations of human existence, and as such cannot be avoided.1 The issue of guilt as one of the boundary situations goes beyond the limits of Jaspers’ philosophy of Existenz. It is related to his conception of Being. This is not restricted to immanent human existence, but recognizes the independent existence of a transcendent Being towards which the inevitable guilt is directed.2 In any case, even in his philosophy of Existenz, Jaspers does not grant real and concrete reality any weight or significance with regard to guilt. The issue of guilt, then, although continuously discussed in Jaspers’ writings, does not touch upon the connection between its various aspects. Moreover, from a phenomenological viewpoint, Jaspers’ references to guilt raise a problem, since they do not confront the basic fact that guilt is the individual’s way of relating to the other, to the norms and moral approaches acceptable in society and to events in concrete reality. An answer to these problems appears to be provided in The Question of Guilt, where Jaspers presents the range of manifestations of guilt in the context of historical reality with a reference, albeit minimal, to the criminal and moral aspect of guilt. Furthermore, in addition to his reference to the real German

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context, Jaspers refers in this work to the subjective and metaphysical aspects that had appeared in his earlier works. Thus, one cannot conclude from the perception of guilt arising from The Question of Guilt that Jaspers changed his approach or that he thought that dealing with concrete reality was incompatible with discussing these aspects. In The Question of Guilt, he refers to the guilt of the Germans as individuals and as members of the German nation, but also presents guilt as “the guilt of our humanity”, an indisputable datum of human culture.3 However, it seems that the difficulty in formulating a thematic concept of guilt containing the spectrum of components of guilt scattered in Jaspers’ writings is most tangible in this work. The lack of coherent integration between them is particularly prominent at the point where he collects all of them together. The relation between the guilt experienced by an individual and the guilt experienced by the member of a collective is unclear, as is the connection between these two experiences and the metaphysical dimensions of guilt. In this article I would like to present the three main dimensions where human beings experience guilt – the individual, the collective and the metaphysical. Each of these dimensions in Jaspers’ perception of guilt acquires its full significance only within a complete phenomenological explication drawn from Jaspers’ entire oeuvre. Guilt as the individual’s experience may be understood in terms of the explication of the perception of subjective particularity that Jaspers dealt with in all his writings, while guilt as an experience of the collective is elucidated using aspects of a comprehensive view of Jaspers’ philosophy of Existenz. This is a framework in which his perception of subjectivity matured and where various expressions of the individual’s transcendence of his individuality are revealed. The deeper significance of the metaphysical manifestation of experiencing guilt, where it appears as a boundary situation, will become clear in the context of Jaspers’ perception of Being, with the notion of a transcendent Being as a horizon of Existenz. This explication anchors the three manifestations of guilt in Jaspers’ entire work. Furthermore, the proposed interpretation will seek to examine the relation between the three manifestations of guilt from a genetic phenomenological viewpoint, and thus the discussion will go beyond the framework of Jaspers’ thinking. To begin with the first manifestation, the individual’s experience of guilt has an evident and immediate nature grounded in the world of real life. The guilt is first and foremost that of the individual but it does not constitute an experience closed within its own boundaries. Elucidating the individual’s experience of guilt, which leads one beyond one’s own boundaries, will reveal the

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second manifestation, the collective horizon contained in it. This complements the discussion of the individual dimensions of guilt. So far as the ontology of guilt is concerned, the first circle, encompassing the individual’s experience, exists within the collective social being that surrounds it. This determines what guilt is, and accordingly marks the boundaries between guilty and not guilty. It also determines the field within which the addressees of the guilt – other humans – are located. The social framework shows that guilt is not just a category through which individuals refer to themselves, and which reveals them as beings yearning for self-understanding in existence. It is also a category that mediates between the individual and others. However, even the collective experience cannot contain itself, and its elucidation leads to the third, most encompassing, circle of the experience of guilt, the metaphysical manifestation. As in any phenomenological explication, completing the movement gives new significance to the previous manifestations of guilt. The different dimensions of guilt can indeed appear in human experience independently of each other, but the ontology of guilt deriving from them all reveals that they are different stages in dealing with guilt as a basic datum of human existence. Thus, the three stages of the phenomenology of guilt should all be seen as existing in the ontological space of inevitable guilt. This means that it is found in the manifestations of existence that are not the result of the individual’s mental constitution but rather the datum into which the individual is thrown. At the same time, the unavoidable nature of this guilt is not revealed all at once – neither in existence nor in the philosophical explication – in each of its manifestations. Instead, the inevitability of guilt is gradually revealed as the experience of guilt deepens. At the more mature metaphysical stage of experience, when guilt appears as a boundary situation, the inevitability of guilt reaches the peak of its clarity. That each of the three stages can appear independently shows that the experience of guilt is, by its very nature, inexhaustibile. The ontology of guilt connects and elucidates the various stages, thereby making the human experience of guilt significant. The process of phenomenological explication is reflexive in nature. On the one hand it serves as a mirror for the experience of guilt, gradually revealing both the various stages and the dynamic leading from one stage to the next. On the other hand it extricates guilt’s inevitability already present implicitly in the first manifestation. Following this explanation of the nature of the phenomenological reading of Jaspers’ thought, let us now examine in detail each of the three manifestations of guilt derivable from his writings.

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THE EXPERIENCE OF INDIVIDUAL GUILT

Guilt anchored in the individual’s subjective experience is presented as the first manifestation in The Question of Guilt. The individual nature of guilt is clearly expressed in the following words, bearing the signs of a personal confession: We Germans differ greatly in the kind and degree of our participation in, or resistance to, NationalSocialism. Everyone must reflect on his own internal conduct, and seek his own peculiar rebirth in this German crisis. Another great difference between individuals concerns the starting time of this inner metamorphosis . . . we Germans cannot be reduced to a common denominator. We must keep an open mind in approaching each other from essentially different starting points. (GG, 104).

The basic premise regarding the distinctiveness of individuals leads inevitably to the recognition in principle of the range of attitudes towards the Nazi regime that typified German society. Jaspers states that: “In this kind of talking none is the other’s judge; everyone is both defendant and judge at the same time” (GG, 14). Moreover, the individual is not only the addressee of the guilt, he is also its deliverer: “the guilt question is more than a question put to us by others, it is one we put to ourselves” (GG, 28). So, guilt has a framework of self-reference with the range of emotional and mental skills involved in the formulation of self-consciousness. Indeed, a demand from an external source – other people, the state laws or general moral norms – affects the individual and the formation of his personality. However, the arena in which people deal with guilt is limited by the boundaries of the individual’s self-reference. Thus, reference to the external dimensions relating to guilt is delayed at the individual stage in favor of the experience (Erlebnis) of guilt with its particular aspects. Some of these cannot be communicated and objectivized, since the faults that awaken guilt appear to the individual as aimed at him specifically. At the individual stage, guilt does not appear as a general human experience or as connected to a concrete historical reality but only as tangential to it, and independent of general criteria or standards. Further study shows that the perception of individuality guiding Jaspers’ approach to the individual experience of guilt is drawn from the concept of the subject developed in the early stages of his thought. The recognition that the individual’s world is particular and mostly inaccessible to formal knowledge and objective thought as such began to develop already in his early writings dealing with psychopathology. In this spirit, he argued that the human being’s individuality places a boundary (Grenze) that cannot be crossed or overcome using the objective criteria taken from the conceptual system of

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science (AP1, 1–2). Therefore, the possible contribution of psychopathology to the understanding of people suffering from mental diseases was essentially limited. This approach continued to develop in The Psychology of World Views (1919), dealing with the description and elucidation of individual experiences through which people formulate their self-perception. In this context, Jaspers argued that the infinite variety, reflected in the experiences of people in reality and in the ways they perceive themselves, does not allow the philosopher to achieve by mere observation an exhaustive and complete understanding of the person’s individual Being. In this spirit, he declared: We are not searching for the frequent or the average . . . We are searching for the specific patterns even if they are rather rare. Our area is . . . the material that comes into being when we see what we notice in the historical experience, in the living internal [experience] and in the [one] present in the peculiar (Eigentümliche), in itself unique, even if this only seems and is built as typical. (PW, 14).

Jaspers’ interest in the particular aspects of subjectivity reached its full development in the philosophy of Existenz, at whose heart was the requirement “to be from the source of my selfhood” (Ph 2, 6).4 He argued that the constant gap between people’s Being and the contexts in which they participate (Ph 2, 32) greatly restricts the ability to discuss it using objective tools and justifies the perception of an individual as a Being whose particular elements dominate it. As he phrased it: If I want to know what I am, then my objective existence presents itself, in the thinking moves I experience, as a scheme of my Being. I perceive myself inside it, but I experience that I am not completely identical with it: what thus becomes an object cannot attain absolute identity with me myself, since in my expansion I must lose myself in this scheme. (Ph 2, 32).5

This brief review of the perception of selfhood in Jaspers’ writings clearly shows the dominance of his interest in the particular aspects of selfhood compared with its objective dimensions. The perception of subjectivity as a particular Being is essential to the understanding of the stage of the individual experience of guilt in Jaspers’ thought, where the extent of its detachment from the surrounding reaches its maximum. Here this perception explains the lack of communication typical of the appearance of guilt at this stage and of its view of guilt as a type of self-reference. In other words, the individual notes in this context not only the field where the guilt appears, but also the context where it has meaning and significance. The objective or formal viewpoint, whose boundaries are determined mainly by the collective, is marginalized due to its inaccessibility to the individual’s subjective Being. However, it is impossible to refer to the individual while suspending the external contexts in which he acts, since the individual’s own experience takes

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place within a concrete field. The individual is always this particular individual, located in a particular environment and place, connected to a specific history and to people with whom he shares a common existence. As one penetrates inwards to subjectivity, the spaces from which its surrounding subjectivity appears are projected. Jaspers does not present the insufficiency of the experience of guilt at the individual stage explicitly. In practice, this insufficiency arises from his discussion of the four concepts of guilt in The Question of Guilt: criminal, political, moral and metaphysical.6 The first three are attributed mainly to individuals, but the individual’s viewpoint is not what determines the fact of guilt. Instead it is objective criteria independent of the individual that do this. Thus, criminal guilt applies to those who perform “acts capable of objective proof and violate unequivocal laws” (GG, 31). Political guilt “involve[s] the deeds of statesmen and of the citizenry of a state, result[s] in my having to bear the consequences of the deeds of the state whose power governs me . . .. Everybody is co-responsible for the way he is governed” (GG, 31). Moral guilt relies on recognition of the individual’s responsibility for what he does as an individual, or for what he avoids doing, an avoidance whose results are undesirable from his point of view (GG, 31–32).7 Apparently, the situation is different regarding metaphysical guilt, which is not determined by objective or formal criteria. Metaphysical guilt originates in the conscience the individual possesses as part of his Being. Moreover, the individual does not bear this guilt as an autarchic subject but as a human being. Metaphysical guilt originates in “a solidarity among men as human beings that makes each co-responsible for every wrong and every injustice in the world” (GG, 32); “responsibility [that] is the willingness [of each individual] to take the guilt upon himself” (Ph 2, 248). Jaspers tried to make this argument concrete when he stated that this solidarity is breached “if I was present at the murder of others without risking my life to prevent it”. If these things happened and I witnessed them, if I survived when someone else was murdered, then I hear a voice that tells me: “that if I live after such a thing has happened, it weighs upon me as indelible guilt” (GG, 32). It seems that even if metaphysical guilt is an experience of individuals, and like the three other types it is self-referential, its meaning breaks through the boundaries of the individual’s existence, and does not depend on any particular behavior, or its avoidance. Either way, in all forms of the individual’s experience of guilt, he is revealed as insufficient in himself and thus forced to transcend the boundaries of his self-reference. This can be achieved through external objective judgement or through the individual’s attempt to transcend the boundaries of self-reference. Since this transcending becomes inevitable

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for him, it is revealed as a full expression of the individual experience of guilt.8 The perception of the individual as a particular Being, implemented in his approach towards guilt, continued to bother Jaspers throughout his works. It was only in his writings from the early nineteen-thirties onwards that he gradually became aware of its restrictive implications. The perception of the individual is restrictive not only as a starting point for clarifying other philosophical issues his thought was destined to address, but also for the individual’s self-understanding. This awareness is clearly reflected in the following passage: Placing itself absolutely on itself alone is for Existenz the truth of its independence of the reality of time, but this turns into despair for it. It [Existenz] knows itself that by standing completely by itself it must sink into a vacuum. (Ph 3, 4).

Jaspers sought to solve the closedness that the individual’s viewpoint forced on his perception of selfhood by expanding the perspective regarding selfhood. However, his handling of the possible harmful implications of the viewpoint anchored on the individual did not lead Jaspers to completely rejecting the centrality he had granted the individual in his approach. Rather, when discussing selfhood in the philosophy of Existenz and when turning to the issue of guilt, he located the problematic element, the particularity of the individual, whose over-emphasis had contributed to the formulation of the individual in his writings as a solipsistic Being.9 The meaning of this insight in the current context is that the extreme particular perception of the individual imposes upon the experience of guilt a detachment that conceals its inevitability, or more precisely, creates a false appearance of guilt. Jaspers’ discussion of the individual’s attempts to avoid guilt (GG, 74) he is indirectly aware of the ontological distortion entailed in the manifestation of guilt at the individual stage.10 The discourse of escaping guilt raises ethical questions which are not the concern of the current ontological analysis of guilt. Jaspers describes the problem with the experience of guilt by referring to the individuals’ consciousness of the different types of guilt. In this way, he contributes indirectly to the discourse of escaping it, since consciousness can be changed, while guilt cannot. Nevertheless, the problematic of escaping guilt touches upon a significant point for its ontology, since it indicates that the individual manifestation of guilt can be distorted. Beyond the potential for distortion entailed in individual guilt, its ontological representation encounters another basic difficulty. This stems from the fact that it is the very focusing on the individual’s particular characteristics that

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contributes to its concretization. This, in turn, inevitably locates it in the time and place common to the individual and to other people. This is a difficulty typical of the phenomenological discourse based on real human experiences, which requires a constant expansion of the perspective of reference to the human experience in order to achieve an appropriate understanding of it. Thus, the phenomenological explication shows that one cannot reject the external contexts in which the individual operates. The appropriate weight of the individual’s subjective Being in the experience of guilt will be clarified below in the discussion of the next stages, where the individual aims beyond the boundaries of his personal view. Jaspers himself did not suggest an explanation for the transition from the individual stage of experiencing guilt to the next stage, collective guilt. However, his discussion of the possibilities for escaping guilt indirectly laid the infrastructure for this transition, since it was contained in dimensions objective and external to the individual existence, which turned out to be involved in the human experience of guilt. In this context, it is especially important that even when he was aiming to establish the centrality of the individual’s personal Being, in the clarification of guilt and in his philosophy in general, Jaspers did not explicitly reject the relevance of objectivity for understanding the individual’s Being. He only marginalized or suspended it, and thus did not prevent the possibility of breaking out of the solipsistic individuality that was formulated in his discussions of the issue of guilt and elsewhere in his writings.

T H E C O L L E C T I V E S T A G E – T H E G R O U P ’S G U I L T

Two aspects arising from the explication of the individual manifestation of guilt serve as the basic infrastructure, albeit mainly negative, for the second manifestation of guilt, the collective stage. These aspects are the suspension, rather than explicit rejection, of the objective aspects it entailed, and the potential for distortion entailed in the solipsistic manifestation of the individual that conceals the guilt’s inevitability. The collective stage in Jaspers’ ontology of guilt is basically an expanded observation of the individual experience of guilt and not a diminution or devaluation of this experience. More precisely, the collective stage is merely an explication of the context in which individual guilt manifests itself. It is clear that the character of an experience appearing in a context is different from its isolated representation as expressed in the individual stage of the experience of guilt. It is not surprising that only in The Question of Guilt, a work written in connection with concrete reality, did Jaspers discuss the collective aspects entailed

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in the experience of guilt. In the other contexts of his thought, which lack this connection, direct references to this dimension are not to be found. This is not to imply that the experience of individuals is not a real experience of guilt, or that the metaphysical aspects related to guilt are not part of this experience. However, it seems that the collective dimension of the experience of guilt appears especially in relation to a concrete historical situation. Thus, when discussing the guilt of Germans for crimes committed during the Nazi period, he included expressions that indicated that the guilt under discussion was the guilt of those belonging to the German nation as a collective. In this spirit, he described himself as a German among Germans (GG, 11), “who feels concerned by everything growing from German roots” (GG, 79). Jaspers clarified that speaking about Germanness as a characteristic that turns Germans into a collective “is altogether different from making the nation absolute” (GG, 80), and added that “there is no such thing as a people as a whole . . .. One cannot make an individual out of a people. A people cannot perish heroically, cannot be criminal, cannot act morally or immorally; only its individuals can do so. A people as a whole can be neither guilty nor innocent” (GG, 41). In this work, the collective appears as a continuation, expansion and development of the individual’s selfhood, clarified as a Being existing in relation to the human reality surrounding it. As he puts it: The self-analysis of a people in historical reflection and the personal self-analysis of the individual are two different things. But the first can happen only by the way of the second. What individuals accomplish jointly in communication may, if true, become the spreading consciousness of many and then is called national consciousness. (GG, 102).

Not only do the individuals join together to form the collective, the individual also bears the collective within, thus “everyone, in his real being, is the German people” (GG, 80). Moreover, understanding the collectivity as a continuation and expansion of the individual’s experience enables us to observe the collective experience of guilt as a modification of an individual experience, and thus as also limited within its own boundaries: But even more important to us is how we analyze, judge and cleanse ourselves. Those charges from without no longer are our concern. On the other hand, they are the charges from within . . . are the source of whatever self-respect is still possible for us. We must clarify the question of German guilt. This is our own business. (GG, 49).

Thus it transpires that just like the individual, the collective appears in the experience of guilt as a Being to be clarified and examined: “[in Germany] we have no common ground yet” (GG, 11), to the extent that “being German is to me . . . not a condition but a task” (GG, 80); “Common is the non-community”

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(GG, 18); “now that we can talk freely again, we seem to each other as if we had come from different worlds” (GG, 19). Jaspers’ range of references to collectivity in The Question of Guilt indicates the cautious and gradual way in which the immediate experience of guilt anchored in the individual’s Being is directed to the surrounding collective horizons. Jaspers wishes to preserve the individual’s status within the boundaries of the collective. He also wants to ensure that the presence of individuality in the experience of collective guilt will not entail the failings threatening the standing of individuals in the face of guilt. In particular, individuals closing themselves off from other people and the world, thereby potentially distorting the authentic appearance of guilt as inevitable. However, even in The Question of Guilt, the only context referring to the collective stage, Jaspers did not elucidate the transition between the individual stage and the collective stage of guilt. The basic question what makes a group of individuals into a collective is not answered in The Question of Guilt, nor in the other contexts where Jaspers refers to the issue of guilt. Apart from collectivity providing the context for the manifestation of the individual’s experience of guilt, it is not clear what unique quality of experiencing guilt is discovered at the collective stage, nor what is has that the individual’s guilt does not. In my opinion, the answer to both these questions, essential for understanding the collective experience of guilt, is contained in Jaspers’ original idea of historicity (Geschichtlichkeit). Jaspers himself did not link this idea to his perception of guilt, but it throws light on the notion of objectivity as an expansion of individuality. In this idea Jaspers rehabilitates the dimension of objectivity external to the individual and links it to his experience of existence. This concept completes Jaspers’ effort, prior to the appearance of the idea of historicity, to re-examine the possible contribution of recognition of the world’s reality and of formal knowledge to the development of the philosophical perception of selfhood. This had encountered difficulties due to the over-emphasis of its particular elements, which had led to the view of the individual as a solipsistic Being.11 Historicity provides Jaspers’ notion of collectivity with content, beyond the formal features of the common language mentioned in The Question of Guilt (GG, 79), and joins the subjective and objective dimensions, enriching the individual’s manifestation in existence. The idea of historicity was based on the classic Hegelian distinction between the two meanings of the word “history” (Geschichte) in German: history and story.12 The former denotes the objective clarification of the details of an historical event, whose guiding principles serve as a basis for understanding history as a science. The latter, following the formation of the consciousness of the past by people and its use as a basis for self-understanding in the present, expresses

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the subjective meaning of history. A person’s understanding of himself as a historistic Being combines reflection aimed at clarifying the data and objective circumstances of the past with the subjective meaning he grants them. Through these, the person perceives himself as existing in a concrete time and context, and as part of a continuity whose boundaries transcend the boundaries of his individual existence. So, in this context, the individual is manifested as a continuation of earlier forms of existence, and at the same time as a foundation for a future reality that will continue after him (Ph 2, 118–119). Jaspers expressed the connection between the objective and subjective dimensions when he wrote: Here are originally connected in an inseparable way Being and knowledge . . . Without knowledge, meaning a clear perception and being inside it, there is no historistic Being, and without a reality of historicity there is no knowledge. (Ph 2, 119).

However, the distinction between the objective and subjective dimensions of history was not intended to detach and separate them. Quite the opposite: through the concept of historicity, Jaspers sought to harness the mental skills involved in the formation of historical consciousness, mainly aimed at establishing the scientific nature of history as an area of knowledge, to the service of historistic consciousness, to turn it into an integral part of self-consciousness. As he put it: From this historistic (geschichtlichen) source, thehistorical also becomes for the first time really historistic. Without it, it would only mean a particular event attributed to the existence of the present evaluated positively or negatively. However, my theoretical knowledge from history becomes through the whole science of history a function of the possible Existenz, if its contents and images aim themselves at me, face me, demand from me or push me away from them, not only as distant patterns existing as closed within themselves or in other words: if it is acquired to the function of the eternal present of the things that exist within the philosophical-historistic consciousness. (Ph 2, 119–120).

The idea of historicity, it transpires, contained the understanding that historical knowledge itself did not reflect a mere objective generality. The individual’s reflexive turning to historical knowledge causes a fundamental change in himself, as a result of which the general and impersonal element is removed from this knowledge. It now serves as a framework within whose boundaries the person organizes his life story and his self-consciousness as an individual.13 From Jaspers’ viewpoint, the change occurring in historical knowledge as a result of the individual’s turning to it is not perceived as its distortion but as revealing its real significance: “[historical knowledge] proves its power in the ability of its results, to be replaced by real historistic consciousness of the self existing in the present” (Ph 2, 120). In fact, the meeting between the person and

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historical knowledge creates a mutual change. On the one hand, the existential view reveals new and unfamiliar facets of historical knowledge, enriches it and especially reveals its dynamic nature that enables it to turn to the world of present people. On the other hand, the individual’s turning to historical science expands the boundaries of his existence and introduces to it belonging, context and depth. The concept of historicity thus connects the individual to the past and to the knowledge of the past. The knowledge of the past does not take away the individual’s privacy, but bestows upon it a fuller meaning that is not restricted to the boundaries of personal existence. Through the idea of historicity we can now mark out the boundaries of the collectivity in which the experience of guilt appears. This collectivity has two basic features: it indicates the link between the individual and his contemporaries, and it connects him, along with them, to ancestors and future descendants. The objective aspect of history, portrayed in the accumulated knowledge of the past common to members of the collective, and the subjective dimension comprising the range of references of individuals belonging to the collective towards this past, now turn out to be present in any experience of guilt. The absence of the objective dimension at the stage of the individual experience of guilt has now received a real solution from the perspective of the idea of historicity. Questions regarding the injustices done to other humans during my lifetime and the crimes committed by previous generations of the collective with which I identify myself may now be seen to be an integral part of the individual manifestation of guilt. Jaspers’ aim to establish independence between the experience of guilt and individuals’ concrete behavior – an aim apparent already at the stage of individual experience of guilt – now receives additional validity, since the idea of historicity indicates that the person never manifests alone in existence.14 More precisely, the reference point for human existence is anchored in multiplicity, i.e., in society. Indeed, “the effects of natural causes depend also on how man takes them, how he handles them, what he makes out of them” (GG, 85). Moreover, the idea of historicity does not remove the uniqueness of the individual and accordingly claim that in the collective manifestation of guilt the objective dimension is granted priority or greater weight than that of the individual manifestation. In his discussion of the idea of historicity Jaspers referred to the aspects relating to the individual’s consciousness in existence. However with regard to the ontology of guilt it is more important that this idea appears in the description of the way that individuals who have this consciousness are present in existence. In other words, they are manifested as part of a collective and there is objective knowledge referring to them as a collective. Thus, the individual is present in

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the collective and in certain cases may even be an object of knowledge that will be handled with objective tools. However, both the collectivity and the knowledge represent a deviation beyond the manifestation of the individual as such. From a phenomenological viewpoint, the explication of the collective dimensions, including that of the objective aspects entailed in the experience of guilt, reveals no new dimension that did not exist in the individual stage. It elucidates what was contained but not revealed in the individual manifestation of guilt due to the restricted perception at that early stage. More precisely, the two stages of the experience of guilt supplement each other. The personal link to the reality to which the guilt in its individual manifestation refers is joined by another form of linking to reality anchored in objective knowledge, which indicates a Being going beyond the boundaries of private existence. Against the background of the discussion of the idea of historicity, we can now understand Jaspers’ statement in The Question of Guilt: “we have to bear the guilt of our fathers” (GG, 79) as summarizing the concrete stage in his perception of guilt. All the individuals in a certain collective inevitably become guilty, merely by their belonging to the collective. The collective thus indicates the horizon of possibility (Möglichkeit) at the disposal of the individual in existence at a given time. Even if this individual did not express in practice a behavior harmful to others, his own manifestation was saturated in the collective to which he belonged. Thus, being part of the collective, he inevitably bears the guilt. The component of “possibility” in guilt adds a layer to the general trend seeking to detach the experience of guilt from linkage to concrete actions, thus giving another indication of the continuity between the stage of the individual experience of guilt and the collective stage that expands it.15 Jaspers went further and defined guilt itself as a possibility. As he put it: In tracing our own guilt back to its source we come upon the human essence – which in its German form has fallen into a peculiar, terrible incurring of guilt but exists as a possibility in man as such. (GG, 100).

At this point, the dimensions of the particular collectivity to which individuals belong have been expanded, and the experience of the guilt has been directed to a deep element in human Being, an element “which cannot be flatly referred to as our guilt” (GG, 33). This is an element that does not relate to individuals per se or as belonging to a particular collective but to the widest collective imaginable, the one to which all humans belong. This wide space, to which “the inevitable guilt of all, the guilt of human existence” (GG, 34) refers, leads to the metaphysical stage of the experience of guilt.

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T H E M E T A P H Y S I C A L S T A G E – G U I L T A S A “B O U N D A R Y SITUATION”

The metaphysical stage is the third and final manifestation of guilt. The element of possibility in the collective approach established the status of the second stage as intermediate in the experience of guilt. There is a negative facet entailed in this understanding of the collective that separates it from the perception of people and nation in a-priori and absolute terms. Apart from this it has a positive role in relation to the other two stages. First, the perception of collectivity as a possibility of the individual creates continuity with the stage of the individual experience and enables a more complete manifestation of the individual experiencing guilt. Second, the perception of collectivity as a possibility lays the foundation for the experience of guilt going beyond the boundaries of the individual and the group to which he belongs and turning to the widest context in which he participates. Now the experience of guilt appears as the “guilt of human existence” (GG, 34). The realm of the experience of guilt at this stage encompasses human existence as a whole, and thus one cannot mark its starting point or its boundary. As Jaspers wrote: If I knew the beginning of my guilt, it would be limited and preventable; my freedom would be the possibility of preventing it. I would not need to take upon myself anything, not myself in the sense of a self-choice and not existence [Dasein] into which I enter and for which I become responsible in my actions. (Ph 2, 197).16

The absence of clear boundaries of guilt prevents us from noting the lack of the beginning of guilt and from determining the boundary beyond which people no longer experience guilt, since human existence ceases where people do not experience guilt. Now it appears that experiencing guilt as an undefined human possibility – positive or negative – has maximal dimensions, and is therefore inevitable. In other words, the area where guilt manifests itself is coextensive with that of human existence and for this reason a person cannot avoid experiencing guilt. The exhaustion and radicalization of the approach that translates possibility into necessity exists in Jaspers’ conception of boundary situations (Grenzsituation).17 The term “boundary situation” embraces two basic concepts that appear in Jaspers’ philosophical writings in different contexts: “situation” or “situation Being” (Situationsein), and “boundary”. A “situation” that people experience comprises the duality of freedom and necessity. Freedom represents the possibilities for self-realization at the disposal of the Existenz, while necessity includes all the facts and constraints that restrict its ability to act (Ph 1, 1).18 Jaspers used the concept of “situation”, which is significantly narrower than

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that of “world”,19 to express the fundamental insight that people never experience reality as a whole. Humans experience only very limited contexts in which they have freedom but at the same time are subject to restrictions that are not dependent upon them and that reduce reality. The concept of boundary is likewise typified by duality, portraying the limit of the possibilities of human experience and understanding, and at the same time the human desire to go beyond the boundaries of existence and consciousness. As Jaspers said: “every boundary immediately raises the question what lies beyond it” (Ph 1, 45). The duality typical of both the components of the concept “boundary situation” expresses the basic pattern of human experience that is split into the experience of enforced givenness and the wish to transcend it that represents human freedom. Against this background, Jaspers, following Kant, defined human reality as antonymous reality (Ph 2, 249), meaning a reality trapped in an unknowable contradiction.20 This is how Jaspers described the experience of this reality: [One] can never remain in the concrete finite, since everything concrete has at the same time both a finite and an infinite nature. No matter what the essential [thing] for him, he always encounters ways to the infinite or the whole. He can find in the face of the infinite in the evasive mystical experience a limited satisfaction in time and in quiet. However, if he remains alert, if he remains in the split between object and subject, any infinity leads him to the abysses of the contradictions that are called antonymous. (Psychology, 231).

So, the antonymous nature of reality is an expression of the undetermined duality which man encounters in existence in the world.21 This means the simultaneous presence of good and evil, positive and negative, infinite and finite, whole and partial, day and night. The antonym, just like the element of “possibility”, is entailed in any human experience as such. However, while these features are present on different levels in man’s routine existence, in the boundary situations they appear in their full force and transparency. Jaspers described boundary situations as follows: These situations, like those I always exist within, that I cannot live without struggle and sorrow, that I accept upon myself inevitable guilt, that I must die, I call boundary situations. They do not change, but only their manifestations; in their reference to our existence they are totally valid. We cannot see beyond them; in our existence, we do not see [anything] behind them. They are like a wall that we push and walk into. They cannot be changed through us, but we can only bring them into clarity without being able to deduce them or explain them from something else. They exist with existence itself. (Ph 2, 203).22

Guilt, like the other boundary situations (death, struggle, etc.), appears as an experience that people cannot avoid, just as they cannot change the antonymous nature of the reality revealed to them particularly in these situations. In guilt as a boundary situation, man is manifested both as a free Being (Ph 2, 196), and at

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the same time as denied freedom, as subject to arbitrariness and impotence, as a “game ball” (Ph 2, 216). Freedom and necessity appear as interconnected in the experience of guilt, or as Jaspers put it, “my guilt inside my freedom is each time something defined and thus something I experience and not something I enable to approach me” (Ph 2, 197). The lack of a connection between the experience of guilt and concrete behavior, revealed by the analysis of the two previous stages of the experience of guilt, becomes an explicit datum in the perception of guilt as a boundary situation. In Jaspers’ words: Inaction [Nichthandeln] is in itself an action, meaning omission [Unterlassen]. Inaction would necessarily become a rapid sinking; it could have been a form of suicide. Non-entry into the world is a self-negation in the face of the demand of the reality turning to me . . . to dare to experience what has formed from it. (Ph 2, 247).

Action and avoiding action thus express both freedom and necessity at the same time. Moreover, in terms of the manifestation of guilt there is no difference between the results of inaction and those of action, and thus one cannot attribute guilt to the difference between them. In other words, man is guilty whether he acts or avoids acting. Finally, avoiding acting is a false choice as it distorts the person’s manifestation, since human freedom is reduced by avoiding action. In fact, not only the absence of a connection between the experience of guilt and concrete actions but also its inevitability appears as an explicit datum in boundary situations. Now it transpires that boundary situations, delimiting the boundaries of human existence, do not leave another space for the existence of guilt, since beyond them the human Being ceases. The boundaries of existence are also the boundaries of guilt, and thus the ontology of guilt is also the ontology of reality. However, the manifestation of guilt at the metaphysical stage is not limited to the absence of a link to concrete actions or to its inevitability. Another datum of human existence is also revealed in it. As Jaspers says: “every boundary immediately raises the question what lies beyond it” (Ph 1, 45). This datum is transcendence.23 Transcendence appears when man seems to himself to be “aiming at a different freedom”, as “referring to a Being that is not himself but is his transcendence” (Ph 3, 2). This discovery does not indicate that a person’s entity is distorted in all the other experiences that are not included in the boundary situations. Just as the collective experience of guilt reveals the individual included in this collective more fully, so also the experience of guilt as a boundary situation indicates that turning towards transcendence constitutes part of human experience in general. In Jaspers’ words: “we live in activity . . . I must want; because wanting must be my last [thing] if I finally want to

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be. However, the way I want to be can certainly be opened to transcendence” (Ph 2, 197). Transcendence grants meaning to the nature of human freedom as something existing in the face of an object existing beyond it, a reality exceeding the boundaries of the person’s existence and consciousness. The boundary marking the end of the realm of freedom and necessity in human existence thus also marks the beginning of the realm of transcendence, spreading from that point onwards. Furthermore, the meaning of transcendence for human existence is not exhausted by its sharing a common boundary with existence. It is portrayed as a source of meaning for the experiences within existence – especially since it exists beyond human existence: “Were there no existence, the question would have arisen why I need to want. I can actively want only when there is transcendence” (Ph 2, 198). Wanting, one of the prominent expressions of human freedom, may now be seen to be lacking direction and meaning without transcendence. As Jaspers phrased it: Transcendence is not my freedom, but is present in it. Only in the freedom of my selfhood, where I think to surround all the necessariness of . . . necessity, am I aware that I did not create myself. It now occurs to me that where I am completely myself, I am not myself alone. Where I really was myself in wanting, I was at the same time subject to myself in my freedom. (Ph 2, 199).

Thus, the recognition of transcendence does not deny human freedom, nor does it change the range of restrictions in which it exists. However, through its function as the object of possibility and necessity, transcendence reveals the real dimensions of the two elements that constitute human existence: freedom and necessity. These are determined in light of, and perhaps even as a result of, another entity existing above and outside human existence, but sharing a common boundary with it. Becoming acquainted with transcendence complements the understanding accumulated so far regarding the elements of possibility or freedom and necessity, and thus it helps position more accurately the status of humans in Existence. In Jaspers’ words: “it realizes that what is coming towards it fills it . . .. It verifies its possibility only if it knows itself as based on transcendence” (Ph 3, 4). Transcendence, as the entity humans face, determines both their possibilities and their restrictions. These two elements, freedom and necessity, are thus clarified only by recognizing the existence of transcendence, a more encompassing and whole entity than them. In the ontology of guilt, transcendence serves as an object for the experience of inevitable guilt, without which the experience would appear meaningless or arbitrary (Ph 2, 198). Just as we think about something, want something,

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do not think about anything or want anything, so too does guilt require an object. We are guilty of something or about something. Since the explication of the experience of guilt reveals human ontology, we can state that all human activities including guilt manifest themselves in relation to an object. However, transcendence as an object has a more encompassing meaning than the other objects of human activity. Jaspers’ perception of transcendence as an entity that exists independently of humans, even if this entity is revealed in human existence and has significance for it (Ph 2, 22–23, see also Ph 3, 164–165), enables a more accurate understanding of the human experience of guilt. Guilt is not only being guilty of something, it is also being guilty in the face of something or towards something. We can clarify the significance of transcendence for human existence with the aid of Jaspers’ statement: “the boundaries appear in their real function, to be immanent and already to indicate transcendence” (Ph 2, 204). This statement confirms the obvious, that human actions take place in the world and are known there, but at the same time it indicates that human activity is not exhausted by this since a new ontology exists above and beyond its boundaries. To be precise: the ontology of guilt is not identical to the ontology of transcendence, but is tangential to it. This tangent is not a tangible point, but expresses a horizon of reference. Transcendence, like any otherness in relation to which human activity takes place, is now set in context: Against the tendency to self-sufficiency, against the satisfaction with the knowledge of general consciousness, against the individual’s self-will, against the drive to self-closure in self-contained life . . .. (Ph 2, 60).

Transcendence as a permanent datum of human experience was posited by Jaspers against the distorting and harmful transience of human experiences. The fact that man stands alone in the face of transcendence reveals the basic connection between the first stage of experiencing guilt and its metaphysical stage where it appears explicitly as inevitable. The apparent immediacy of the inevitability of guilt restricts the horizons of human experience to a defined range from which there is no escape. However, the fact that the horizon that appears in the experience of guilt is that of transcendence, which in itself is not coextensive with the boundaries of human experience, and is not defined, may actually open new horizons for human experience directed at an entity rather than at itself or at the human at all.24 Thus, the inevitability of guilt revealed explicitly in light of transcendence does not mark the boundary of the experience of guilt but the most appropriate starting point for clarifying human manifestation within guilt.

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The three stages of the experience of guilt – individual, collective and metaphysical – have been shown from the proposed phenomenological-ontological explication of the concept of guilt in Jaspers’ writings to belong to one reflexive and dynamic movement. Uncovering the constant process of boundary expansion of human experience has illuminated the complexity of the human experience of guilt, whose dimensions have wide-reaching implications for human experience, with the later stages elucidating the earlier stages. The link to guilt’s starting point anchored in the individual’s personal experience is constantly maintained. The basic feature of the entire phenomenological explication, arising from the first datum appearing in experience and returning to it at the end of the interpretative process, is clearly expressed in the merging of the metaphysical stage of experiencing guilt with the individual stage. This further supports the fruitfulness of the phenomenological perspective regarding Jaspers’ concept of guilt. Once the first cycle of explication had been completed, it transpired that the three stages of experience did not denote different degrees of guilt, but were, instead, expressions of the basic patterns of human existence, themselves raised above any concrete context that might cause guilt. Jaspers himself did not realize the potential for achieving an ontology of human existence from his perception of guilt, and he left it largely as a task for his interpreters. As we have seen, his approach contains a foundation on which the main stages of the experience of guilt can be formulated. However, Jaspers himself did not discuss the dynamic typical of the experience of guilt, nor did he usually connect other parts of his philosophy with his perceptions regarding guilt. In this paper I have attempted to respond to these omissions by marking the three basic stages of the experience of guilt, explicating them and the relations between them, and linking them to other themes in Jaspers’ thought that gave his statements regarding guilt a wider significance. In my opinion, the project of completing Jaspers’ ontology of guilt should continue in this direction, examining the relevance of additional issues in his philosophy with a view to elucidating the basic stages of the experience of guilt, and perhaps even finding additional materials that could draw a more gradual progression in the transition between the various stages. This direction could both realize his original vision that the experience of guilt and the experience of existence are coextensive, but also reveal Jaspers’ perception of guilt as a framework capable of containing the variety of subjects appearing in his philosophy and giving them an overall significance.

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NOTES 1

Jaspers made it clear that his approach had nothing in common with the idea of original sin (GG, 100). 2 Jaspers’ perception of Being is discussed directly in the following writings: Ph3; VuE; VdW. 3 Karl Jaspers, Die Schuldfarge, Von der politischen Haftung Deutschlands [1946], 1996, München. The discussion will refer to the English translation, which appeared as: The Question of the German Guilt, New York, 1947 (Hereafter: GG). Other references to Jaspers’ writings will follow the abbreviations appearing in the list at the end. 4 On the perception of Existenz as a “source” (Ursprung), see also Ph 2, 336–337. 5 For an extensive discussion of selfhood in Jaspers’ writings, see: Miron, 2005. 6 For a more detailed definition of these concepts of guilt, see: GG, 31–33, 61–73. 7 For further discussion of Jaspers’ idea of responsibility (Verantwortung), see: Harries, 1994. 8 The revolution Jaspers instigated in the individual perspective of guilt, familiar mainly from its psychological discourse (mainly Freudian), is clear against the background of the proposed analysis. While the latter leads to liberating the individual from guilt, or more precisely from guilt feelings, the former aims to anchor the experience of guilt and the process of the formation of self-Being on common ground. For a basic ontological distinction between guilt and guilt feelings, see: Buber. For Jaspers’ criticism of psychoanalysis, see: GSZ, 137–139. See also his essay “Zur Kritik de Psychoanalyse”, written in 1950 and published in RuA, 260–271. For further reading see: Kolle. 9 On Jaspers’ handling of the difficulties involved in the solipsistic understanding of man and the turning point in his thought towards another approach of subjectivity, see Miron, 2005, 2010. 10 Jaspers demonstrates a possible discourse of escaping guilt (GG, 74). He believed that the ways of referring to the boundary situations and to the antonymous nature of reality in general expose the person’s character, and he suggested classifying people by their various coping patterns. See PW, 240 ff. 11 For further discussion of this issue, see: Miron, 2004. 12 Hegel, 142 ff. 13 Jaspers’ attitude in principle towards general and objective knowledge, in this context towards historical knowledge, is an extension of his early attitude as a psychiatrist and active researcher of mental disease. As in his criticism of the science of psychopathology or of general psychology as formal frameworks of knowledge that cannot enable access to the fullness and uniqueness of human Being, here too it is assumed that general and formal historical knowledge cannot serve as a source for self-understanding. 14 It is important to clarify that although Jaspers sought to avoid reducing guilt to the concrete level of acts, circumstances or reasons, a level that on its own could lead to avoiding the clarification of guilt (see GG, 27: “The temptation to evade this question is obvious”), he did not reject factuality as irrelevant to the discussion of the issue of guilt. Moreover, in The Question of Guilt he refers to the concrete facts around which the uniqueness of German guilt was formulated in comparison to that of other nations and did not try to avoid the concrete implications necessitated by the actions of the Germans (see for example, GG, 70–71). 15 The idea of possibility is discussed in relation to the idea of freedom in Jaspers’ philosophy. See: Young-Bruehl 1981, 64–65, 105–106. 16 The problem of the beginning has bothered many phenomenological researchers. Husserl noted the difficulty in determining the point at which the method of the philosophical enquiry starts being applied (Husserl 1913, §63) and also in terms of determining the nature of the datum this enquiry grasps (see Husserl 1913, §40). One of the conclusions Husserl reached was that the

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definition does not help us understand since it is an arbitrary setting of a starting point. For further discussion, see: Fuchs, 1976; Fulda, 1966. 17 The “boundary situation” is an original concept of Jaspers’. Heidegger believed that this concept on its own could grant Jaspers his status as a philosopher, see: Heidegger, 1998, 10. For further discussion of Jaspers’ concept of boundary situations, see: Latzel, 1957; Bollnow, 1964. 18 An early version of the idea of “situation” appears in: GSZ, 23 ff. 19 The concept of the world is discussed extensively in the first volume of Philosophy (Philosophical World Orientation); see especially: Ph 1, 63; VdW, 85–107. 20 Jaspers used the Kantian concept of antonym, referring to a logical contradiction between two premises, each of which can be proven by disproving the other. The secondary literature interprets Jaspers’ philosophy as Kantian. In another article I have discussed this approach and proposed an alternative to it. See: Miron, 2006a. 21 Jaspers discussed these contradictions in several contexts in his writings. See for example: Ph 2, 248–249; Ph 3, 102 ff. 22 The term “boundary situations” is discussed in two contexts in Jaspers’ writings: Ph 2, 201–254; PW, 229–280. 23 The concept of transcendence is one of the most complex in Jaspers’ thought. It was not defined anywhere, except indirectly. See for instance: VdW, 107–113; Ph 3, 1–35. On the problematic nature of this concept and on its philosophical implications, see: Collins 1952, 88–127. 24 See the demonstration in the diagram where transcendence appears as an open horizon. VdW, 142.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Jaspers’ Writings and Their Abbreviations Jaspers, K. Allgemeine Psychopathologie. Ein Leitfaden für Studierende, Ärzte und Psychologen (1st ed., Berlin, J. Springer, 1913) (AP 1) Jaspers, K. Die geistige Situation der Zeit (Berlin-Leipzig, 1931) Walter de Gruyter (GSZ) Jaspers, K. and Bultmann, R. Die Frage der Entmythologisierung (München, 1954) R. Piper & Co (EM) Jaspers, K. Rechenschaft und Ausblick (Reden und Aufsätze, Tübingen, 1958) R. Piper (RuA). Jaspers, K. Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung (München, R. Piper & Co 1962) (PGO) Jaspers, K. Philosophie. 1932. 3 vols. Philosophische Weltorientirung (Ph 1); Existenzerellung (Ph 2); Metaphysik (Ph 3) (Heidelberg, Serie Piper 1994). Jaspers, K. Psychologie der Weltanschauungen (Berlin, Serie Piper 1919), Heidelberg, 1985. (PW)

Secondary Literature Bollnow, O. F. Existenzphilosophie (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1964). Collins, J. The Existentialists: A Critical Study (Chicago, Henry Regnery Company 1952). Dilthey, W. Weltanschauungslehre, Abhandlung zur Philosophie der Philosophie, in Gesammelte Schriften (8, Stuttgart: B.G Teubner; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1962).

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Fuchs, W. W. Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Presence: An Essay in the Philosophy of Edmund Husserl (The Hague, Martinus Nijnoff 1976). Fulda, H. F. “Über den spekulativen anfang,” in D. Henrich and H. Wagner (eds.), Subjektivität und Metaphysik (Festschrift für Wolfgang Cramer, Frankfurt a.M., V. Klostermann 1966) Harries, K. “Shame, Guilt, Responsibility,” in A. M. Olson (ed.), Heidegger & Jaspers, pp. 49–64 (Philadelphia, Tempel University Press 1994). Hegel, G. W. F. Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschiete, ed. G. Lasson (Leipzig, F. Meiner 1974). Heidegger, M. Sein und Zeit (Tübingen, Max Niemeyer 1927), 1993. Heidegger, M. Pathmarks (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1998). Husserl, E. Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, vol. 1 (Tübingen, M. Niemeyer 1913), 1952. Knauss, G. “The Concept of the ‘Encompassing,’ in Jaspers’ Philosophy,” in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, pp. 141–175 (New York, Open Court 1957). Kolle, K. “Jaspers as Psychopathologist,” in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, pp. 437–466 (New York, IL, Open Court 1957). Latzel, E. “The Concept of ‘Ultimate Situation’, in Jaspers Philosophy,” in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Jaspers, pp. 177–208 (New York, Open Court 1957). Miron, R. “From Opposition to Reciprocity- Karl Jaspers on science, philosophy and what lies between them”, International philosophical Quarterly 44/2:147–163, Fordhum University Press, New York 2004. Miron, R. “Transcendence and Dissatisfaction in Jaspers’ Idea of the Self,” Phaenomenologische Forschungen NF. 10:221–241, Felix Meiner, Hamburg 2005. Miron, R. “Was Jaspers Really Kantian?” Yearbook of the Austrian Karl Jaspers’ Society 19: 73–106, Studen Verlag, Innsbruck 2006a. Miron, R. “Towards Reality: The Development of the Philosophical Attitude to Reality in Karl Jaspers’ Thought,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 37/2:152–172, Jackson Publishing and Distribution, England 2006b. Miron, R. Karl Jaspers: Value Inquiry Book, From Selfhood to Being (Amsterdam, New York, Rodopi) (Forthcoming 2010) Plümacher, M. Philosophie nach 1945 in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Hamburg, Vowohlts enzyklopädie 1996). Salamun, K. Karl Jaspers (München, C.H. Beck 1985). Saner, H. (ed.). Karl Jaspers in der Diskussion (München, R. Piper 1973). Scheler, M. Philosophische Weltanschauung (Bern, Francke 1954). Young-Bruehl, E. Freedom and Karl Jaspers’ Philosophy. (New Haven, Yale University Press 1981).

SECTION IV

EGIL H. OLSVIK

F R E U D , H U S S E R L A N D “L O S S O F R E A L I T Y ” : CLASSICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS, TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXPLICATION OF PSYCHOSIS

ABSTRACT

In the following paper I am not going to deal with psychiatry in the traditional sense, but with what psychiatry is dealing with. Or, more precisely; with what psychiatry ought to be dealing with. Freud’s psychoanalysis has both been influential for, and been influated by existential philosophy in the twentieth century. Freud’s attitude towards philosophy was deeply ambivalent – he both rejected most of philosophy as being forms of sublimation, and regarded rationalism as a defensive strategy relative to the alienating primary processes of the unconscious. But Freud’s own metapsychology, as ex. in the Jenseits des Lustprinzips – may be read as a genuine attempt in existential phenomenology. Given that Freud’s psychoanalysis has contributed strongly to the configuration of modern subjectivity, a philosophical, phenomenological analysis of Freud may elucidate deep a historicity of modern subjectivity. My efforts in this paper are twofold; first I try to demonstrate how Freud’s theory bears heavily upon classical thinking of our tradition. I claim that Freud was in fact re-collecting, or even maintaining a deep current in the Western humanistic tradition, hinting to unruly powers of a an un-personal “Will” constantly pressing on to break free. Freud’s originality thus lye less in conceiving new ideas, than in demonstrating unthought-of dimensions and consequences in ex. Kant’s model of the mind. Thus Freud is able to see a rudimentary theory of psychopathology already described by the tradition. Secondly, and this is my main point in this paper, is that that Freud in fact ordered a phenomenological-hermeneutical interpretation of his own work, and if read in this perspective, a new horizon opens for psychoanalysis. To achieve this I will demonstrate an often overlooked resemblance of Freud’s theory of the unconscious and Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology of the “will” (as in HUA XV), which may then be seen as a genuine motivational theory of the Self. 255 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 255–275. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_16, 

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My interpretative suggestion is that Freud wanted to explicate deep, existential consequences of an uncanny knowing in the Self of both being the source of its enduring existence – and at the same time having the notion of not being its own origin. The Self, therefore, has an aporetical, almost irrealizing appearance to it’s Self, hence being under a constant pressure of ontological inconstancy, which may upsurge as profound psychical irruptions, witch may be labelled “pathological”. In conclusion I argue that the main lack in psychoanalysis is a fuller theory of constitution, which Husserl’s phenomenology perhaps may provide. I suggest a thorough phenomenological re-reading of Freud, in order to provide a potent theoretical contribution to psychopathological research.

INTRODUCTION

In most of psychiatry, even in psychoanalysis, most people have now abandoned the idea that the psychoses are understandable from a 1.-person perspective, as they are assumed to be a more or less random outcome of brain-pathology (Lucas, 2003; Willis, 2001). And in the “bible” of modern psychiatry, the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (APA, 2004), it is bluntly stated that as it is not possible to give an adequate definition of the word “thought”, there cant’ be given a definition of “mental disorder” either (sic!). Thus, leaving the field open for bio-psychiatric interventions, which for the most are based on a 3.-person-perspective, or if you like, on an objectivist metaphysics fused with behavioural theory. In line with this trend, there is also a tendency to avoid the use of “metaphysical” concepts like “reality” and “ego”. As I see it, these opinions are based on fundamental, onto-epistemological misunderstandings. In the following I will therefore try to demonstrate, how a possible theoretical merge of classical psychoanalysis and transcendental phenomenology may contribute to the understanding and clarification of what many hold to be the core symptom of schizophrenia, namely “formal thought disorder” (DSM IV, APA, 2004; Bleuler, 1916). My argument here is mostly based on an interpretation of Husserl’s theory of constitution, or, so to speak, a reversed version of that theory. And in Ideen III Husserl raises the question of the possibility of a solid ontology of the mind – founded in transcendental idealism. Husserl was of course, not doing psychopathology. But if we are sympathetic to his search for irreale Objektivität – as the bedrock for any science of human experience, perhaps this may lead to a path where we may speak of a psycho-pathology in

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a real sense. But just how then, are we to proceed in order to make an adequate description of the psychotic experience?

PSYCHOANALYSIS AS CONFLUENCE OF CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY?

Let’s start with a question that may set a perspective for the analysis to come; what is the relation of Freud and the philosophical tradition? Firstly, we may note that according to Freud, philosophy should direct itself with insights from psychoanalysis as leitmotif – a serious philosophy must at least acknowledge psychoanalysis, according to Freud, because: Die Philosophie hat sich allerdings wiederholt mit dem Problem des Unbewuβten beschäftigt, aber ihre Vertrether haben dabei – mit weningen Ausnahmen – ein von den zwei Positionen eigenommen , die nun anzufüren sind.1

Here we see a good example of how Freud reads the philosophical tradition. Even though we may say that Freud not was a “great” philosopher, he certainly was an important thinker. Like many of the great, canonical thinkers, his was a prismatic mind, and perhaps his greatest gift lay in providing a synthesis of strongly influential ideas of the tradition. Perhaps we may regard Freud as a dialectical thinker, in that he attempted to take a step back, and to de-scribe a culturally formed subjectivity, that already had been constituted? As Plato also stepped back from the discussions and the arguments presented, Freud may have wanted to just rapport what he was able to see. In this perspective, psychoanalysis is a confluence of our tradition, both as expression of a genuine historicity in the phenomenology of the modern Self, and as result of the deeply devoted individual, for whom his existence depended upon clarification. So, given that Freud’s theory has contributed strongly to the configuration of modern subjectivity, it also seems that Freud in fact was re-collecting, or even maintaining a deep current in the Western tradition. A current which always has been feared by certain instances of society, but as Freud stated, there will always be a constant discontent in civilization. In this he was hinting to the unruly powers of the “Will” that is constantly pressing on to break free. If regarded in such a perspective – in the light of say, Plato, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche – then we see that Freud’s project is in line with an age-old struggle of man, to build courage to face the Trolls of night, to let the spears of the sun boast them asunder. Letting the I be were the Id was. Though all thinking of psychoanalysis must begin with Freud, the scope should be widened to reflections on both the historical heritage of psychoanalysis and interpretation of its philosophical implications. As Freud’s theories

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bears upon classical thinking of our tradition, psychoanalysis may be said to be as relevant as it is? Though perhaps an exaggeration, in this sense, philosophy at least, carries with it memories of a distant past – and in this manner I think that the philosophical, even phenomenological analysis of Freud may elucidate a deep historicity of our subjectivity. But of course there are some problems in all this. In that Freud wants to support his theory by drawing on a host of classical philosophers, and philosophies, he stands in danger of importing conflicting material. This level of inquiry is not made explicit by Freud himself. One main objection to Freud’s statement in the quotation just presented is that he seems to imply a clearly modern concept of subjectivity in his critique of traditional philosophy. But what about Freud’s own philosophical position? Freud’s attitude towards philosophy was deeply ambivalent2 – he both rejected most of philosophy as being forms of sublimation, and regarded rationalism as a defensive strategy relative to the alienating primary processes of the unconscious. But Freud’s own meta-psychology, as ex. in the Jenseits des Lustprinzips – is a genuine attempt in existential phenomenology. I will argue that Freud in fact ordered a phenomenological-hermeneutical interpretation of his own work, and if read in this perspective, a new horizon opens. I will return to this below. The main objective for Freud was to present an encompassing theory of situated subjectivity that (always already) is pre-formed by a common cultural meaning. Freud had a fairly close resemblance with the historiological currents in his own time. Here I am not only thinking of Dilthey but also Husserl. My point here is that even though his anthropology and hence his view of historicity was of a more pessimistic type, almost in line with Spengler, the main trend in Freud’s argumentation is marked by a distancing from the naïve rationalistic tradition from cartesianism. According to Freud this tradition had hyperbolised a shallow conception of a transparent Ego; which had been reified on a cultural level. But here as often is the case, Freud is notoriously unclear. Even though Freud’s metapsychology developed and matured during his career, Freud was making performative inconsistencies in his self-critique. As I see it, this follows from his not performing a thorough methodological analysis of the idealistic tendencies in his own thinking. This argument is based on the fact that the early Freud explicitly employs Kant’s ontological dualism as a qualification for the division of unconscious and conscious dimensions of psychic life. As Freud states in the paper on the unconscious: Just as Kant warned us not to overlook [Kant uns gewarnt hat] the fact that our perceptions are subjectively conditioned and must not be regarded as identical with what is perceived

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though unknowable [unerkennbaren Wahrgenommenen], so psychoanalysis warns us not to equate perceptions by means of consciousness with the unconscious mental processes (. . .)3

But as both Freud him self matures, his theory develops, and the Kantian antagonism is gradually seen as being to rigid. But again, because Freud never fully succeeded in overcoming the basic argumentative structure he developed on the basis of Kant’s ontological dualism in the early period, he remained “trapped” in a solipsistic position. Freud’s early theoretical basis is a static, dualistic model for the organisation of the psychic. Even though he makes an effort to reformulate psychoanalysis in a profound manner in the late middle period (1914–1923), this basic opposition remains. As already indicated, Freud’s philosophical meta-psychology matured during his career, and he was constantly trying to revise the theory, in accord with his clinical observations. By this I am not claiming that Freud was generally more “right” later that earlier in his writings, but the deep, metaphysical reinterpretation of the middle period (about 1920) is a rich, philosophical smorgasbord. In and by the essay Das Ich und Das Es, Freud now takes a Nietzschean position, and in fact tries to regard human existence within a (temporally and genetically) reversed Platonism. (I have tried to read Nietzsche’s critique of Kant as the elder Freud’s self-critique.) This then leads to a profound and drastic change in the view of the unconscious, and hence on (psychic) life in general. In the late period Freud was experimenting with a recentering of the I in psychoanalysis. By taking the position of the I as point of departure, psychoanalysis becomes existensialised. Freud now wants to know what is the essence of “love”, asking for the ultimate meaning of death etc. But, even though he was making an attempt of radicalising psychoanalysis by deepening it’s philosophical dimensions, he ended up by stating a purely psycho-logical reality (for the individual). But – without performing a philosophical analysis of the concept of “reality” as such. What we lack in Freud then, is a robust theory of constitution.

F R E U D ’S O R D E R I N G O F A H E R M E N E U T I C A L INTERPRETATION OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

So then, may psychoanalysis be regarded as existential phenomenology? Before answering this, there are some difficulties that must be faced. Firstly; phenomenology is a purely descriptive discipline, therefore: if psychoanalysis is regarded in this perspective, we in fact must bracket out – suspend, all normative aspects of psychoanalysis. Consequently, it becomes transformed into a philosophical method. Psychoanalysis may then be seen as a pre-clinical

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approach – or perhaps even as philosophical anthropology – i.e. a thorough formulation of what it means to be a human being. This is further explored by Freud in Jenseits der Lustprinzips,4 where psychoanalysis becomes a philosophy of the meaning of death for and in, life. Jenseits is structured by a generalised composition, and Freud seems to have had an anthropological ambition for this essay. Therefore it must be seen as psychopathologicaly neutral. Let’s then see to the opening lines of Jenseits, where Freud in fact seems to have ordered a phenomenological-hermeneutical reading of psychoanalysis: (. . .) we would like to express our gratitude towards any philosophical or psychological theory, which could inform us on the interpretation of the for us imperative problem of lust and unlust.5

Let’s take Freud verbally here – in fact must we not? What does Freud indeed say here? As I see it, he is de facto ordering a method which is to give an adequate description of meaning. This is the basic principles of a phenomenological hermeneutics – further: what Freud in fact does in the Jenseits is a re-centering of subjectivity, i.e. that he so to speak turn psychoanalysis on it’s head, now taking the dimensions of the I as starting point to ask: how far does the region – the field of meaning of the I really reach? (This is also a problem in the Cartesian Meditations.) What may that mean in context? Let’s now start looking into what a phenomenological and hermeneutical re-reading of psychoanalysis might look like. It is important to realize, from the start, that the later Freud attempted to provide a ontological redescription of the essence of the I, and, that the revised psychoanalysis of the 1920s operates on a far more personalistic orientation that earlier. This also inflicting the relations of other people, and it seems to me, at least, that the concept of the Id – the That – not only encompasses that which is unknown of the Self by the I, but also, or especially, of the mind of Others – which again must influence the perspective of both remembrance and hope (sedimentation and projection). But what does all this mean, more concretely? According to Freud, Jenseits was “committed” in pure curiousness, and he said that he wrote it as a piece of philosophical psychology. As the title Jenseits indicates, Freud wanted to explore the regulative forces of the psyche, especially the Supra-I (Über-ich), and ask whether now the cultural aspects of mentality in fact had to be given explicit priority. In this theoretical transition, the developmental theory of the psycho-sexual stages were toned down. Freud rather now wanted to seek for the Ur-quelle of existentiality, by analysing primary narcissism and the genesis of the rudimentary Self. By turning the perspective in this manner, psychoanalysis was to present a more originary

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explanation of the existential dimensions of the I. By letting immediate experience lead the way, psychoanalysis was opened for a reinterpretation of a deeply disturbing situation for the I, the Id is perceived as representative of something Unheimliche, “something” which alienates the I from it’s Self. In this view, the I is doomed to never finding a solid substantiation for it’s Self. The Self can never be anything but an idea for the I. This self relating relating, may be experienced as being deeply disturbing for the I. Because the I “knows” that it isn’t the source of it’s Self, this leads to a certain degree of aniexiety. The “will to life”, or to “self-preservation”, if one prefers, is then to be seen as the primary source of psychic organisation. This then opens for my main interpretative hypothesis, which in part represents my “deliverance” of Freud’s order: psychoanalysis explicates deep, existential consequences of an uncanny knowing in the I of both being the source of its enduring existence – and at the same time having the notion of not being its own origin. The Self, therefore, has an aporetical, almost irrealizing appearance to the I, hence being under a constant pressure of ontological inconstancy, which may upsurge as profound psychical irruptions, witch may be labelled “pathological”. As already mentioned, Freud seemed to focus more on the cultural dimensions of the I in this later period. This perspective is presented in detail in the analysis of the Supra-I, which is the instance that invests perception with value and so constitutes or rather, transforms the surroundings into a “world”.

S U P R A - I , “R E A L I T Y ” A N D P S Y C H O T I C E X I S T E N C E

In the analysis of the Supra-I, Freud uses two different terms to distinguish two basic dimensions in the I-Self-constellation: the Ideal-Ich, which points forward in time – towards a social idealisation – the source of the neurosis, and the Ich-Ideal, which points backwards in time. Now I want to focus on the latter – the I-Ideal – hence towards the “original position” of the I, i.e. the situation of primary narcissism – the source of psychosis. A state in which the rudimentary I is unable to differentiate between it’s own libidinal structures and that of the “outer” world. To understand this, we must try to imagine, revitalise, the experience of the toddler. That is, attempt to understand the phenomenal field of a very young child, say 6 months of age. In this primary situation there is then no rational objects – all what is perceived is a plastic “something” that which just is – Das Es. If we now follow Freud in his theory on the genealogy of the Self, then we see that in the rudimentary phases there are no clear boundaries for the I – and if the I really is

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a compromise product, a shrunken rest of a more primary experience, then it follows that both the experience- and certainly the concept of ontological dualism is a late, mature product in the Self – what we may label “objectivism” is therefore a psychologically secondary level of thinking. The psychological possibility of acknowledging the “objective” has deep presuppositions. Further in this primary, original position, there is no “I” and no “World” it all flows together, is an Es – that which just is. If taken as valid it seems to follow that the feeling of irreality must proceed the concept of the real – or to rephrase: for the rudimentary I the Real is irreal and the Irreal is the real. For the rudimentary Ich the Es appears as phantasmatic. In this perspective we may even say that reality it self is a comprise product. “Reality” is a product of gradual differentiations of the environment. What the Self understands – what it has preconditions to understand – as being real, its “reality” is the psychic reality of the I – or again: the psychoanalytical concept of reality is a plastic, libidinal configuration – it is phenomenal in its structure. I find this argument quite interesting, but let’s now look at it’s phenomenological validity and rationality. At a certain point in all this, Freud the alleged anti-philosopher seems to have radically misunderstood his own thinking. Let me now try to qualify this statement, by criticising Freud’s conception of “reality”, in order to elucidate how this may cast light on the explanatory power, or lack of such, relative to severe mental pathology – ex. “psychosis”. Let me now schetch out the basic argument in Freud regarding psychosis, for then to return to my questions. Freud claims that the psychotic I first dissociates from the outer world, to construe a “new” world for it’s Self because of a unconscious need for consistency – the manifest schizophrenic symptoms therefore, are attempts to fill out crucial lacks in the synthesis of the I. This attempt at self-healing, like in Schreber – may be interpreted as a desire for regaining a consistent, autonomous lifespan. These attempts at self-healing then show them selves as manifest symptoms of deeper latent functional deficiensies in the primary structures of the I, which then desperately tries to cope with strong antagonistic forces in the Self – by deforming it’s I. Thus: (. . .) for neurosis the deciding factor will be the dominance of reality [die übermacht des Realeinnflusses], while in psychosis will be the Id. In a psychosis, loss of reality is inevitable (. . .).6

For Freud, then, “reality” seems to be an outer phenomenon. The objective “world” is as it is experienced by almost everyone. But this is a naivety. Has not Freud claimed that it is the I which is the ultimate source of all libidinal investments? Yes, this is so – but if this is the case – is not the appearance of the world a result of the “workings” of the I? Yes, this seems to be the case –

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hence: must it not follow that the deformation of the I also is a deformation of the world? If this is the case, the formulation “loss of reality” in psychosis is therefore not quite accurate – the “loss of reality” in psychosis seems rather firstly connected to a weakening of the rational structuring of the objective Realeinnflusses. Which in fact, when Freud is read consistently: actually opens the Self for a more original, affective and unstructured form for being. But here a new dimension of the problems open; even though this experiential dimension is apparently more real – it is given as less real-istic. Therefore, the aniexiety associated to the struggle for upholding rational experience, is not a defence against reality, but it is a defence of the reality of the Self’s reality. May we therefore regard psychosis as a loosening of a primary repression?7 In the late model of psychoanalysis (post 1919), also the Id may become structurally defective, because the Ich-ideal, or if one likes – the retentive sediments of the I, as a substantial portion of the Self, may be expressed as an irruptive and inconsistent functioning Über-Ich. The phenomena of psychotic disturbances may now be understood as a result of that primary configurations of the I haven’t proceeded in an adequate development, with the result that the preconditions for the experience of “objective” reality has not been consolidated in the I. Or, if one likes; we may speak of a partially defective constitution of the I-Self-configuration. Hence: these unconsolidated dimensions in the I are marked by an originary ontological ambivalence, and it is when this experience becomes to strong that the integrative functions of the I is unable to synthesise its material, the “schizo . . .” – the splitting, fragmenting of the I occurs: (. . .) being an adult in no way guaranties a protection against the original traumatic aniexietysituation. Every individual probably has a limit beyond which his mental apparatus fails in it’s functions of mastering the quantities of excitement which must be eliminated.8

When a certain level of negative intensity is experienced by the I, when this “anexietal border” is crossed, the integration of the I-Self-consellation – which is a secondary, psychological product, collapses. In analytic terms this then would be a regression beyond the reality principle – which then constitutes what we may call a psychotic “phantasy-world”. But to say as Freud does, that the phantasmatic character of the Real is becoming gradually split of during the maturation of the I, is only to say that it is repressed, or to say it with Schopenhauer: that it has become distant within the nexus of associations.9 And as such, that it always has the potential to perform a psychological modification of the uncanny stressor, so that the Self may relate to is as it pleases, by becoming psychotically regressed. In order words; the I is now existentially immersed in it’s own psychic sphere.

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On this background, I so far reach the following conclusion; because Freud upheld an unqualified and inconsistent position relative to the (phenomenon of) the “real” – he maintained that it was the denial of the Real which caused psychosis – but this seems to me as an misunderstanding: rather it is a hermeneutical principle that a surplus of meaning will be experienced as a lack of meaning (“perplexity”) due to the immensity of work needed to clarify the psychic material. So when Freud first stresses the importance of the Oedipal-drama, and secondly, hyperbolized the abduction “Father”/“Reason” as the primary source of “repression” of the Outer world, then this unjustified insistence on the Paternal object in fact led to a implicit naturalistic, dualistic ontology within the basic framework of psychoanalysis. This then, led Freud, the anti-philosopher, into problems he seemed unable to resolve, in spite of the efforts at an ontological revision in the late period. The argumentative defect regarding psychosis in Freud is therefore due to the lack of understanding of that the “world” and the “Self” cannot be seen as being essistentially separate – without an I, no reality, and without a reality, no I. My point now being that Freud did not go far enough when he claimed that the I is the source of all libidinous investments. Or to make a long story short; Freud lacked a theory of constitution. This therefore leads over to my next argumentative phase in this paper. I will now attempt to present the same experiential dimensions, the same groups of phenomena within Husserl’s vocabulary. If I succeed in this, then we may take a fresh look at psychoanalysis again, perhaps being better informed at a detailed level.

A HUSSERLIAN PERSPECTIVE ON UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVATION AND THE CONCEPT O F “W I L L E N S I N T E N T I O N A L I T ÄT ”

Husserl is often regarded as impersonal and abstracted, and it is usual to claim that transcendental phenomenology is irrelevant for concrete, personal life – or even for persons in general. This is a wrongful conception that probably follows from pore knowledge of the later period of Husserls thinking. In order to grasp these problems more radicallty, one therefore has to try to understand the full implications of taking the experiences of the “life-world”, as is expressed by the principle of all principles also. The task therefore entails to understand how: (. . .) the path here leads back to the Ur-evidenz of the Lifeworld, which always is always pregiven.10

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If one looks to the even later writings, ex. HUA XXVIII, we see that Husserl there returns to the question of the subjective, without leaving the transcendental level, under the heading of reconstitution of the transcendental Ego as psycho-physical person. The later Husserl wants to present a description of the personal that is invested by the insights of his earlier analyses, that is – with a clarified view on the conditions of possibility for subjective experience.11 This motivation is also presented clearly at the end of the CM (HUA I), under §§59, 60 and 61, witch opens by analyses of the “ontological explication” of pure phenomenological thinking. Subsumed here, are the problems of “life” and “death”, of the “movement of the generations”, and the “individual position in the total historical complex”.12 And if we look to a lecture from 1933, on “universal motivation of drives as the source of social togetherness”, this argumentation is clarified even further. What Husserl in fact wants to clarify here, is the phenomenological basis for, and content in, the concept of procrastination.13 Even though it is not stated explicitly, Husserl now alludes to what commonly is known as a theory on sexual motivation, but expands the field of meaning of such a view. The problem arises from the tension in the acknowledgement of the subjective desire and the various degree of understanding of the desire of others. Here we may see that Husserl’s argument may be compared to Freud. But, Husserl’s perspective is, in some important ways, deviating from Freud in certain aspects. Let’s use the phenomenon of “hunger” as example to illustrate. Hunger may be understood both as expression of a bodily located source of desire, and it is an “urmodus” of a primary willensintentionalität. A derived modus of this is the sexual need, says Husserl, and this desire is most oftenly directed towards others. The sexual motivation may be directed towards all sorts of objects, but finds its most full degree of fulfilment in the copulation.14 Analysed in a purely phenomenological manner, the primary drive of the subject demonstrate an originary state of unhibited (“free”) energy, witch it is the task of sociality to master and cultivate. But this strong component of basic desire lasts on in mental live and functions a natural motivation for the “I” and its stream of projected ambitions. Husserl claims that these motivations yields reciprocally for every individual, so that we may speak of a mutual flowing of primary drive qualities in social fields. Hence, human beings will not firstly acknowledge each other as rational individuals, but feel others as given in oscillating affective modes. It is only secondarily that these modes may be concretised as “happy”, “sad” etc. Most often, the meaning of the Other is given in an unclear and obscure modus. And, says Husserl, this obscurity may it self function as a form of social hunger. We therefore have a basic need to understand the Other’s “deep” motivations, because they have a profound effect on

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our own perceptual configuration of the Mitwelt. This is of course not always the case, but the tendency is latently present. But how may this become clarified in a more concrete sense? What is the basic origin of this “social hunger”? By answering this question, I will be elucidation a clear, existential dimension in Husserl. In an immediate, experiential modus, people are given for others as valueintentional beings, that are driven by different motivations in their natural surroundings. Human beings are not primarily rational beings; Husserl states.15 The primary characteristic of sociality is to be a system of drives. When a subject “wants” something, this necessarily implies the wills of others as well. Thus the primary will of the subjects’ grips into each other, modifies them, and channels the intersubjective affections on basis of common, basic hierarchies of value, constituted in the life world. This basic pattern also seems to support the experience of “understanding something”, ex. an utterance, a gesture etc. The mental processes will then modify the given such that they contribute to a regulation of the self-understanding of the Other. This varies in intensity, of course, but the closer the individuals are related, the more strongly the affective effect will be (Mother/Child as prototype). In this way, then, the transcendental subjectivity will always set its stamp on the existential experience of others, without the person needing to “know” exactly how the affections intertwine. This is the husserlian version of the Supra-I. We see that Husserl’s phenomenology states originary and passive willingness in the “core” of the I, witch leads the subject to experience anonymous drives at an existential level. At a purely descriptive level though, these internationalities may be explicated within the retention/protention-system (remember the distinction in Freud of Ich-Ideal and Ideal-Ich). By the temporal synthesising of the different corresponding acts, the “I” is structured as a unified system of meaning. This formality may be explicated as a purely personal I, that always has a self-reference in concordance with a “world”, and a social field of commonness. But, the “I” is not the originary source of its own motivation. The personal I is framed, so to speak, by apperseptive, affective passivity, witch varies in intensity. Expanded to a general theory of a phenomenology of the will, this leads to a view of the I as being motivated by fluctuating and varying degrees of insight regarding the own and others existential goal-directedness. Further, we see that a husserlian theory on existential motivation implies drive-energy stemming from both Leib, as a culturally defined system, and biological needs of the Körper. In addition, there are “higher motivations” of a almost sublimated kind – such as religious, aesthetic values. Generalised in a

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phenomenologically valid manner, this leads to a rich existential theory of human life and its conditionings. But this structural analysis of the immediate will and its relevance for the constitution of social fields must now be expanded by some further remarks in order to achieve understanding of a material reconstitution of the I within Husserl’s phenomenology. Thus far in the analysis, we have seen that there is a pre-personal motivation in the I, which may be labelled “drive”. This drive may attain an undecided plurality of forms and needs, such as ex. “hunger”, “sexual” drives etc. But, again, all this seems to need an even more profound explanation, witch I will now attempt.

THE QUESTION OF THE MOTIVATIONAL STRUCTURE OF T H E P R I M A R Y D R I V E S : “L I F E ” A N D “ B A S I C S A T I S F A C T I O N ”

As I have tried to demonstrate, like Freud, Husserl does not regard humans as rational beings. There are passive motivational structures, that functions organisationally in the “I” and its activities. A first problem in this, as already mentioned, is that social fields must be regarded as systems structured and invested by drive-energy, and that the apperseptive dimensions of others can’t be perceptually accessible (for me). If the perceptual qualities of the Other are not given for me, this then leads to problems of understanding motivation for objectification of social experience. Questions like these are indicative of a deeper layer of functionality in subjectivity, which precede active, reflective mental activity. How then, may the constitution of the Other be explained in this pre-rational dimension? Husserl states that a complete knowing of the Other is principally impossible.16 This is not due to a defect in the phenomenological method. Rather it is a phenomenological fact, and it is this lack of existential connectedness that founds the motivation for setting up ideal notions of Others and the Self. It follows that such phantasised forms of social cognition, may replace the originary perception, and be held as expressive of a “character”, a “personality” etc. Thus, a thorough, phenomenological analysis may demonstrate that psychological conceptualisations are secondary (“constituted”), and that positive psychology – as a form of meaning in the Lebenswelt – is secondary also. There seems then, to be phenomenological support for saying that, there is an underlying form in the structure of subjectivity, that is less unstable, though less explicit – it is unconscious. This “form” of the active Ego or the personal

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I, therefore seems to be the constitutive strata of the immediate, existential experience. How may this be qualified by Husserl’s theory of self-perception? By Husserl’s own words, it is the case that: The deeper motivation, witch precedes human remembrance, I cannot reach by phenomenology, not either in the self-streaming flow of remembrance, is only achievable by a reconstruction of a universal type.17

A reasonable interpretation of this is that because the anonymous dimensions (the Self) of the individual are not given for the I in a strong degree of explication, the I cannot communicate it’s self-experience clearly either. If the “person” is something witch basically “happens”, then persons always are in a process of cultivating the Self as a cultural nexus, in light of the “higher” motivations I mentioned over. As a consequence, the “person” cannot reach an objective notion of the meaning of the Self, due to the principal lack of substantiality of its remembrances. “My” life then, is perceived as a incomplete field of complex motivations and realisations. The explicated history of a personal life (ex. a therapeutic self-report given in psychoanalysis), must be a fluctuating structure – a re-construction, on the basis of present motivations, that also fade out in a temporal modification. In accord with the protational system of presentedness, these unrealised motivations for self-explication are experienced as values for the subject, something that is going to be realised. Hence, there will occur a stream of originary, passive structures of motivation that functions as a form for mental causality, which varies in degrees of intensity and explication. It is when the Ego has a need for abstracting certain perceptual aspects of this originary experience, that there is an explication of “objectified” moments of experience. Such isolated moments (“parts”), does not exist firstly. They are re-presented again and again through these extremely complicated processes.18 The concrete experience of a “Me”, in the form a sexed, cultural identity, is therefore not an objective entity. I have now set my self in position to attempt answers to my initial problems. How may we both provide a more substantial psychopathological explanation for psychosis – and – how may phenomenology invest psychoanalysis in this matter?

A H U S S E R L I A N R E S P O N S E T O T H E P R O B L E M O F “L O S S OF REALITY”

Let’s here start with a hard question; what is thought? Let’s ask like this: if it is true that the essence of reality must be sought by tracing the genesis of givenness – that is assigned to a “world”, then the perplexity of the

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deranged I-Self-constelation, may be formulated as the problem of reconstructing the intentional history of the present state of mind. In Husserl, all types of experience are founded within the domain of human consciousness, which is actively imputing meaning at the surrounding world. This world is first and foremost mine. On one level, this is to say that my phenomenal field is primarily structured according to the confluence of my bodily sensations and intentions (“drives”). If I am blinded or lamed, this would make the world appear dramatically different to me. On another level, it means that what I call my “Self” is a result of intentive processes that literally are resulting of deeper, transcendental mental processes – which never can be made subject of intentional control – they are genuinely unconscious. Together, these processes are substrate for that which is labelled “transcendental Ego”. So, in a phenomenological language, the transcendental Ego is constitutive both of the world as its field of interest, and the subjective notion of “Selfness” as a part of this world. Theoretically this position is called transcendental idealism. To prepare an answer to the challenge of how to re-describe the problem of “loss of reality” in psychoanalysis, I now ask which processes that are functioning at the kernel of this constituting activity. With Husserl, it may all be summed up as how to understand the temporal synthesizing of different types of mental acts. And Husserl states that: No matter how alien in essence mental processes may be with respect to one an, they are none the less constituted in one temporal stream, as members of the one phenomenological time.19

But what does this mean more concretely? Let’s illustrate through an easy example: when reading this text, I am not explicitly aware of my glasses. But not only do they sharpen my view, but the glass itself is pre-reflexively taken to “have” certain qualities such as “hardness”, “transparency”, “fragility” and so forth. If we ask where these qualities has their origin, one could, I think, argue reasonably, that it is only for me as a thinking human subject, that the glasses “has” this cluster of meanings that makes them the culturally stable object that they are. And further, the wall behind me, the room under us, and the back side of this paper sheet, none of these phenomena are directly given, they are mediated. But none the less, they are necessary moments of my immediate experience. The same principle goes for the experience of my “Self”. The continuous structuring of “my” passive horizon as a concrete field of meaning has always already performed mental acts, before I can reflect upon them; they are passive. This is to say that my phenomenal field is given as a stable, structurally organized whole. My average, daily subjective experience is therefore, for the most experienced on a background of a passively pulsating horizon of meaning (“screen memories”). In short, I do not have to actively

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think, to make the “world” appear as world. The individual mental life, is thus standing out, or rather: ex-cisting (from Greek: ex stasis – to stand out), from a presumably undecided horizon, in which both my future and my past, are given as constituent aspects of all my present existential projects. When saying that the meaning-background is ever pulsating, this is to say that it is always changing in phases of likeness and difference, but the phenomenal field is normally tending towards likeness, or if one likes: it tends towards a condition of homogeneity. These processes are labelled “receptivity”, and are functioning at the lowest level of awareness in the Ego/I. All explicated entities which is given for the active ego, or the I, are always already the result of constitutive, passive mental processes. Which in their turn, point to deeper structures in the transcendental Ego. And this is what Husserl speaks about as the synthesizing functions of the inner time consciousness. And this is important, because according to Husserl, this is factually the seat of identity in general. It is these processes that found the stable and solid character of a “world”. To understand this, one must ask further about the meaning of the concept of “synthesis”. In Husserl’s theory, all intentive processes are combined in what he calls syntheses. Such syntheses occur when multiple intentive aspects of a perceived entity are combined to form a whole, or one could say: a gestalt. And it is such structures of meaning that is denoted under the rubric of “thing” – ex. “me”. A synthesis is therefore a collection of multiple formation-modalities, which belong to mental acts of every type. And because of this, the passive, plural intendings of horizon-consciousness are given common foci, which in turn is the basis of distinguishing acts of an higher type, like using and manipulating of symbols, i.e.: language. On the basis of this, it can be made understandable that the parts of the meaningstructures are inter-dependent. Entities are always seen as parts of larger wholes; they do not stand out in isolation. A fork points to the knife and so on . . .. This not only goes for the single experiences, but mental life as such is combined in this manner. This is the permanent background that makes up the basis for self-evident identity in the I. The “world-phenomenon”, when analyzed in this manner, therefore has an inner horizon, which is structured according to certain principles. According to Husserl this formal structure of the individuals original sphere (Eigenwelt), is what is usually named by the common title of “reason”.20 (Unfortunately, this occasion does not permit a further explication of this problematic – which would lead to a critique of Kant’s position also.) The active Ego, the I, which is reflexively given to itself, as part of this inner horizon, always first appears in a state of primordial, pre-categorised meaning. And because of this, the world it “sees” may have an “unhomely” character. But in “normal” states of

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being, a further consequence of the stable character of the world’s inner horizon is experience of predictability. The active Ego can, again normally speaking, project it’s Self into a future which is taken for granted. At the pre-reflexive level, this founds an “automatic” positionality, which is the founding belief in a natural, functioning world – the life world that is given in an unproblematic mode. This is what Husserl calls the “ur-doxa”.21 Every conceivable entity that stands out on this background is seen as “real”. But because the inner horizon of the entity may be influenced by other systems of meaning, objects may be presented in unusual ways, as optical illusions may demonstrate. In such cases, the co-intendings are being synthesized in a way that is producing “impossible”, but none the less perceived phenomena. And because the “Self” is also given as an integral part of these systems, it to may be given in such deranged influenced ways, and hence appear as “strange” (for the I). In some cases – ex. in “psychosis”, the Ego may (begin) to synthesize it’s Self with aspects of the inner horizon which earlier were seen as alien to it. It may hear it’s own thoughts, or having problems of distinguishing “here” and “there” (birdsongs “in” my head etc.). This may cause the experience of objects to dissolve, or take on radically new forms. The horizon may begin to appear in a fragmented way. And this is the self-pathology of the Ego, which is commonly called “formal thought-disorder” – or perhaps; a loss of “reality”. A phenomenological theory of schizophrenia must be based on reflections like these. In the early phases of schizophrenia the “world” often begin to emanate in an utterly strange and frightening way. When the essential structures of the World and Self are radically re-arranged, because of disturbances in the passive mental processes, this has as its results what Jaspers called “borderline experiences”. Features that before were taken for granted, can then be taken as just the opposite and vice versa. As the Ego is formative of “identity” it may also form experience of “non-identity”. When the limits of reason are diminished, nothing is impossible, and states of severe confusion will set in. This is what Laing called “ontological insecurity”, and it is the first stage in the psychotic development. The individual may doubt whether he is really dead or alive, if he really is an automat or not etc. In most cases such borderline-experiences produces an extreme aniexiety, which may become severely handicapping. When situations like these appear, the active Ego must take over the functions that used to belong to the passive ego-aspects. Nothing else matters now, but to re-create a harmonious world in which the self may reside in a homely fashion – and so; all the “libido-energy” has to be employed, withdrawn towards the kernel of subjectivity. The individual who is damned with this hellish situation is first and foremost occupied with a

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desperate attempt to preserve what is left of “normality” (i.e. “autonomy” and “futurality”), and may therefore begin to isolate himself, in order to work in peace. But the I can’t exist without an explanation of the new situation, and may now choose an interpretation based primarily on affect. Hence we see a form of regression toward a childlike way of living. In time, the ego may find a way out by construing a new and stable surrounding for it self, but maybe at the price of what we call a “psychotic” condition. If so, radical loneliness awaits because of a deep lack in the ability to relate socially. The psychosis is a symptom of a radical breakdown in the intersubjective dimension. And, according to Freud, there is no difference in principle between states of dreaming and those of psychosis; they only vary in duration and intensity. If this is so, then what we call “psychosis” is nothing strange at all – since we all have experienced it some way or other. And again, if this is true, then it isn’t unthinkable that the same principles that regulate our waking thinking also are active during the dream work. And, if the phenomenological method may provide an adequate description of the way people think, then maybe the phenomenological study of dreams can be the king’s road to the full understanding of the mental as such?

CONCLUSION

I will now present my closing statements. An upholder of a meta-psychology founded in affective irrationalism, should also agree that his basic logic is based in an auto-erotic tendency. Or, that “logic” is the result of a subliminated primordial aniexiety. And if this is so, there must be as different ways of thinking as there are psycho-logics – hence: equally many versions of psychoanalyses. Freud was neither dumb nor lazy. So why was he unable to sort these problems out? I think Derrida could be right when claiming that Freud became entangled in a “paleonymic game”, so that the elder layers of metaphorisity of his theory gave raise to perhaps unconscious inconsistencies. As Freud seemed unwilling to abandon the central dogmas of the early phase of theoretical development, he remained trapped within a naive, objectivistic framework, with an equally naïve conception concerning time and space – in fact seems to have confused them – with the consequence that Freud’s psychoanalysis ended up with a mechanistic tendency, in spite of the effort at an ontological revision in the middle period. In the opening remarks of this philosophical analysis of psychoanalysis, I asked whether psychoanalysis or philosophy that would have the most to gain of a mutual collaboration – it seems to me that philosophy, even existential

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phenomenology, both could, and perhaps should learn from psychoanalysis the importance of a “scientific” observation of the facticity of actual lived life, to downplay it’s perhaps speculative tendency – but on the other hand: we see that the core of psychoanalytic theory, the premises for observation, are built on classical, “speculative” philosophy towards which Freud was deeply ambivalent, the reasons for this remains obscure – but Freud himself remained a naïve philosophical idealist because he so strongly defended the notion of a psychological reality. Because of his lack of philosophical insight he remained under the spell of the cardinal problem of idealism, namely ontological dualism – or rather; how to connect mind and world. If Freud had succeeded in developing the concept of “libido” further, then he could have toned down this speculative tendency and then also resolved the basic problems of psychoanalysis. In line with this line of reasoning, I think that a closer examination of psychoanalysis may facilitate a more profound understanding not only of Freud, but perhaps also of some “deep” presuppositions of philosophy it self. As Freud’s theory is so heavily laden by the classical tradition, then perhaps a re-thinking of psychoanalysis in light of these sources may bring psychoanalysis closer to current systematic philosophy also? Perhaps then we may see a renewed familiarization with psychoanalysis? This may resemble what Husserl called a possible revitalisation of the core ideas of psychoanalysis. So the question may remain: what do a human want? University of Bergen, Norway

NOTES 1

GSW VIII, Das Interesse an der Psychoanalyse, p. 407. Both Husserl and Freud followed Brentano’s lectures at the Universität Wien. We know that Freud studied Brentano’s Psychologie von dem Empirischen Standpunkt. Brentano actually recommended Freud as the German translator of J. S. Mill’s Grote’s Plato. 3 GSW, X, Das Unbewuβte, p. 270. 4 GSW XIII, p. 4. 5 GSW, XIV, DNP, p. 363. 6 According to C. G. Jung who held a 5-year seminar on the Zarathustra, Nietzsche was in periods severely deranged. And, if read psychographically, this is perhaps expressed clearly ex. in the “Fiest of the Donkey”. If we may trust Jung in this, then Nietzsche perhaps tried to outscribe, so to speak, troubling experiences from altered states of consciousness. Experiences like these were then claimed to be of a more original type; a purely aesthetic way of being, or a heightened receptivity regarding the Ürsprunglische which in a certain sense are un-personal and hence, universal forms for the active thinking of the human mind. Or, if one will: an immediate experience of the unconscious. 7 GSW, XIV, ISA, p. 307. 2

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The importance of understanding these deeper, hidden processes is, according to Schopenhauer, that unconscious motives will continue to exert influence on the person, regardless of how long it has been since they arose. If these are to continue to exert their influence on a unconscious level, then this may lead to a disaster. Further, the unconscious motives may become split off from their original context, and their affective “location” may then become associatively separate from the accurate situation in which they were created. Then the person may loose recognition of the structure of his mental representations, with the consequence that motivational drives may become unintelligible for the person. And, by this: also the “world” may appear as alienating and even dreamlike. We in fact here see a rudimentary, but in my eyes, radical phenomenology of psychopathology. Or to modify, by these derangements of the logical matrix of the Self, the borders of “conceptual reality” and “psychic reality” are being blurred. 9 HUA VI, §34d, p. 131. My italics. 10 HUA XV, nr. 34, p. 593. 11 HUA I, §59, p. 163. 12 HUA XV, nr. 34, p. 593. 13 HUA XV, nr. 34, p. 593. 14 HUA XV, nr. 34, p. 594. 15 HUA XV, p. 631. 16 HUA XV, p. 632. 17 HUA IV, §54, p. 213. 18 HUA III, §118, p. 291. 19 HUA I, §23, p. 92. 20 EuU, §7, p. 24.

CITED LITTERATURE Freud, S. Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalyse – Briefe an Wilhelm Flieβ Abhandlungen und Notizen aus den jahren 1887–1902, (S. Fischer Verlag 1950). Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke. Chronologisch Geordnet, I, (GSW), (Imago Publishing Co., Ltd. 1948) I, (1892–1899). Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke. Chronologisch Geordnet, I, GSW II, III, (Die Traumdeutung) (1900–1901). Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke. Chronologisch Geordnet, I, GSW, VIII, (1909–1913). Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke. Chronologisch Geordnet, I, GSW, IX, (1912). Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke. Chronologisch Geordnet, I, GSW, X, (1913–1917). Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke. Chronologisch Geordnet, I, GSW, XIII, (1920–1924). Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke. Chronologisch Geordnet, I, GSW, XIV, (1925–1932). Husserl, E. HUA IV, in M. Biemel (ed.), Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (The Hague, Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff, 1952). Husserl, E. Erfahrung und Urteil – Untersuchungen zur genealogie der Logik (Hamburg, Claassen Verlag, 1964). Husserl, E. HUA XV, in I. Kern (ed.), Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil. 1929–1935 (The Hague, Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff, 1973a).

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Husserl, E. in S. Strasser (ed.), Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge (The Hague, Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff, 1973b). Husserliana I, (HUA). Husserl, E. HUA VI, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie (The Hague, Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff, 1976). Husserl, E. HUA III, in K. Schuhmann (ed.), Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführungin die reine Phänomenologie 1. Halbband: Text der 1.-3. Auflage – Nachdruck (The Hague, Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff, 1977). Husserl, E. HUA XXVIII, in U. Melle (ed.), Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre. 1908–1914 (The Hague, Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988).

E V A S Y Rˇ I Š T O V Á

A CONTRIBUTION TO PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE HUMAN NORMALITY IN THE MODERN TIME

ABSTRACT

The question of normality is much broader than that of the possibility of elimination or prevention of mental disturbances. In its essence it is the question of possibilities for creating the most favourable conditions for human life. We enquire into normality as an endless process of mans self-creation and his reshaping of the world. Creative activity, constant over-reaching, openness toward the future, seeking the truth, the possibility of choice and free decision belongs to the specific characteristics of the human species, and hence to the essence of human normality, as well. The article is mainly concerned with problems connected with the concept and basic criteria of normality of personality. A logical prerequisite for understanding the essence of the abnormity is a clear conception of normality. It is one of the basic conditions for diagnosis and therapy of abnormal behavior. Although this presumption seems to be a matter of course we have to admit that a satisfactory definition of normality is not available as yet. At the present state of knowledge the conception of normality is characterized rather by a more or less appropriate working hypothesis. What is exactly the essence of human normality? Does it exist at all? What do we have in mind when saying a “normal” individual or a “normal community?” Is normality real or is it utopianism? May it be considered identically with mental health, contrary to disease? Is normality an endless developmental process or is it an ideal state? Is normality a relatively constant structure lasting through various changes, or is it – on the contrary essentially dynamic, a process of change in times? Does not the point of abnormity belong to the very essence of normality? Would not a so-called “perfect normality” be exactly something abnormal? What is the relation of normality of personality to biological normality? Are there any generally valid principles of biological normality which could also be applied to human psychology? Or are 277 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 277–279. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_17, 

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there some specific features in “human normality” outside the realm of principles of biological normality? And is this problem accessible to scientific investigation? These are the basic questions which the author is concerned with in her paper. Although the question of normality seems to be most actual in psychopathology and psychotherapy, its significance exceeds to a great extent the present frame of reference. It occurs e.g. in each context where the question is asked: What is our aim in the process of education or in regulating the life of human society? What is our idea of “the optimum pattern of human existence” or of the “most favourable psychosocial conditions” for the development of personality? The question of normality is thus much broader than that of the possibility of elimination or prevention of mental disturbances. In its essence it is the question of possibilities for creating the most favourable conditions for human life. . . . Firs of all, we try to find the most favourable variants and possibilities of human life the way in which to eliminate destructive or deformative effects on men. We search for the basic conditions necessary for man a self-realization, on the pattern of which each individual, each culture, each society can create its unique optimum of life. Thus we are interested in normality not only as a sum of relative signs varying in their relations to a particular culture, historical epoch, society or individual, but also as a structure, as a genetic lay-out, as a system of laws of the human species with its particular human traits differing from any other biological species. We enquire into normality as an endless process of mans self-creation and his reshaping of the world. Conscious creative activity, constant over-reaching, openness toward the future, seeking the truth, the possibility of choice and free decision belongs to the specific characteristics of the human species, and hence to the essence of human normality, as well. This is why human normality is incompatible with an established “perfect” state. The ability of self-creating is part of genetic pattern of a normal human personality”. “. . . The objectives of pedagogical, psychological, therapeutical, ethical and social regulation, of a human individual should basically be aiming at the maximum of creative development of personality within the social conditions while simultaneously reducing the hazards of damage or death of the individual. This should be the case again if we admit that the most favourable state of human self-realization can only be a transient one owing to the development of nature in its integrity . . .”

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Further the author formulate the key psychosocial problems of mental disturbances and Human Normality in the framework of the specific living conditions of modern age. Charles University, Prague

REFERENCES A list of the authors publications exploring the concerns of this article. (English translations of the titles.) 1. The Possibilities and Limitations of the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenic Diseases (Prague, Czech Academy of Sciences, 1965). 2. The Imaginary World (Prague, Mladá fronta, 1973). 3. Normality of the Personality (Prague, Avicenum, 1973). 4. The Zenonian Syndrome (Prague, Czech Psychology, 1976). 5. “Psychosis and Artistic Inspiration” in LEidos ´ de lart ´ (Krakow, 1985). 6. The Cracked Time (Martin, Osveta, 1988). 7. Man in Crisis (Prague, Karolinum, 1994). 8. The Poem as a Home in the Homeless of Paul Celan (Prague, Association of the White Raven, 1994, 2000, 2006).

ANTONIO DE LUCA

TOWARD A PHENOMENOLOGICAL AND EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOLOGY

ABSTRACT

While it is no simple matter to face the crisis of current psychology, alienated as it is by reductionism, naturalism, and epistemological misunderstandings that dangerously simplify man’s lived experience and complexity, it is nevertheless vital to re-found psychology itself so it may engage in the decisive task of studying man, proposing solutions, and engaging in interventions. The contribution of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Max Scheler, and others, as well as that of the existential philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, and Maria Zambrano, often ignored in the sphere of psychology, can finally help psychological research today to propose a new objectivity born of intersubjectivity and of transcendental subjectivity in order to return to things themselves, man’s lived experience, and the essence of being human in the world, even when human existence is in a condition of shipwreck. This is the challenge that today’s psychologists must confront in their work, setting themselves as witnesses to their own credibility in research and in their relationships with patients. Thus this paper presents current studies in phenomenological and existential psychology in Italy and proposes some existential coordinates as universal and essential structures. The deliverance of psychology lies in acknowledging the dignity of man and his interior poetry, in facing his contradictions and anguish, and in accepting the other as an alter-ego, another subject and being unto himself as a person who discovers and rediscovers lived experiences. We cannot carry on the work of psychologists without radically engaging ourselves, without our testimony in existing; otherwise the word we exhort can dwindle to empty silence. The essence of our humanity is involved. Heraclitus reminds us that it is impossible to discover or discern the boundaries of the soul, no matter what road we travel, and Zambrano wonders what happened to the “psyche,” the “soul,” precisely when psychology was charged with studying them, asking what the results have been of this inquiry, if the soul seeks itself in poetry. Husserl and Stein, in their “philosophical existence,” highlighted the complexity of the epistemological 281 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 281–299. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_18, 

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constitution of psychology, its crises, its paradoxes, and its estrangement from the world-of-life. It is certainly difficult to deal with the crisis of psychology. Several years ago in Italy a detailed inquiry was launched to propose a psychology that takes into account the contribution of phenomenology and existential philosophy.1 Perhaps the time has come to acknowledge that a certain psychology has failed. Worn down by methodological contradictions, epistemological ambiguities, theoretical misunderstandings, intellectualistic and nihilistic stances, caught between temptation to pursue and imitate physics and medicine, and disappointment at the elusiveness of its object of study, psychology could not help but fail in certain spheres, in some inquiries. Many have made extensive efforts to discover “statistically” what man has always known intuitively. This crisis was markedly worsened by underestimations of studies that not only denounced the theoretical driftings or deliriums, and the reductivistic simplifications that in some cases characterized its history, but also proposed reflections and analyses to help psychology construct its own theoretical and methodological framework. Authors such as Søren Kierkegaard, Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, as well as Ludwig Binswanger, Eugène Minkowski or Buber, Weil, Ricoeur, Zambrano, De Unamuno and others, have sought implicitly or explicitly to propose to psychology a new way of operating, of doing research. They have considered lived experience, meaning, and the concrete existence of the person in relation with himself, the world, others. Constantly present in their inquiry was the question of what conception of man was necessary for this research. Theirs was not a nihilistic, reductivist, simplifying proposal, but in the individual differences of approach to the problems, it was the attempt to offer an adequate epistemological constitution to the study of the person and his world, even when the latter was an alien world or a shipwreck. Inquiry of this kind therefore is not born as criticism of psychology or in opposition to its studies. On the contrary. It certainly is not simple to be a psychologist. Though a certain psychology has failed, there is no such failure in the function of the psychologist or his work. There is no failure in his sincere search for objectivity, which for phenomenology is rooted in intersubjectivity. There has been no diminishment in the importance of the help it offers suffering people in many ways and in many spheres in its little more than a century of its life. Modern psychology must rediscover its epistemological constitution to avoid becoming what it is not and never will be: a natural science. Can there exist a psychology that gathers and can describe the “lived world” and lived experience of particular people in their individuality, discarding the theoretical opposition between subject and object, between individual and

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universal? A psychology that “understands” lived experience without claiming to “explain” what happens in the other, aware, as St. Augustine said, that nobody knows how he might behave tomorrow? A psychology that, without fear of losing its identity, can acknowledge the intuitive knowledge of poetry and art, the authentically astute and cognitive gaze of the human soul? Can there finally emerge a psychology that, free of anguish about not being “scientific” enough in its research and expression, can formulate its own epistemological constitution on its own terrain, in order to know the human soul and that of that particular person as much as possible? Can there be a psychology that looks at suffering, even when expressed in mental disturbance, without judgments and prejudices, free of naturalistic and reductivist categories? Can there emerge a psychology that always takes into consideration individuals, not seeking “impersonality,” but the personal in the interpersonal, precisely when there is an absence of representation for the appropriate behavior, precisely when the approach of the phenomenological and existential psychologist is constant research to understand the complex inter-human encounter? Is it possible to reconcile the many epistemological questions, those related to the “what” and “how” to know, that wear down the action of psychology and its constant reflection? Is it possible to “measure” sadness, joy, suffering, boredom, beatitude, that is, the unquantifiable? Is it possible with naturalistic categories to grasp the most ardent and important leap that a man can take, according to Jaspers, the leap from desperation and shipwreck to the attainment of respite and serenity?

THE EXISTENTIAL COORDINATES

Studies of phenomenology, existential philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and hermeneutics can help notably in the reconsideration of the epistemological constitution for the study of the soul, hidden in the folds of silence, of the depths, of the radicalness of human beings in relationship with themselves and others, a soul that has revealed itself to poets and philosophers before psychologists. Man constantly yearns. Toward. He reaches to orient himself, with himself and others, at every step. This tension of his reveals how he is a being-for. Recently I sought to reflect on the possible existential coordinates that might guide each person’s journey, finding them in the context of such tragic misunderstandings as the labyrinths of substance abuse and eating disorders.2 In the following text I would propose these existential coordinates as universal and essential structures.

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Being-for-life. At each step we take, there is the search for what we love and what we experience as vital. What becomes fundamental is the question of life and death, and the search for the reasons for continuing to live, which can be the same for the choosing to die. In a therapeutic process, the therapist’s inability to comprehend what is vital for the patient can determine an abandonment of the therapy itself. Psychologists have to ask themselves bit by bit as therapy progresses what the person loves, how he loves, and what is vital for him in that moment. For the drug addict, in a grave misunderstanding, the effect of the psychotropic substance is the most lovable thing that can exist, and thus the search for it appears not lethal, but vital. For very complex reasons not analysed in the present work, it can happen that a relationship, a certain event, or a particular situation can be constantly sought out because loved. In everyone’s life there can be missed appointments that feed particular lived experiences and, if grasped in the absence of the other, can make existence incomprehensible or cause people to mistake a horizon, convincing them of an indisputable certainty.3 The noetic-noematic process constitutes itself in an unquestionable conviction, without reaching the datum of reality through the adequate relationship between “signifying intention” and “filling with meaning.”4 Life is, should be vital, and yet, since life crosses through us and does not belong to us, what humans authentically possess are not their own eyes, or those of their beloved, which will be taken away by death, but their adult gaze on things, their knowledge of themselves and life: our responsibility for it can be reached even when we can die or lose our beloved, in any moment. We always engage in the search for the vital, for what we love, what we believe and live this way, even when misunderstanding has made it lethal. It is the capacity to love that makes vital what one considers so. It is not easy to comprehend this. The greatest responsibility for existence is precisely the responsibility for the capacity and the way of loving: for the person we love we can be willing to do any action. This is why loving immediately poses the problem, the task, and the responsibility for how we react to the loss of the beloved and for the way we love, opening the ethical question of psychology. How we accept loss provides the measure of the way of loving, while suffering becomes the cipher of loving. We suffer for the loss of the beloved, and our reaction to this separation makes us people aware of our own limits and at the same time of the possibility of overcoming them. Separation and abandonment make us responsible, precisely when we are most vulnerable. If we live love responsibly and can responsibly be loved, in a re-found alterity, then it is possible to measure ourselves against loss and death, which is different from dying, and perhaps accept death itself. For Lévinas, this measuring ourselves against our

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own death and that of the other is the extreme moment of responsibility. Our individual responsibility is enclosed in this irreconcilability between love and loss. All this seems at once obvious and absurd, tragic and paradoxical, at times grotesque, like life in certain cases: the representation of Medusa in the past or the corporeal metamorphoses in oncology, where humanity still expresses itself in its ultimate, unique being, notwithstanding the amputations of the body or one’s history. Our very reaction to apparent defeat is not the scorn Camus makes Sisyphus experience when without fail he returns to retrieve his boulder, which will roll again, but the dignity of the human being expressed with that sacredness that suffering, faced and accepted, restores to the tragic sentiment of life, overcoming it. Being-for-our-own-body. We are our body: it is our center of orientation, the place we can make sense of ourselves and others. It is the place of orientation. Perhaps there is an urgent need even stronger than the anguish of death: it is the need to continually find orientation in the visibility of existence and in still feeling ourselves. It is the need to feel something in our own body, be it pain or pleasure, but to feel alive. Primordial sensations, necessary for feeling ourselves in our own body when the body/living-being seem to fail. If pain becomes the final horizon for being able to glimpse ourselves or the other, for being able to find our own center of orientation, then pain itself can be welcomed and sought, as happens with those who hurt, cut, or burn themselves.5 Greater than the fear of feeling pain is that of not being able to orient ourselves in the living body (Leib). The body (soma) can be lived as the body object (Körper), as the tomb (sema), not because bound to identity, as in Plato’s Cratylus, but because it would not let us sense that resonance that permits us to find orientation as living beings. The limit of pain becomes the only beat of life emitted from a body-tomb. It seems then that the search for pleasure, sexual pleasure in particular, and pain, are the only ways the body-thing can resound with life: but pleasure in the finite, like pain, anchors humans to the present without possibility of becoming, chaining us to the finite, to the immediate, to the instant, to our body, without this being able to exist after the instant, in the beyond, in overcoming the finite. Orienting ourselves, if it does not happen in the becoming of existence, can present itself as death. Pain and pleasure are the fundamental bodily sensations within which our entire existence oscillates. But our existence is continually consumed in the search for orientation in its uniqueness and unitariness as person, where the affective and spiritual component not only characterizes our humanity but also provides the fundamental nucleus that anticipates any meaning of pleasure and pain. Edith Stein, in her unitary vision of the uniqueness proper to each person, distinguishes between the body and psyche, which we share with animals,

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and the spiritual sphere that is proper to the human being.6 The body, the ultimate and first boundary with the external world, is the certain limit of our existing, but is equally the offering and the means through which we exist and orient ourselves in the unitariness of the person, existent not only because outcome of nature and culture, but above all, for Marcel, because creature, because generated by an act of love, as it should be for each birth. The attempt to petrify the body, the search for pleasure and pain reveal the effort to orient ourselves, to orient our own body that is living being in harmony with the psychic and with the spiritual, even in the misunderstanding of things. Such a search reveals not only the reaching to obtain the objective, which overcomes the fear of death itself, and that steeps the question in ethics, but also each time reveals the possible meaning of that something finite we intend to reach. When we orient ourselves in our own spiritual existence, love, hidden among the folds of appointments that happen through an alchemic process, manages to go beyond sexuality.7 Love cannot be reduced to a Freudian drive. Angela Ales Bello distinguishes (a) pleasure, proper to the corporeal sphere, (b) joy, characteristic of the psychic component and knowable during the empathetic act, understood in the Steinian sense, through the possibility of recognizing my joy and that of another person even without feeling it originarily, and (c) beatitude, proper to the spiritual sphere, which encloses our human essence of happiness in absolute terms.8 The body has in itself its finiteness, but our body exists as a work of art, as Merleau-Ponty observed, which manages to overcome its materiality and – as both Bergson and Stein noted, albeit from different points of view – inasmuch as it is endowed with a “vital force”, it is therefore steeped in the force that enables the development and the journey itself of the person in the world and that is the common source of our physical and spiritual strength. The possibility of death makes our relationship with our own body both paradoxical and tragic. Desperation is the awareness of our own limit, deprived of hope. The possibility of orienting ourselves in a body-object (in a set of organs, that might no longer exist as mine and in my body and shortly, deprived of my awareness, separated from me, without me, even if donated or received in a gesture of generosity) can alienate any lived experience: I am no longer I and this is not my body. The psychopathological lived experience of body, in particular the process of depersonalization, reveals this eventuality. The body as well, in order to be felt and to still feel itself, can at that point scream or close on itself in silence. In a body not “your own” you can suppose the possibility of death at every step, but it is difficult to restore that place where you have encountered and loved the other and through which you have been loved, when

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the hour of death can be very close. We search for the living body at every step. Death is not the only destiny of the body. In tragic situations of existence, in physical amputations, in the decline that the body can experience, in situations where the incapacity to act, to move, makes existence almost “unreal” – if the “real” lies in what one “produces” – the corporeal existence, our own existence, is in the last fragment of life, in the last blink of the eye, in the last imperceptible movement, suffering, certain, treated as object, but still pulsing with life because ruin, as Zambrano reminds us, presents its essence also in the last shred, while it overcomes its own destruction in an unspeakable sacredness. We are our body, but, like limits that transcend, our living body presents its essence among the sores, the incurable wounds, that make our body knowable and unique, like that of Ulysses, who, returning to Ithaca, is recognized by Euriclea because of his old wound. Through the body, then, comes not only pleasure and pain, but also the chance to transcend, to know, to know oneself, to orient oneself, to love oneself, to love. When this eventuality seems to falter, even pain, like pleasure, might offer the distant echo of our radical authentic modality of existence. Echo died for Narcissus, for an impossible love, certainly immense, but diaphanous, incorporeal. Being-for-others. Man needs to feel a participant, part of a human reality that can make him recognizable as man. For Martin Buber, reality itself is participation. If we are not in participation, then we are not in reality, in the real lived world. The relationship must be founded and rooted in the I-You relationship, and not the I-It.9 If participation can be guaranteed in a group where individuality is lost, in so-called primordial groups,10 then every action can become possible, feasible, justifiable as long as it enables us to continue living with those others, whose individuality, like our own, cannot be recognized. This is how gestures can evoke pathological dependence, inappropriate relating, and mental illness: any kind of relationship is better than none. The other can be lived like a physical part of ourselves, from whom separation is nearly impossible, like amputating a hand. From here each person’s responsibility for the relationship and for individuality, according to Stein the fundamental and personal nucleus, unreachable by the noisy voices of the world, center of ultimate and initial, spiritual and unavoidable responsibility of the human being. In our individual nucleus, being-for-the-others is acknowledged in its limits. Superior to the sense of belonging, fundamental, it should be the sense of justice, of dignity, of responsibility. Certainly, for Martin Buber, at the beginning, it is the relationship. He underlined how even in a moment of desperation, seeking someone, in reality we seek a presence through which we can grasp the meaning of things, notwithstanding everything. The meaning of things can be

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reached through the other, the living presence of the other, who offers confirmation of ourselves. And yet, it is not easy to encounter ourselves and the other, to orient and confirm ourselves in individual existence: it is necessary to make ourselves and the other present in a place and time: it is giving presence and living in it. While Buber affirms that in the beginning it is the relationship, he also believes that it is necessary to have acknowledged the singularity of existence as the point of departure for attaining authentic dialogue between two people. The authentic search for others and familiarity with them can be lost. It is in the birth of alterity that we discover the common destiny between diversity and equality, the other and ourselves. This can happen if a fulfilled appointment gives the relational life its authentic flow. The act of communion with others is not the loss of individuality, but rather, through the empathetic act, in the sense of Stein, in order to know ourselves, we sense the need of the other and at the same time know the other if originally we manage to know our own lived experience. Another’s feeling will be lived and known through empathy, in the Steinian sense, but not in the same original lived experience of the other. Living-with can become knowledge, but it cannot substitute lived experiences, the attainment of the ultima solitudo of man, that of Duns Scotus. For an authentic encounter, two people are required, aware of their individuality, history, and existence. Two authentic people. Therefore, we are not merely with others, but for others, through the continual search of the other who is significant for me. This is how we attain a moral experience of alterity that calls to the true power of the other and over the other. What is the true assassination we can commit, or the true decisive help we can give? For Lévinas, no evil can kill my face and that of the other, because the true face is what is rooted in the uniqueness of each person, not in his death. Alterity is built in the consciousness beyond loss, any loss, even if facing loss is essentially tragic for man. For Rilke, we live continually saying “goodbye”. But to say goodbye, it is necessary to be contemporaneously aware of the limit of the relationship and the possibility of overcoming it. True hell is not the presence of the other, as for Sartre, but the absence of the other: this is the first death for Lévinas. And yet this lack can become loss of ourselves. It is the impossibility at the same time of protecting the beloved and ourselves, in the consideration that people can exchange everything, reciprocally, but not existence.11 It is the vulnerability of loving, and is to be embraced. True reciprocity is reached in the possibility of loving each other in absence. Loving can overcome every possible absence. If I and the other in time are not absent, then we are not dead. Death, as the boundary of the finite, determines the missed future appointment: that which is not in the time of the hourglass. But the time of participation, of communion, is beyond this time: my capacity

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to love exceeds that time and enables the other to be established in consciousness not as a nightmare or delirium, but as vital and dialoguing essence. Those who live in love live an infinite time, not a time that never passes, instead, given by the absence of love. For Marcel, only my possibility of loving grants the gift of immortality, an immortality of which perhaps I am not even aware deep down. This is why knowing how to love the other is a radical conquest: it is the irreconcilable comparison between the search for the other, because beloved, and his absence, his silence, in the finite. Being-for-meaning. At every step, we search for the meaning of things, the truth. But we only come up with fragments of the truth. We have to be alert in this research. Our humanity can be seen in Oedipus, not for what psychoanalysis tried to indicate, but for what his search for the truth represents. The attainment of truth, albeit partial, must be embraced with responsibility. The sea cannot be contained in a little hole, nor can truth be sought alone, as was the case for Oedipus. One can go blind. Truth has to do with our being responsible, not so much with our guilt or innocence. In judging the guilt or innocence of ourselves or others, there can emerge the certainty of having understood, but in the absence of the other, in a subjective and not inter-subjective dimension. Comprehension of truth demands the other, authentic dialogue with the other, where the fragments of truth are composed in proportion to the willingness for active and participatory listening. The truth of Us is different from the truth of “Me”. There is an ethics of meaning through what meaning itself imposes on its research and through the relationship this research maintains with its consequences. This is mitigable only in the interpersonal encounter (Begegnung). In fact, for something with meaning we are willing to do anything, as when we love. If existence is living labyrinthine conditions, the question comes alive in one (and for one) premise: it is hope, the drive, the true pulsion, the motivation, the bringing to fulfilment, and, together, the outcome of meaning. Hope comes alive in the continual reconstruction of meaning, which in is interpersonal, because of the polysemous dimension it assumes for Ricoeur, and in the rediscovery of loving, to which hope itself directs us. It is that hope which, even though drawn on the background of existence of each person, still smiles at us, illuminating the journey, be it already completed or with many miles to go, precisely when memories present their irreconcilability with the reality of things. It is that hope which measures itself against reality without letting itself be overcome. Hope exhorts and lives in each person. And each person lives with it and for it. From this derives a consequence in acting, referring to an ethical dimension. Our acting lives because we have meaning and hope, in every situation, even the most tragic.12 In tragic circumstances we can act in a self-destructive way because it takes on meaning and gives hope to

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existence. The source of the interior light, so admirably described by Stein, the light of consciousness cannot help but make itself present as hope. The search for meaning is the search for truth and love, which composes its prelude and epilogue in hope, and this yearning is answered in discovering spirituality as the essence of our being, in dialogue with others. Meaning for Zambrano sets itself beyond essence. For Stein, manipulating an object can give it another meaning. Another meaning can be offered both our own history and material objects. This cannot happen to our humanity. The ultimate, radical and authentic meaning of our action is given by hope, in the relationship between the finite and the infinite, as Kierkegaard and Marcel demonstrated. Ignorance of this reality by psychologists means ignorance of how dependence on psychotropic substances distorts the very outcome of meaning, warps the conception the other. People can experience the substance and the dependence as “opportunities” to continue hoping. In the face of human anguish, desperation, only meaning offers shelter, and with it arrives hope. If pain, death itself, and suffering take on meaning, they become functional for birth and growth, like labour pains. In the thought of Scheler, only then can suffering, as the lesser loss for a greater conquest, become acceptable as an extreme sacrifice, even with serenity. For love a person may give her life for another, or accept her own death or that of the other. Or, more simply, the person can recover: this is what can happen in psychotherapy. The purpose of psychology cannot be the passive acceptance of reality, but the constant measure against the meaning of life, of hope, in dialogue with the other. Being-for-the-good. Man seeks the good, always and no matter what. Each person’s acting is constantly moved by the search for the good. If we know the good, we cannot avoid following and pursuing it. But there is tragic misunderstanding. Man can wreak absolute evil on himself and others, in the conviction that he is pursuing the good. That absolute evil is the non-consideration of ourselves and of the other as person, a consideration of the other as object, as thing, as body-thing (Körper). If the good hides in the folds of silence, it has to be sought continually in the relationship with the other. It is through the other that we can reach the good. While evil is the negation of the good, as St. Augustine demonstrated, there is a tragic condition to be faced, caused by our limitations, an irreconcilability between the different exigencies of man. Because of the absence of representation of the good, or of the truth, the good can concretize itself in its question, in its continual search to be achieved with the other, precisely when all certainty seems to annul every striving, every yearning for the good. In some pathologies, the question is no longer asked and the good, misunderstood, is pursued in its indisputability, need, and urgency.13 This is why, in the name of the good, the most horrendous crimes can be committed, why

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hatred manages to hide in the forms of a misunderstood love. It happens when the question, the meaning of dignity and justice of man have shipwrecked. For Arendt, the “banality of evil” can arise in human relations at any moment and blind us. In the understanding of good there is the comparison against evil, continually, and sacrifice; it is necessary to authentically understand, then, what the good is, the sacrifice, the sacred, the withdrawing, the stepping aside, precisely in the relationship with the other. Every human gesture can be lived as sacred, that is, in a dimension of authoritativeness, of “fear and trembling,” of love. But how can this entirely human possibility translate itself into action? Are we aware of what the true sacredness of man is? Evil, as victory over the finite and radical misunderstanding, can be defeated by our dignity in accepting it, in measuring ourselves against it radically, in bearing it and enduring it with hope.14 It is in doubt, authentic dialogue, questioning and silence, in openness and in judgment, spiritual activities for Stein, that the consideration for ourselves and the other as person presents itself, and the radical and authentic understanding of good can emerge, at every step, in the concrete awareness that at the next step we have to begin again. In asking what good we are pursuing, there emerges our responsibility for acting as adults and no longer as helpless children to be guided. It is our responsibility toward suffering. Can psychology, which should study the movements of the soul, ignore this search, this particular relationship with good, the constant motivation of acting? Pleasure itself, like every other thing, like death, is sought for the value it assumes for us, as Scheler demonstrated: therefore, it is the search for value that always prevails. And yet the necessary good, in a tragic misunderstanding, can become the abandonment of oncological treatment or even suicide. In misunderstanding, each thing, even the most absurd, can acquire absolute value, sacredness. Suicide, a radical concern for Camus, if solipsistic sacrifice and not altruistic, manifests its absurdity. Death cannot be controlled and life cannot be given in a closure, in a world of its own (idios kosmos), where the other is miniaturized, transfigured and enclosed in himself, in an inversion of pregnancy. We are stolen away by death, and can only anticipate it, not contain it, precisely when, as in a 1911 painting by Schiele He Who Sees Himself, (Man and Death), man, in glimpsing himself and in transfiguring the relationship with the other, can encounter death, the power over the finite. If the good is the extreme consideration of self and the other as person who can love even only for an instant, then in the good the overcoming of the finite can be concretized: one can not die, one only dies in finite history, which is the tragic condition of man. Instead, the time that lasts, that of participation and loving, which overcomes the finite, is the time of freedom as responsibility for the value of life. We act in the name of the good and seek this overcoming of the finite. The good thus sought

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cannot help but be that of life, even while it includes death. Neither death nor the tragic limits of existence can in any case imprison the good, if they are part of life, of that union of the finite and its overcoming, in consciousness. Comprehending the good means, in dialogue with the other, comprehending the essence of ourselves and of the other, being person, in continual search. Being-for-transcendence. Man reaches, strives toward overcoming in every place and time. In this constant yearning, the search cannot end in the fallacious certainty of the finite, nor in another yet-to-be-revealed finite. The finite is overcome in continual rediscovery of our capacity to love, together with interpersonal narration, in a new dialogue with ourselves and others. It is difficult to know how to love in the continual oscillation between the loss and the joy of love. Here the greatest responsibility is anchored: what is one willing to do in loving and in loss? It is difficult to orient ourselves, to be able to encounter again, when silence enshrouds the word. Death and loss cannot reach the place-not-place of love, nor that of dialogue. However, in the silence of the finite, in the silence of the stone, being silent can only exist as sacredness. For Zambrano, ruins have overcome their own destruction and precisely for this reason, manage to offer that sacredness attainable by the finite.15 In the place of ruins and destruction, dialogue with the transcendent becomes a face to face conversation like the one Camus imagines between Job and God. And it is not a monologue, but a new dialogue in consciousness. If, for Romano Guardini, only those who can speak can be silent, only humans can do it, certainly not a stone, though for the poet Trakl “the silence of stone” is steeped with power. However, there is a silence that is word, and a quietness that resounds with an offer to responsibility. The search for transcendence is proper to man, yearned for in every way, even if in some situations it is carried out in tragic misunderstandings. It is possible to reach transcendence in consciousness and not in history, which encloses its own limits. It is in consciousness that the dialogue and responsibility of loving present themselves. In some tragic conditions, such as toxicomania, there is the attempt to search for transcendence by overcoming limits, searching for love in sexuality, dialogue in monologue. Each of us lives in the enclosure of the limits of existence, we ourselves as limits, but each of us lives in his own consciousness the overcoming of the Leopardian hedge. This is the margin where our existence, as responsibility, and our humanity, as dignity – so difficult to reach, but essences of our spirituality – are built. The search is enclosed in the equilibrium between what we are and what we yearn for. In the concreteness of our own being person, we can encounter even what someone defines as the silence of God: it is precisely then that we become responsible, that is, human, radically human.16 Perhaps in every divine silence it is our responsibility that makes us human and ransoms apparent fatality, that

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permits dialogue with the sacredness of suffering, with ourselves and the other and therefore loving, precisely when the confines of existence become insurmountable limits. Only consciousness can go beyond the limitation. Only love can face loss, death, and evil. In history, life does not belong to us, but crosses through us: how can death belong to man? In consciousness, love manages to challenge the human’s finiteness, transience, and limitation, and to go beyond. We can love beyond time and space, after the death of the beloved or before her birth. Love can happen before knowledge, on the same level as hope, as happens with a mother awaiting the birth of her child, loving it even before she sees it. Love is anticipation and passing beyond, while true death is not that which is realized in our history, which will happen in any case, but is the agony lost in isolation of those who can no longer hold out; it is the abandonment, the loss of the transcendent reaching without the other, with which to challenge death in the place hidden to it and unreachable for it, that of loving. Man lives in a continuous tension toward overcoming his being. However, the elusiveness of becoming, of the horizon, creates the margin between what he yearns for and what he attains: between his own existence and the yearning toward the beyond. In his continuous search, man can reach the truth, the essence of things, or dwindle toward a tragic misunderstanding of what life is, what the good is, his body, the relationship with others, the meaning of hope, transcendence. It is then that the absence of dialogue with himself and others does not allow the appointments necessary and with them the overcoming itself of his own history to reach, even in suffering, the authentic meaning of existing, which is not a slow procedure toward death, but an assumption of responsibility toward life and hope, in an incessant search, never definitive, never concluded, in a continuous starting anew, that renders the epoché, the suspension of every judgment and prejudice, of ethical fact, through the consequences that it generates. Existence proceeds at every step, in authentic experience or in grave misunderstanding, toward what is its essence: loving. Every man is being-to-love-and-to-be-loved.

TOWARD A NEW PSYCHOLOGY: THE RETURN TO INQUIRY ABOUT AND STUDY OF THE SOUL

The authenticity of existence is not unraveled in accepting death, as a certain dynamic psychology and a certain existential philosophy would have it; not in suicide, not in mental illness, as a certain nihilism in vogue would impose, but in the acceptance of what, in the tragic nature of existence and for this reason in the recovery of our humanity, is authentically life, body, others, meaning,

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good, transcendence, in a common world, in the responsibility of acting, in our own dignity. The collision with our situations of limit, while tragic, is not violence, but possible existence and painful consciousness. It is on this terrain of awareness and choice that psychology should operate. This need was very clear to Edmund Husserl, up to the end of his life.17 We psychologists thus should take up again these radical and difficult inquiries, not only in the psychopathological sphere, examine the poetry in man, his spirituality, and notwithstanding everything, not reduce our work to the attempt to adapt the individual to reality without considering the ethical element of his choice, his action. It is impossible to set aside the ethical dimension because it is uncomfortable, with its questions about the meaning of our action. For a certain psychology, the ethical element is excluded from analysis or is to be evaluated after the adaptive solution has been found for a given behavior. For phenomenological and existential psychology, the ethical question not only precedes the study of the behavioral datum, but coincides with our analysis of the action, motivations, intentions, and consequences, as well as adaptability to reality. The meaning of existence in its radical questions is analyzed, in an open dialogue. Approaching the other, his joy or his suffering, even when expressed as mental illness, cannot help but invoke the fundamental questions of existence and with them the ethical question. Asking what is and was the lived experience checks the triumph of the naturalistic method, of the implicit and explicit judgments and prejudices about the person of a certain pragmatism, relativism, and reductivism that also reign in modern psychology, and that sweep away every spiritual consideration about existence in its ultimate givens, in its mystery, in its search for truth and justice, precisely when a person can risk his psychophysical well-being or even his life for this research. Giving your life for your child or others, emigrating from a poor or war-torn country, or more simply, trying to be correct in the relationship with others or to give witness as a psychologist can be considered by a certain psychology as “dysfunctional behaviors,” not adapted to reality and thus “pathological.” For a psychology that considers the ethical question to be fundamental, that focuses on the meaning and essence of man’s existence in his individuality and universality, that considers the moral choice an irreducible and central datum of the super-egoic psychic needs, these “dysfunctional behaviors” can instead be indicative of the search for attainment of one’s spiritual essence in a tension that exalts the spiritual datum over psychophysical well-being. It does not propose a moralistic psychology that judges, but one that seeks the intersubjective truth and for this reason is capable of suspending all judgment and prejudice on the mystery of existence. Thus we need a psychology that can take up again and explore with humility and attention the paths of phenomenology, its method and anthropology,

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and those of existential reflection, which, in every place and time, has been directed not only toward the uniqueness, unity, and individuality of existence, in its concreteness, condition and tragic awareness, but has been able to reach and illuminate, with laborious experimentation, those radical questions of man so scornfully neglected by psychology as not “scientific”, ignoring how much our life and its meaning are built upon such mysterious questions, so steeped in another scientificity, on the capacity to love and be loved, universally intuited and indisputably comprehensible. With phenomenology and existential reflection the rather reductive question of the subject-object relationship is set aside to launch upon a new concept of scientificity, in radically turning inquiry upon lived experience, in the attempt to reach the particularity of man. And yet the person can find lived experience to be incomprehensible. His existence may lack poetry or understandability, may be caught in shipwreck and misunderstanding of the existential coordinates, in mental illness. He may not understand what is happening. There can emerge desperation, suicide, the many contradictions of life and the missed appointments from which misunderstandings can derive, even tragic ones. Thus, as men and as psychologists, we are called not to justify reality, but to make it live again, in poetry, while pain requires help. The journey of a man can be slowed or deviated by a missed appointment, which is not a trauma, but an existential condition that should have come about but did not. Starting out from this missed appointment, from the loss of a beloved or from an inevitable conflict with the Jasperian boundary situations, each act, each step is steeped in an absence and in a denied possibility to be faced. Comprehending oneself or each other does not mean justifying oneself or each other, but grasping the meaning of individual responsibility for life, which is expressed in the success of the authentic appointments among people in authentic relationship of help, beyond the human finiteness or boundary situations. The missed appointment and its attendant disappointment calls for answers from the psychologist, in a new authentic encounter, in a new dialogue with ourselves and with others. It is not simple to say “you” to ourselves, the stranger in whom we are incarnated, to that unique and universal you who lives, loves, and suffers. Saint Augustine, Pascal, and Kierkegaard knew this. It is not simple to encounter oneself after being wounded, disappointed, or conditioned. What kind of encounter could there be (here, now) between a person and that same person of a few years ago, or between a person and another who is no more? What would they talk about? What would they say? What remains beyond space and time? In these dialogues, set within consciousness, we can find ourselves after many years of absence. This is what happens at times in psychotherapy, but not just here. Binswanger underlined that there is nothing exceptional in the

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psychotherapeutical encounter: it is the chance for some people to encounter each other. He spoke of trust between therapist and patient. But whence does reciprocal trust arise, if not from what permits intimacy with oneself: the search for one’s own spirituality? While human tragedies have no creation, no chance to live poetry, each human tragedy can allow the rediscovery of poetry, but in a new appointment with the other and in a new dialogue with oneself and with the other. Zambrano noted that in suffering, confession and intimacy become authentic. Dignity is restored. Sharing becomes spiritual. It is the overcoming of materiality and history. Art offers the capacity and chance to create a new dialogue, to overcome the finite, to transcend and go beyond destruction. Art is capable of restoring sacredness and overcoming the material that nourishes it, on par with the meaning of things. This is why the contribution of art throughout history cannot be considered mere sublimation of a sexual drive, as a certain psychoanalysis would have it. Binswanger highlighted how an artist can grasp the essence of a datum of reality, go beyond it, in a much more adequate and for this reason more scientific way than a naturalistic description. It is therefore appropriate that psychology not colonize or interpret art, but yield to its mystery, so that man’s lived experience is interpreted by art and whoever, philosopher, artist, poet, or simply man, can set his knowledge in parenthesis, intuitively grasp what remains in consciousness and describe the true essence of man, his true responsibility, in a new sharable universality: the being-to-love-and-to-be-loved. A psychology that helps to live in the poetic vision of the world is not an ingenuous research into ways of approaching and relating with the world, as underlined by Minkowski, but grasps its essence, its spiritual component, steeped in tragic awareness, that gives meaning to our living. Even though the landfall at this objective, at consciousness, can happen in solitude, in our solitary existence.18 In the becoming of existence or in a therapeutic process, recovery is often the painful acquisition of awareness. Not every misunderstanding of coordinates indicates a later recognition of what happened, a will to search. The journey of each of us is a mystery. Nobody can live, love, die or suffer in the place of another. We are born in pain and we die in the awareness of it. In order to continue living, we often die slowly, where, for Zambrano, existing is enduring. In every kind of psychotherapy, in every psychology, we must intersubjectively seek this overcoming, this existential condition of man, his poetry, present not only in art. Often poetry is enclosed in a handshake, a smile, the silent gaze of comprehension, of understanding each other. In this research, psychologists will have a difficult work to carry out, deprived of reassuring

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naturalistic methodologies and comforting numerical explanations, but an important one, if they accept the challenge of measuring themselves against the historically necessary failure of a certain psychology. If psychology truly wants to be such, then the inevitable consideration of man as person, in his lived experiences, in his existence, ineluctably anchors psychology to ethics. Psychologists will caress their own authenticity and that of others, living the poetic moments of life, if they can manage to rediscover over and over their essence of existing and that of others, in an incessant Lévinasian insomnia, in an untiring radical engagement; if they can succeed in grasping their own anguish, limitations, errors, their unique being and at the same time, their belonging to a common destiny, the overcoming in the consciousness of misunderstandings, weariness, and banality; if they succeed in learning from suffering the essence and the meaning of the human; if they are capable of accepting without resentment their own unkept promises or those of people dear to them; if they succeed in making the necessary choices, forgiving, and facing their sense of guilt. They will offer an authentic testimony of being psychologists, as people among others and ready to measure themselves against existence. They will become responsible for their own actions with their own dignity. They will gaze upon life with an aware and adult eye. They will acknowledge hope. They will consider themselves and others as persons. They will grasp limitations and their overcoming in consciousness, their own being-to-love-and-to-be-loved. All this will help them to be psychologists, and perhaps decide not to change jobs, but to begin a new way of working, of helping themselves and the person they will encounter in their first conversation. If psychology wants to understand man, its soul, its existence, it must carry out an interpersonal search at each encounter and set its direction for a phenomenological and existential psychology. Rossano (Cosenza), Italia Antonio De Luca. Psychotherapist psychologist. Contract professor of Dynamic Psychology, University of Calabria, Italy. Professor of Phenomenological Psycopathology at the S.I.P.S.I. master’s program in Rome, he collaborates with the Interdisciplinary Studies Center in Chiavari (Genova) and with the Italian Center of Phenomenological Research in Rome, affiliated with The World Phenomenology Institute. NOTES 1

Cf. A. De Luca, Frammenti di esistenza. Per una psicologia fenomenologica ed esistenziale [Fragments of existence. Toward a phenomenological and existential psychology] (Foggia: Bastogi,

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2003); A. Ales Bello, A. De Luca (ed.), Le fonti fenomenologiche della psicologia [The phenomenological sources of psychology] (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2005); A. Dentone, A. De Luca (ed.), Le fonti esistenziali della psicologia (Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2006); A. De Luca (ed.), Verso una psicologia fenomenologica ed esistenziale, in press; A. De Luca, Tra le rovine dell’esistenza. Sofferenza Psicoterapia Ripresa, [In the Midst of the Ruins of Existence. Suffering, Psychotherapy, Recovery], in press. 2 A. De Luca, Frammenti di esistenza, op.cit. 3 Ibid. and cf. A. De Luca, Gli appuntamenti mancati e lo sguardo di Sisifo, [Missed appointments and the gaze of Sisyphus] Comprendre, 2000, 10, 89–99. 4 Cf. E. Husserl (1900–1901), Logische Untersuchungen (3rd ed., Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1922), Sixth Investigation. In consciousness the lived experience requires a noetc-noematic process that is not resolved in the subject, otherwise it a solipsistic fall could occur that would fail to keep in mind the intersubjective problem in the relationship with the lived experience of reality, and the possibility of grasping the intuition of essence, operating an appropriate reduction. It is when it happens in a person with psychopathological problems. The evaluation of the exam of reality in the psychopathological sphere requires consideration of the complexity that was revealed, observed and studied in depth by Binswanger, Minkowski and others in the course of their lives, as well as Callieri, who already in 1955, in his article, republished in 1993, in Percorsi di uno psichiatra [Itineraries of a Psychiatrist] (Rome: Ed. Universitarie Romane, p. 25) in considering the Husserlian issue of intentionality, notes how hallucinations are an intention of meaning with a fulfilment of meaning that remains in the subject. Also Borgna, in Come se finisse il mondo [As If the World Ended](Milan: Feltrinelli, 1995, pp. 57–58), in taking up the Husserlian discourse on intentionality and some observations by Straus, observed about hallucinations that phenomenologically they cannot be considered perceptions without object, but are testimonies to a very complex experience with a radical change of the intersubjectivity in the anguishing schizophrenic solitude. Cf. also De Luca, Frammenti di esistenza, op. cit. and Calvi, Il consumo del corpo [The Consumption of the Body] (Milan: Mimesis, 2007). 5 Cf. A. De Luca, Frammenti di esistenza, op. cit. 6 Cf. E. Stein (1922), Bëitrage zur philosophischen Begründung der Psychologie und der Geisteswissenschaften (Tübingen: Niemeyer Verlag); E. Stein (1919–1932), Einführung in die Philosophie, in «Edith Stein Werke», vol. XIII ed. L. Gelber e M. Linssen (Freiburg i.B.: Verlag Herder, 1991); E. Stein (1932–1933), Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person, «Edith Stein Werke», vol. XVI ed. L. Gelber e M. Linssen, (Freiburg i.B.: Verlag Herder, 1994). 7 Love finds expression in existence in the sexed living body, not in a dichotomic possibility of explication, but in a dynamic integration between the corporeal, psychic and spiritual reality. Life, as the self-determining nucleus (Angela Ales Bello, L’analisi della corporeità nella fenomenologia, [Analysis of corporality in phenomenology] Studium, 2000, 3/4, 481–494. 2000, p. 489), roots itself in human existence in a body and sets itself “as unavoidable moment of launch of intersubjective knowledge” (ibid. p. 490). For Merleau-Ponty, sexuality cannot be considered as a “peripheral automatism” distinct and separate from existence, in which the experience of pleasure becomes detached and separate from existence, in which the experience of pleasure becomes unavoidable and self serving. There is an integration to an “affective totality”. In reference to sexuality, Merleau-Ponty notes in La phénoménologie de la perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945) that one is before an osmosis between sexuality and existence, in a continuous, inexhaustible, and transcendent tension, and intentionality itself follows the movement of existence. 8 A. Ales Bello, Piacere Gioia Beatitudine. La felicità tra tempo ed eternità, [Pleasure Joy Beatitude. Happiness Between Time and Eternity] in S. Cavaciuti, A. De Luca (ed.), Alla ricerca della felicità [In Search of Happiness] (Foggia: Bastogi, 2002).

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Cf. M. Buber, Das dialogiche Prinzip (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 19845 ). Cf. D. A. Nesci, La notte bianca. Studio etnopsicoanalitico sul suicidio collettivo [The White Night. Ethnopsychoanalytical Study of Collective Suicide] (Rome: Armando, 1991). 11 Cf. E. Lévinas (1946–1947), Le temps et l’autre (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1979). Cf. also E. Lévinas, Totalité et Infini (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961); E. Lévinas, Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974). 12 Cf. A. De Luca, La speranza muta della depressione, [The Mute Hope of Depression] in S. Rodighiero (ed.), Depressioni e melancolie, [Depressions and Melancholy] (Rome: E.U.R., 2002) pp. 93–104; A. De Luca, Frammenti di esistenza, op. cit.; A. De Luca, Ritrovarsi nella sofferenza [Finding Oneself in Suffering], Ricerca di senso (Ed. Erickson, Trento), 2, 2004; A. De Luca, Quelle pagine non scritte della sofferenza, [Those Unwritten Pages of Suffering] in S. Rodighiero (ed.), Clinica e psicoterapia. Dai modelli alla prassi, [Clinic and Psychotherapy. From Models to Praxis] (Pisa: ETS, 2005) pp. 135–140; A. De Luca, Sulla soglia dell’indicibile, relazione al congresso: “L’inconscio in psichiatria. Problemi di formazione”, [On the Threshold of the Unspeakable, talk at the Congress: “The Unconscious in Psychiatry. Problems of Formation”] Carceri (Padova), 18–19.05.2007, in press. 13 Cf. A. De Luca, Frammenti di esistenza, op.cit.. 14 Cf. A. De Luca, Accogliere il male [Accepting Evil] in A. Dentone (ed.), Ascolto e Accoglimento [Listening and Accepting] (Foggia: Bastogi, 2001), pp. 17–34. 15 Cf. M. Zambrano, El hombre y lo divino (Madrid: Ediciones Siruela, 1991). 16 In this regard to poet M. Luzi writes: “How alone is man. How he can be so!/You are everywhere, but he finds you nowhere. There are places where you seem absent/ and then he frets because he feels deserted and abandoned. Thus am I, understand me.” And again, “Why Father have you abandoned me?”/It is his last human cry./It is of man, in fact, the extreme thought of the Son of man on earth.” Luzi, La Passione. Via Crucis al Colosseo [The Passion. Way of the Cross at the Coliseum] (Milan: Garzanti, 1999), pp. 31–32 and p. 65. 17 E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1959). Cf. also A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Phenomenology world-wide. Foundations, expanding dynamics, life-engagements. A guide for research and study (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002). 18 A. De Luca, Dal naufragio alla solitudine. Riflessioni su fenomenologia e psicoanalisi [From Shipwreck to Solitude. Reflections on Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis.] (Castrovillari (Cosenza): Teda, 1998). 9

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PARADOXES OF INTENTION: LOGOTHERAPY, PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM

Nearly 45 years ago Herbert Spiegelberg gave a paper entitled “The relevance of phenomenological philosophy for psychology”. Many of the author’s strictures have stood the test of time and are assumed by this writer in what follows. That paper is well worth reading in the context in which we again review that subject, noting that Spiegelberg’s passing reference to Carl Rogers is the point intellectually where these two reviews connect. • Intention, its conception and our capacity to hold or form intentions is crucial to our model of the rational man. Even more than our actions, our intentions define our personality and foreclose our moral standing. The claim of Victor Frankls’ logotherapy and the other brief strategies that followed it was that the most clever, most discerning element of our being could be tritely corrupted, to the extent of being turned upon itself such that an intention could be inserted into our intending mechanism. If done well, what was not to be intended, [stridently, but insincerely] led, in certain cases, to the completion cessation of the intention. • Our question is to raise again the roots of phenomenology in the foundations and consequences of intentionality, and consider whether there are aspects of the study of paradoxical intention of more recent date which can inform the way in which the mind’s mechanism was “visualized” by the writers of the first years of the twentieth century who sought to elaborate upon Husserl’s earlier writings. What has become of these psychotherapeutic schools and to what extent were their asserted affliations with phenomenology and existentialism responsible for the development or extension of their insights? What do these psychoanalytic knowledge bases imply for phenomenological treatments of the unconscious or for neurosciences and the philosophy of mind? In examining these questions we are also engaged in extending the range of Spiegelberg’s review of the influence of phenomenology on psychology and the discussions of the important contributions made by the contributors to volume 27, X and Y of the Analecta Husserliana symposia. There are trite analogies between the meaning theorist Husserl and the meaning theorist Frankl. Frankl made the meaning of life the meaning of meaning and that conceptualization clearly flows from some of Husserl’s approach to 301 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 301–320. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_19, 

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the topic of meaning: Gurwitsch has concisely dealt with the role of meaning in the Husserlian corpus. Yet we have little insight into the relationships between perception, intention and consciousness that could explain the sudden success of certain psychological suggestions upon some sufferers of neurosis (but not others). For a working psychiatrist, the level of detail or profundity to which he needs extend in order to demonstrate the relevance of the conceptual schema for his descriptive discipline, can be slight . . . Frankl found in the phenomenomenologists his understanding of “sanity”. The survivor of destructive forces had found supra-individual meaning, in history’s worst concentration camps thus rejecting the empiricists’ materialism. He realized that possessing conventional moral beliefs did not improve chances of survival or intellectual superiority in the Nazi concentration camps. His experience as a psychiatrist in those camps showed him that not all phenomena were or could be transparent to the prevailing observational/experimental/replicative paradigm of good “non-subjective” science. In other places I would argue that the argument is “ideological” in the sense that Eagleton uses the term: whether, life has or ought have or can have, meaning, may indicate a suspect teleological and emotional pre-dispositions which dispositions are likely to be capable of re-description, if not explanation, in terms of genes, nurture and environment. But that is not the subject of this paper. Rather it is to examine what aspects of the early writings of Husserl lend themselves to conclusions about intentionality, about the causal relationships between thoughts and the existence of other entities, whether organic or otherwise, and of the way in which intention is ultimately related to conceptions between willing and causing. And then to ask whether psychiatric investigation may throw light on aspects of intention which were not accessible to Husserl at the time he wrote Philosophical Investigations. Where ordinary language philosophy avoids dealing with emotions in favour of logical, intellectual, non-emotional analysis or pre-suppositions, the german academic environment at the turn of the century pursued an agenda set much more by the claims of social theory and by the study of psychology. Some of the inter-connectedness of that period 1890–1930 is clearer now than it was at the end of the period. Many of the lesser elements have seeded and faded away. One very important context of the discussions of psychology from Henry James to Husserl from the fringes of consciousness to its margins, equally simple metaphors, is the role played by the gestalt theorists who counteracted the logical positivist and empirical reductionist mode with its converse intellectual movement.

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Brief therapy strategies have in fact increased in size and significance in the field of psychotherapy generally, especially if we exclude practitioners who also seek to alter the frames of reference by resort to pharmacological techniques to achieve individual pain relief or a reduction in personal suffering. Some of the ways in which the existential concerns entered into logotheraphy reflect the pre-occupation of the professionals charged with rendering individuals capable of independent existences. Thus, for example, in alleviating neuroses which prevented persons from leaving their caves (dwellings) or being-in-the-world-with-others. While the Freudian approach at the time had little institutional relationship with phenomenology, the interests of Freud were consistent with the more “philosophic” orientation of another group of scholars who had no duty or obligation to examine individual modes of reasoning in the way in which Freud or his disciples undertook. The ambiguities which beset any clear definition of the meaning of the term “intention” illustrate the hub role the word occupies lying between accounts of human action, ascription of human guilt as some overarching portal not merely to man’s rationality but to his being in this place and time. The antonym is not quite un-intentional as in accidental, but (derivatively) “unconscious” for it is thought the unconscious cannot intend. We shall conclude these various discussions at the end of this paper by re-examining the role hypnosis has played at the margins in therapy. The complex procedures which man has used to bypass the rational, intentional complex and its reflexivity whether pharmaceutical, aneasthetical or hypnotic reel in face of simple intentional substitution.

T H E C O M P L E X I T I E S O F H U S S E R L ’S C O N C E P T I O N S

Not only did Husserl’s concept of intentionality undergo change, but his successors have developed a new scholasticism in dividing and analysing the ways in which the chief concept in some understanding of phenomenology, was or should have been explicated by Husserl. As Spiegelberg would have it (above) there are ambiguities in Husserl’s treatment of psychology: concerning his relationship to the status of the discipline as a hard science, or how it might function as true handmaiden of philosophic endeavour. There is almost a pre-paradigm cluster of intellectuals approaching – the unconscious – the personal unconscious – or – the social unconscious – from Mannheim to Foucault.

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In consequence, or in spite of this post-modern feature of the globalizing culture, many writers continue to use the same term for quite different purposes in psychotherapy. While it was clearly Frankl’s wish to bring a less expensive and more efficient therapy to the masses than Freud’s talking therapies could offer a different world from upper middle class Vienna at the turn of the century, his intellectual heirs have found themselves equally confined [by that thrust] to familial analyses which by definition can only be cheap and can never be adequately compared with the longer therapies they seek to replace or supplant. Nardone and Watzlawick’s Brief Strategic Therapy goes some way to arguing that there are deeper differences underlying the short term therapy insofar as one is linear and genetically designed whereas the modern strategy aims at swift disruptive and global change by capturing the future not extolling or retrieving the past. But the so-called injunctive language school of theory and of intervention in other’s lives looks as if it replaces the subject’s intention by the analyst’s directives or commands made all the stronger by being couched in language so close to that of the subject that resistance, let alone rejection, is scarcely seen and less and less successful. Thus the history of the use of the concept of intention in psychotherapy has been as tendentious as in philosophy. If there be causal connection between age and experience such that Nardone and Watzlawick are correct in ascribing a change in technique by their foreword writer Milton Erickson, we may need to wonder whether hypnosis may be merely facilitative in managing change in personality, and but one of many ways of socio-genic manipulation that work differently towards subverting an individual’s will, a step always understood as being more easily done and morally more reprehensible than commercial propaganda (advertising) or political rhetoric (spin). Some key concepts of phenomenology and existentialism in the twentieth century such as intentionality, consciousness, attention-ality and mind mechanisms lie behind some important but partial applications of these concepts in recent therapeutic literature. Husserl, Merleau Ponty, Gurwitsch and Victor Frankl have developed these concepts and lines of thought in work which extends our knowledge of operations of the mind, as it applies to these concepts.

INTENTION AND ATTENTION

While non-continental philosophy has taken a narrower concept apparatus to examine the nature of what is said to be an intention, that approach also has

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been limited to a linguistic exhumation of traditional meanings of the term. Anscombe’s discussion finds difficulty in coming to terms with what can only be termed unconscious intentions, which in turn has the effect of rendering the irony of Nietsche and the inversions of Freud inherently outside the pale of the behaviouristic, observable phenomena the warriors returned from fighting idealist battles so loved. To paraphrase Anscombe, “If one could exactly identify just such an intention, doesn’t that mean the intention was not unconscious? While there is clearly a sense in which only the subject knows his true intention, there is another sense in which everybody else can say, don’t believe him, it is clear from his actions, or from the result, or from what he said afterwards, all along he really intended something (else)”. The great virtue of Anscombe pace Wittgenstein’s philosophy is that she brings into question the essential linguistic relation in English between intending and willing; words with quite different meanings when brought into confrontation with each other, but which from a more distant standpoint are almost interchangeable: see Intention @ para.29 ff. The reader may wonder whether making such a distinction in the context of brief therapy would assist in analysing the effective cause of the cure. Forcing the subject to augment the intention, may thwart the will to continue the neurotic or behaviour or was that vice versa? Anscombe moreover examines whether or not to talk of intentions, and it would seem of intentionality, is simply to work within the semantic and syntactical assumptions of one kind of language (or set of utterances) which is particularly useful for answering “why?” type questions or attributing blame. But placing the language game as one where the context is that of “concepts of intention” we find that in that language agame there are certain topics which are irredeemiably part of the environment: essential to issues of morality, personal responsibility, and thus the causal concepts whereby muscles or other agents act on the surrounding environment are some of those immediate features. On the assumption, mind you, that language acts as a reservoir of knowledge about the world as statistically agreed by millions of users on trillions of occasions: but these sponge metaphors might be quite wrong. Again, if intention is said to follow from a mental state or place wherein the intention is contained – recent studies indicate that brain activity related to the voicing of an intention occurs some seconds before. Anscombe’s genius is to show us how the word “intention” has almost no essential or ever-present component and that to ascribe efficacy to the term is merely to re-describe and not to analyse (in the sense of reach new knowledge). Some objectivity is however present in the English language in the respective uses of the words intention and attention. Now attention betokens the exercise

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of intention [nominally] in focussing upon. a thought or object to the exclusion of others, understood in the ordinary language as including not merely the exercise of will as in being “automatic”, unthinking and or non-conscious awareness (as for example where something “catches” our attention). Two derivations of the one verb together ground the more complex notion of Intentionality. By intentionality we now mean the embededness of any object, even non-existent objects (of thought or whimsy) in both the perceiver and perceived and oscillating homeostasis thought by Husserl necessary to assure us that what we have thought has a compulsoriness of the absolute, or the being [qua fundamental reality]. There are thus Humean, Kantian and Husserlian approaches to causation, epistemology and ontology which focus upon intention and through the analysis of mind or spirit upon intentionality and our modes of perceiving it. Frankl opportunistically figured that the convergence of intention in attending could be colonized for the purposes of obtaining (relatively) swift relief from neurotic symptoms. In the same way, obsession as a perversion of focus or attention, is to be resolved by de-reflection which perspectivizes the observer in a wider field. Not surprisingly, we are left with the infinitely regressing series of causation puzzles. Why, or how is it, that for some people we can succeed – apparently – in harnessing the brain to resolve the dilemmas of the body? Arriving at this point will have taken us past the need to ask why consciousness creates that which it apprehends and other ceaseless epistemological distractions. In Schutz we find the critique of intentionality as flowing from Husserl’s privileging perception, together with the recognition of other fulcrum’s which also spawned philosophies warped towards the initial jumping off point. The proposal to leave the transcendentalism of Husserl impresses Gurwitsch less, to the extent of his pointing out pejoratively and with little analysis that the life-world was a polemic term. He thus counterpointed the Schutzian rejected of Husserl. Gurwitsch might have said, “analytic” term as betokens “used for analysis,” but that might have caught the feared ramifications of Schelerism, of the sociology of knowledge or of reducing the observer to his class roots, or other vested interests; interests of the heart so deep as to be invisible to their bearers. The psychological basis of phenomenology in Husserl while immersed in an Hegelian topic owes as much to Brentano as to Kant. The influence of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche allows a concern with topics such as bad faith and power, will and right as might, to give a sense of the morality of the intentional, without which much of the analytic force of holding, and of in-forming

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phenomena perceived so as to re-create them as we recognize their existence. But the turmoil of the earliest half of the twentieth century and the diaspora of jewish intellectuals from oppressed Europe would alone have explained the way in which Husserlian phenomenology went its different ways after 1935. From this distance, it appears as if the empirical science of psychology both stimulated philosophic interest in the way in which the mind made the world, as well as informed those conceptualizations of what and of how that world was made. There were also many possible universes. The scholasticism of Ingarden and Gurwitsch itself permitted pigeonholes large enough to conceal many different byways. Merleau-Ponty for instance asserts that it is the constitutive aspect of phenomenology debates must recognize: It is not because the ‘form’ produces a state of equilibrium, solving a problem of maximum coherence, and, in the Kantian sense, making a world possible, that it enjoys a privileged place in our conception; it is the very appearance of the world and not the condition of its possibility; it is the birth of a norm and not realised according to a norm; it is the identity of the external and the internal and not the projection of the internal in the external.

Here one sees the epistemological and ontological questions refreshed by reports of the latest biomedical research, somewhat akin to a clutching at intellectual straws: the current debate shows every sign of continuing. There is the recognition that the body affects the mind; that the physiological component of the human being is intimately related to his psychological processes and achievements, but there is no recognition that no mere reduction is enough. One cannot explain nevertheless a thought’s production by reference to the levels of amino acid in certain musculatures: the outcome is still stochaistic, and vastly underdetermined. When a group such as the NLP-ers or the Miltonian Eriksonians talk of using intention in order to re-order the mind, or very differently, of using the mind to act on other attributes of human experience such as the relieving of pain, we can be forced to look more closely at what is understood by “intending”. Because the uses which psychology in all its schools has made of the word “intention” has been skewed by a failure to de-indexicalize the meaning of the term in the context proposed. For the post-Brentano phenomenologist there are of course the traps of ontological and epistemological affliations: does what we think (intend) exist, and what form or appearance does reality take? But the work in Freud and now later in hypnotherapeutic studies, on malformed or dysfunctional intentions throws doubt on the proprietary nature of so-called in-tention.

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Those who practice in hypnotherapy must be aware that there is apparently a place where the most personal elements of an individual can be taken over – appropriated by another mind. Moreover, it is asserted that a person other than the thinker may place into the consciousness of the other person, “intentions” wishes, expressions of desire, or differently, but nonetheless rootedly commands or directions. It is these latter which most strongly encapsulate our basal understanding in common sense of the word intention. At the bottom, metaphorically speaking, an intention is related to the world outside its holder, so firmly indeed that it can be conceived as bringing about a result in the region, of causing if you like, an external event. Of course there is much in twentieth century philosophy given over to question as to whether intention is more than the sum of the physio-chemical pre-existing reactions which give rise to the thought. Quine for one has wished to limit the number of entities which one must posit as existing. Husserl for another thought that it was through the power of the mind to intend that all other objects had their existence, at least to the extent that there was a corelation between the objects’ perceived by the subject and the co-existence of both subject and object. The perceived in-formed the perceiver. Any residual (religious) element was indetectable. Sixty years after the Vienna Circle formed,it must be remembered that for many phenomenologists the psychological sciences beginning with the twentieth century held out the hope of understanding the mind and specifically the means of acquisition of its knowledge and its possible contaminations. For Victor Frankl or for Primo Levi the experience of utter degradation in prison, the wrenching apart of desert and punishment or outcome was to resolve itself very differently. For the one in the postulation of meaning, any meaning it seemed, which gave the will to survive when that kind of intention was subjected to ruinous pressure to abort, or to the opposite direction where the absolute incomprehensibility of randon chance could not but lead to self-immolation. The need for explanation is not necessarily related to the need for expiation but much of our thought has this genesis (and perhaps always should). The search, on the other hand, for an explanation of therapy which ipso facto places the generative principle outside the ordinary sense of sight, sound and touch, barely able to heard or tasted, will have an appeal all of its own. An appeal which although unique in rebutting the present scepticism of those who postulate the invisible, the un-testable and non-empirical, nevertheless gains much of its notoriety for possessing just these features. Of course, a major stumbling block for both Freud and Karl Popper is the invisibility of the phenomena each men have proposed. For Freud, whose

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whole work since Breuer relies on the unconscious, the unconscious displays itself only be inference and interpretation and any interpretation is subject to re-interpretation: there are no sense data to illustrate, track or map or even corroborate the existence of the unconscious at all. Worse still, in Wittgensteinian terms, the unconscious may just be a shorthand manner of referring to a lot of conscious thoughts now unconscious. For Popper’s Third World the pertinence of the invisible is such that it acts as a veritable default category of things and causes which currently lack articulation. The unconscious is one such concept. The impossibility of tracking an individual’s unconsciousness through an invisible identity spanning decades (where the most distant decade is theoretically the most crucial to access) just gives an indication of the metaphorical use being made of all the words used to describe the unconscious. Both Freud and Frankl used hypnosis at various times in their therapeutic practices. Both of the approaches of these men have been followed by others. Later in this paper we mention at the confusional method of induction in hypnosis and same principle used as a of inducing the trance state in hypnosis. We are hoping that finding out why confusion, i.e., lack of a clear, present intention has some role in accessing the unconscious (defined as either those levels of the mind known to the self which are ordinarily accessible to their possessors only through dreams, nightmares or hypnosis or under certain pharmacological regimes. The request of the logotherapist for the patient to override his or her habitual intention which produces the consciously unwelcome behaviour by bringing the intention into conscious focus and if possible accentuating or augmenting it is confusing. Confusion is indeed, merely the possession of incompatible intentions Some might say confusion is then, and it follows, the inability to form a single intention. Stepping back one further realm, one recalls that Freudian psychiatry is premised on the effects of conflicts upon the mental and emotional processing of endogamous or exogamous stimuli. There exists a pervasive innuendo in psychoanalytic literature that conflicts cancel each other out, or at least lessen the time or energy which would be sufficient were the conflict not in existence. Certainly it is possible to look at a very general level at the neurotic or psychotic patient and say that at some level they are deeply confused. At yet another level of abstraction one might regard anxiety as resulting from intrapsychic conflicts, although exogamous fear also presents itself. The level of loss of contact with reality that characterizes the psychotic individual will often be identified by, or incompatible accounts by that

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individual as to his or her position relevant to the questioner: issues of place, time, orientation and recognition of imminent danger. These types of conditions also characterize states of confusion. Much of Gurwitsch’s work swings about this point: the analysis of core and distant criteria for consciousness. Frankl, writing about the impotence resulting from a patient trying to make love while stricken with anticipatory anxiety, remarks: “He realized that it was not the sign of a very great illness that he could not do two things at once.”[D & S, p. 161]. The phenomena of unity which bedevils Gurwitsch in elaborating upon the phenomenological program and culminates in his acquiring the thesis of the constancy, is a critical component. But there are other mechanisms of unity; time is the foremost. The shorter the duration of an intention, the more likely is it to have the default unity of there not being opportunity for other intentions to rob our first intention of its purity, or in other words, its unity. Time and intention is of course only comprehensible if we share taken-forgranted assumptions about duration, about what counts as action and of the temporal relationship between intention and action such as the latter always follows the former, and of course we need to be able to recognize an intention years or decades after it was first formed in the mind in the continuity, or ingenuity of subsequent actions, re-actions and re-commitments to the original intent. Schutz and Gurwitsch spent lifetimes analysing in special ways the phenomenological reduction of the everyday world as any series of taken-forgranted shared understandings of any (theoretically demarcated) community. Any lingering sense that “intention” or “intentionality” were terms with a laudable discreteness, a precision not requiring definition is again nothing more than a lament. The persuasive force of “intention” relates both to the centrality of the concept it expresses for the remainder of the more important words in the language game, and the independent but corresponding need of other words in the language game to use or refer to or assume a corpus of beliefs and tried and tested formulae standing for the efficacy of just such a notion as the word intention betokens. For attributions of responsibility and therefore failure we are dependent upon a State organization which requires that our intentions must be reconciled with State purposes or not acted upon, or else. The whole social structure depends on the language game in which rational persons are thought to make decisions by calculated intent and equally be punished for the decisions if the not the intention. In some ways the privileged position should be given to intention rather perception in both the phenomenological and scholastic traditions. But we often recognize in the common sense world of the everyday that some one’s intentions are not clear, we look for

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explanatory motive, or factual mistake or internal constraints even if we do not label the mind of the actor as confused. What Quine called “mentalist” was the being qua non of those whose preoccupation was with the working of the mind. For the phenomenologist, the privileged access to his own mind and its workings could be thought to weigh against unfounded pre-suppositions. The same privileged access was augmented by loose feelings of non-contaminable immediacy which even science and the external world could not enjoy. Truth and validity became after logical positivism sources of emotional pride, superiority and confirmation. For the hypnotherapist similar [“psychologically” rewarding] feelings must tempt him or her to find superogative justification in going beyond the merely empirical and in finding in the trance state not merely transference of third parties’ images upon themselves but above all a superiority which transcended visible, physical science. The character structure of the hypnotherapist is ever the foci of the art. Moreover those who are more equal than others can attain that role through the usual mechanisms of being seen to suffer a transmogrifying martyrdom, as with Erickson, whose now-collected tapes “My words will go with you” contain a mysticism which repels the Popperian, let alone the empiricist. But one of the outcomes of the study of the mind in Husserl through the self-constitutive perception apparatus and its attending to its intentions was the implications for forms of minding dealing including psychotherapy. Frankl saw in existentialism an entre into what is now known as brief therap. The achievement of swift relief of distress and suffering, far, far quicker than the slow talking therapies of depth psychiatry. While Frankl took what he wanted from the existentialism of Scheler and Biswanger, developing eclectic uses of standard terms, his best account of what he was doing philosophically is in the final chapter of his book On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders. In that work Max Scheler is credited with an important place in the development of Frankl’s theories. As a leader in the field known as the sociology of knowledge and thus of the view that all personal knowledge is perspectival, and that the perspective can never be eradicated from human knowledge. According to this field of study any perspective has been shown to change over time with a regularity of dawn breaking Pure knowledge, like the failure of the sun to rise, has proved a possibility that has never become reality. The mystery in Frankl’s work is that the canvas of anthropological philosophy bears no apparent relationship to his breakthroughs in brief therapy. The transcendental demand for individual meaning in his present was not linked to any analysis of paradoxical intention or the structure of the logical mind. Unless that is to say that we read into his insight that the problems resolved

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in paradoxical intention are those concerned with over-coming weaknesses of the will. Read in this sense, it is possible to see that the science of implanting positive suggestions in hypnotherapy is also the strengthening not of intention capacity, but of the will. If that is so, then we have a long way to go before we can offer any acceptable theory of the will, or the mechanisms by which it may be strengthened. Minimizing energy-sapping and intentions distorting conflictual instructions to the will, i.e., controlling the unconscious and its discordant role in human existence, would then become the chief target of therapy. Instead, Frankl’s reasoning as to why paradoxical intention worked as a strategy for psychotherapy was that it was able to reverse the pathological intention and the compulsive attention (of the patient upon himself) through a process of detachment using whereby the humoresquenessin the paradox permitted the relief for the patient’s anticipatory anxiety and “de-reflection” distracted the mind on a longer term basis by replacing an obsessional habituating thought pattern with a self-regenerating attention upon other matters. Some of the neuroses thus cured were quite striking. Among second-generation psychiatrists in Europe in the thirties debated the prospects of Binswanger’s daseinanalyze focussing on the psychotic and Frankl’s logotherapy (which tended to be more useful in cases of neurosis). Like the phrase “communal catholic” the phenomenological commitment of either of these schools was to be measured by the degree to which they opposed competing affiliations such as the behaviourists or the ego psychologists (neither of whom, for different reasons, espoused a philosophy such as phenomenology). Frankl defined his understanding of phenomenology thus: Phenomenology as I understand speaks the language of man’s pre-reflective self-understanding rather than interpreting a given phenomena under pre-conceived patterns

While the brief strategy theorists of the last 40 years have understood the earlier psychoanalytic approach of Frankl, few have assigned any instrumentality to the phenomenology or psychological structure assumed by Frankl. Frankl’s opinion of Kant as the greatest philosopher who ever lived underpinned his belief that man is lost without meaning. Generally later therapists have not given any recognition to such a grundnorm although there is much that is identical in the therapeutic approaches of the hypnotherapist Erickson. Underlying so many different approaches of the scripts which Erickson recalls using repeat the inside knowledge that physician and patient share that there is a bottom line in social knowledge whereby one’s every life can escape the wordy preachings of one’superiors. This “down-to-earth” knowledge can then be put to work by our cognoscenti. This suggests Erickson’s used a refined ideological stance

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in which he appeared to prioritize the shared truths with the patient i.e., that “I and you” place(d) a value upon simple satisfactions that might yet form an ideology of surviving in one’s body pitted against the denials of idealistic and hypocritical mid-fifties American cultural mores. While considerable work has been done by hypnotherapeutic community on rendering Erickson’s methods replicable, there is no work yet which archeologizes the substantial corpus of Erickson’s work from the point of view of a sociology of knowledge. The relationship between logic, intention and anxiety had been controversial in Europe since Kierkegaard Frankl’s answer as to why paradoxical intention worked, placed the roots of the neurosis in anticipatory anxiety. The relationship between intention and anxiety arose out of the possibility that some states of intention might be regarded as stemming from the anxiety itself and not from the logical, decision-making segments of the mental process. Intention might be impugned by anxiety without any awareness of the fact [attention] by the person holding the intention. In anxiety-states a distortion exists between the reality as it is and as it is perceived at least this is the logic of the language. If the fears were appropriate to the threat we would not use the term “anxiety” to describe that state. Moreover, there is a significantly similar pattern in the compulsive/obsessive disorder which has at its root the opposite – a lack of an appropriate reality. More deeply, we may here be seeing that lack of reality in both situations stems from confusion in the mind of the patient. The de-reflection speedily induced by a rapid hypnotic induction is but one example of the inter-relationship between concepts such as rationality, logic, and cause. What can an analysis of confusion tell us about the forming and carrying through of intentions? What methodological precepts are necessary to show the relationships between thinking and language, between will and intention, between ceasing to think, and dilemmas, between the logic of suggestion and primacy of the individual’s volition which is integral to the notion of intention. Yet we must beware too easily succumbing to the language game in which an individual’s volition is said to be integral to the notion of intention. We are reminded of Wittgenstein’s example in The Blue Book: An obvious, and correct, answer to the question “what makes a portrait the portrait of so and so?” is that it is the intention. But if we wish to know what it means “intending this to be a portrait of so-and-so” lets see what actually happens when we intend this. Remember the occasion when we talked of whathappened when we expect some from four to four-thirty. To intend a picture to be the portrait of so-and-so (on the part of the painter, e.g.) is neither a state of mind nor a particular mental process. . . ..

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Let us revert to our question: what is the object of a thought? (e.g. when we say “I think that King’s College is on fire”) The question as we put it is already the expression of several confusions. This is shown by the mere fact that it almost sounds like a question of physics; like asking: “What are the ultimate constituents of matter?. (It is a typically metaphysical question being that we express an unclarity about the grammar of words in the form of a scientific question.)

The issue of confusion is here the point of entry into the phenomena which is reported at times of logotherapeutic or hypnotic intervention: Wittgenstein was at pains to show in his ruminations as recorded in the lectures transcribed as The Blue Book, that many philosophic and common sense confusions come about because language use does not in fact take place as if it were an exact calculus. Going further it may be possible to see the confusions of those who suffer from neurosis as similar in kind and nature to those suffered by all of us, but which for some reason are not triggered, or instigated, by or owing to some genetic or other additional advantage which we luckily possess. If we postulate that confusion is an endemic, universal and transient state in the ordinary well-functioning mind, then knowledge of how the condition is caused and relieved may have considerable consequences for the remedial strategies we adopt for persons for whom the states of confusion are long, drawn out affairs perhaps lasting for years. At this point however it is useful to add three riders: firstly that it is plain that many traditional arguments about epistemology and ontology will doubtlessly be found to have originated in the then ignorance of the neurological, physiological and hormonal influences and mode of operation upon the brain. But in advance of such developments we can but continue to press for our own explanations. Secondly, as Frankl often emphasized, there may always be cases where the mind reacts to psychical and physiological conditions by redescribing the phenomena of illness or more specifically, confusion, in other words (but where those different words have no greater explanatory power than the original text). Thirdly, in examining the phenomenon of confusion, we shall be investigating one aspect of such brief therapies, the practice of using directive, external suggestion in or out of hypnosis, as a means of changing future intentions of the patients (and knowing that there are innumerable instances where such implanted suggestions appear to have become observationally equivalent to an intention sourced within the patient’s own mind. Naturally, the practice of suggestion has been studied by many disciplines such as education, psychology and information science to name just three. The topics of ideology, the methods of information dissemination and of socio-linguistic knowledge are all intuitively relevant to such an investigation. We shall not have time to do more than assume the findings of those sciences in this paper, and shall instead

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content ourselves with looking closer at the types of response suggestions are said to elicit from patients under psychotherapy especially using hypnosis which is surely the science of consensually taking control of a person’s intending apparatus under certain socially approved rituals for a limited time. Perhaps we can use the success of these therapies to learn more about the operation of our mental equipment and processes. Where for Husserl the perception of the world begins with intending toward the world, where does that place the will and subjectivity. Can a philosophy maintain both a transcendence and immanence except by poetic licence? There are immediate synergies between Husserl’s characterization of the phenomenological reduction and the trance state in hypnosis. If for Gindes the trance state is halfway between sleep and the wide awake world then there is an isomorphic relationship between the reduction of the conceptualized life world or any part of it and the reduction of the that world wherein we see only what we perceive without our (pre-) conceptions. There is at first the whole background of phenomenological reductionism: to what extent is the trance state akin to the actual realization of bracketing? Did Husserl intend in dis-attending to the precepts of the buzzing world around him, to propose a trance-state? And what would have it meant to understand the notional bracketing as a trance? While the hypnotherapeutic literature is replete with the difficulties of identifying or classifying trances as mental states distinct from day-dreaming or other stronger forms of unconsciousness, there a few discussions of the antithesis to intentionality, that is to say, of what one can see of the workings of the mind when the mind, or the intentional part of it at least, is not working. What is a trance, do the examples of self-hypnosis or meditative trance preclude a definition? Psychiatric techniques, not merely of the method known as free association (the reductive state) but by the whole arsenal of psychoanalysis, such as the 101 Defences tome and its predecessors, is practices dependent upon the non-linearity of intention. Both the hypnosis which allowed Freud insights into the less conscious areas of mental activity and the later psychoanalytic theor(ies) all indicate that a “reduction” of the psyche which calls up the term “intention” must explore the whole gamut of intentions which are nonunitary, self-defeating, unconscious, sub-conscious, semi-conscious and fully rational. Insofar as both psychotherapy and hypnotherapy share a strategy of changing intentions as a way of altering behaviour through the tactic of suggesting new intentions, they ought give us some insights into what a phenomenological reduction of the second level percept, intention, and what it might have meant for phenomenologists.

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The techniques of free association share with astrology and the I-Ching the virtues of controlled randomness up to the point where theory-laden second order precepts of “significant patterns” are heard to emerge from the analysis or hypnotic session. After that both types of therapy-oriented activities precede down different theoretical pathways. Psychoanalysis may take much longer that hypnotherapy, but in common the core is essentially the un-veiling of hidden or forgotten origins of conflict in the psyche. Hynotherapy relies more heavily than is generally appreciated upon a version of the psychoanalytic “free association” often now called “client-centred therapy” with little of the randomness removed. Fast induction techniques in hypnosis can be seen to rely upon confusion to initiate a trance, but both slow and fast induction techniques rely upon suggestions which are aimed at changing the present reality of the subject’s universe. In this more subtle sense, they are also techniques of confusion which are designed to dis-orient, if not dis-sociate the subject. To induce confusion is to strangle the possibility of rational thinking or at least to dis-order the common assumptions of thought. The process of so doing is a process where we can see areas where the traditional logic of the patient’s everyday world is more or less subverted, in ways more or less gradual, and on a more or less temporary basis. The use of ambiguity and of premise-omission and leap-frogging when used together has been shown to render the average subject amenable to change of his or her immediate, medium and long-scale “intentions”. For hypnotists in the first half of the twentieth century often called in to alleviate the hysterical reaction to war damage, the average subject was able to change their intentions, not merely able to become amenable to change. In certain ways both short and long term therapy proved able to remove barriers persons had to overcome to be taken as normal. That is to say, persons after the same fashion the bringing to external knowledge and conscious awareness of the existence of states of mind long past or at least not-ready-tohand. But the relative speed with which hypnotherapy has appeared to be able to get past the censors of the conscious, in part by attending non-verbal cues as to character and thus as to the subjective “meanings” held by the patient, raises important topics for consideration. All the more so, because one of the reasons behind Freud’s reticence towards the use of hypnosis in therapy, was its highly directive, paternalistic, methodology which seemed and seems to be critically related to the core elements of the therapy (the other was its unreliability as a technique both as between patients and with the one patient over time.

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The semantics of the word “suggestion” in this context are pregnant. The use of the term in hypnosis is in fact a historical quirk since for at least the last 400 years there has been nothing of the inherent choice to be implied into hypnotherapy other than the original submission to the mind of the hypnotist, in exchange it is generally thought for very pleasurable feelings, perhaps amounting to emotions or at least the release of the emotions. The possible choice of an idea or action is lost in hypnosis where the word is used to indicate a training program in affirming and accepting ideas put into the patient’s now uncritical mind by the therapist. Suggestion is a word, like most words, which has a critical indefiniteness in its use. It can mean the mere provision of an idea implicitly no more likely or liable or obligatory in nature than any other such idea. However it can mean, and does mean, in the hypnotherapeutic context the inexorable acceptance of an idea which presents itself as beyond criticism. In other words it is the rapid, disguised repetition of apparently analytic propositions to induce the patient to alter or strengthen relevant intentions. There are important considerations of trance logic here which go to the extent to which the phenomena exhibited in hypnosis undermine our traditional conceptions of the working of the mind. Whether an idealization or not, we are accustomed to thinking that intentions may be held singly, may be authorized to be put into action and that both steps are governed by rational, in the sense of goal-oriented, actions. Freud realized toward the end of his writings that hypnosis had more in common with non-rational belief than with rational where rational has the meaning of excluded middle logic. In Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the “I” Freud writes: On the other hand, we can also say that the hypnotic relationship is (if the expression will be permitted) the formation of a mass of two. Hypnosis offers a good comparison with mass formation being actually identical with the latter. From the complicated structure of the mass it isolates one element for us, namely the behaviour of the mass individual towards the leader. . . .. by his actions the hypnotist awakens in the subject part of the latter’s archaic inheritance that also concerned the subject’s parents and that in relation to the subject’s father experienced an individual revival, the idea of an overpowering and dangerous personality in the face of whom the only attitude was one of passive masochism, to whom one must inevitably lose one’s will, and being alone with whom (‘coming under his gaze’) looked very risky.

One sees here in a crucial analysis of Freud the intimate relationship between intention and will such that the two are almost synonymous. We also see that there is a dark side of intention and will whereby it is understood that intention may be irrational whereas se the will is often understood as being irrational, lacking all rationality or at least as acquiring its energy from forces other than logic: “wilful”.

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One must be mindful of Wittgenstein’s injunction not to use the topographical flux of language as if one could wrest the truth from the juxtaposition of phonemes or other linguistic phenomena at large. For the purposes of this essay which is to trace the work done on intention and intentionality since Husserl in the broad field of phenomenological and existential psychology we can conclude by saying that the last 40 years has seen a change in the superficial rituals of hypnosis so that the dictatorial roleplaying of the hypnotist is downplayed and that the hypnotherapist is seen to phrase the dictates, at the very least, in language used by or at the level of the individual subject. Moreover, and at a superficial level again, there is much talk of differentiation among persons requiring the equivalent differentiation and adaptation of technique to the subject of the psychotherapy. Talk of therapy brings us back to the other sense in which technique is used: the scripts or serial suggestions by which the will is induce to adopt a superior set of intentions than that possessed by the patient at the beginning of therapy. Naturally there are issues of definition even here; it can be argued that the intention to enter hypnosis is the effective, pre-hypnotic intention. But yet more intriguingly, the rhetoric of hypnosis, the persuasivenss of the therapy is able to be located in the correspondence and co-existence of the intention and the expectation between the patient and the therapist. This adaptation of the early symbolic interactionists – sociologists attempting an explanation of the functionality of social integration, consists in using the metaphor of two headedness (cf. coins) to transmute one substance into another (incorporating the paradox that the same thing can be its opposite at the same time, or at least, something other than it is at the same time that it is other). The existence of hypnosis itself is sometimes questioned on the paradoxical basis that it is merely the fulfilment of expectations in the mind of the subject in the form of matching intentions: Julian Jaynes has eloquently described this extraordinary refutation of hypnotic phenomena. It remains to say something concerning a parallel development amongst hypnotherapists concerning the actual practice of suggestions made to the patient. Indirect suggestions are now the most highly valued. By indirect suggestions is meant the concealment of the suggestion by pronominal form, or by puzzlement, or by paradox or through the telling of stories or similes or metaphors. To the extent that the technique of indirectness is much more difficult than the following of simple-minded scripts, we are led again to wonder why the simple suggestion has such power. But in any event the indirectness requires a special pleading since the metaphors of “participation” the assimilation of the new intention are belied by the lack of equality between the parties where the continuing emphasis upon the charisma of the operator evidences the true basis of the hypnotic relationship.

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Questions of ethical conduct emerge with the same indirectness whereby any lack of candour on the part of the hypnotherapist invites criticism: the cure must be pure not just a cure. But there is little doubt that the mixed messages of non-institutionalized hypnosis rely on a particular technique of inducing confusion as the method of securing the compliance of the subject. Fritz Perls has of course spent many years illustrating a psychoanalytic understanding of confusion. For Perls, . . . a good part of the fight against neurosis is won merely by helping the patient to become aware of, to tolerate and to stay with the confusion, and its correlative, blanking out. Although confusion is unpleasant, the only real danger is in interrupting it and consequently becoming confused in action. For confusion, like any other emotion, if left alone to develop uninterrupted, will not remain confusion. . . . Most people try to handle their confusions, because they are so unpleasant, by interrupting them with speculations, interpretations, explanations and rationalizations. This is the pattern of many neurotics and especially intellectuals. Much of Freudian analysis, for example, is based on the error that symbolic, intellectual knowledge is equal to understanding. But such knowledge is usually itself an interruption, a premature arresting of development, leaving behind a trail of existential confusion. . . . Every “er” and “ah”, every breaking up of a sentence, covers a small or large area of confusion. Each one is an attempt to hang on and maintain contact, the patient’s real need is to withdraw.

In fine, to see the door to ontological knowledge and epistemological precept as devolving from perception where perception is recognized as depending on intention and the state of intentionality does not have the intuitive appeal it must have had at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since then Gurwitsch has attempted to adapt and extend the foundations of this endeavour to the wider realms of consciousness which encompasses perception, attention and intention. The clarifications in Gurwitsch’s work however cannot recover the narrowness of the Husserlian beginning. The narrow focus beloved of the hypnotist proves an unwilling constraint upon an epistemological project which recoils from the contents of a mere pragmatism. Broadway, New South Wales, Australia

BIBLIOGRAPHY Armstrong, D. M. A Materialist Theory of the Mind (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968). Bandler, R. and Grinder, J. Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H Erickson MD, 2 vols (Scotts Valley CA, Grinder & Associates, 1975). Cumming, R. D. Phenomenology and Deconstruction, vol. 2 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1992). Ellenberger, H. F. The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York, Basic Books, 1970). Frankl, V. E. The Unheard Cry for Meaning (New York, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1978).

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Frankl, V. E. The Doctor and the Soul (New York, Vintage Books, 1986). Frankl, V. E. On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders (Hove, UK, Routledge, 2004). Freud, S. Mass Psychology and Other Writings (London, Penguin, 2004). Gindes, B. C. New Concepts of Hypnosis (New York, Julian Press, 1951). Gurwitsch, A. Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1966). Haley, J. Uncommon Therapy (New York, Norton, 1993). Jaynes, J. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1982). Lee, E. N. and Mandelbaum, M. Phenomenology and Existentialism (Baltimore, John Hopkins, 1969). Mays, W. and Brown, S. C. Linguistic Analysis and Phenomenology (London, Macmillan, 1972). Meares, R. Intimacy and Alienation (Hove, Routledge, 2000). Meares, R. The Metaphor of Play, 3rd Edn. (New York, Routledge, 2005). Merleau-Ponty, M. The Phenomenology of Perception (Abingdon, Routledge Classics, 2002). King, M. E. and Citrebaum, C. M. Existential Hypnotherapy (New York, Guildford, 1993). Morton, A. Frames of Mind (Oxford, Clarendon, 1980). Nardone, G. and Watzlawick, P. Brief Strategic Therapy (New Jersey, Jason Aronson, 2005). Natanson, M. Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, Vols.1 and 2 (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1973). O’Hanlon, W. H. and Hexum, A. L. An Uncommon Casebook (New York, Norton & Co, 1990). Perls, F. The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy (Palo Alto, CA, Science and Behaviour Books, 1973). Reich, W. Early Writings, vol. 1 (New York, Farrer Straus & Giroux, 1975). Rossi, I. (Ed.). The Unconscious in Culture (New York, E.P. Dutton, 1974). Siewert, C. P. The Significance of Consciousness (Princeton NJ, Princeton University of Press, 1998). Valle, R. S. and von Eckartsberg, R. (Eds.). The Metaphors of Consciousness (New York, Plenum Press, 1981). Weeks, G. R. and L’Abate, L. Paradoxical Psychotherapy (New York, Brunner/Mazel, 1982). Wittgenstein, L. The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford, Blackwell, 1972). Zeig, J. K. and Lankton, S. R. (Eds.). Developing Ericksonian Therapy (New York, Brunner/Mazel Inc, 1988).

SECTION V

LUDMILA MOLODKINA

PHENOMENOLOGY OF UTILITARIAN-AESTHETIC DYNAMICS OF NATURE

. . . We may see in nature improvised concertos or landscapes or still lifes, etc. However, there seem to be three focal points with respect to which the specific features of the aesthetics of nature appear to us. In analogy to the aesthetics of the works of art, I propose to call them the Spectacle of Nature, the Symphony of Nature, and the Drama of Nature. A.-T.TYMIENIECKA. “THE AESTHETICS OF NATURE IN THE HUMAN CONDITION”, VOL. XIX ABSTRACT

This paper gives an analysis to three philosophical-aesthetic levels, which illustrate dialectic interrelations and reciprocal transitions of utilitarian-applicative and notional artistic-creative impulses of natural landscape development in its correlation with various arts and with architecture in particular. This dialectics of functional levels allows us, according to our reckoning, educing gradation in elaboration of the concept of “landscape architecture” at the earliest stages of development, where material source of this category was identified, then its religious models were determined and thereafter it turned into a philosophicalartistic model of creation. The notion of architectural landscape as eden, as microcosm, and later on as masterpiece of art, evolutionally came up out of utilitarian practice of human being. • Firstly, landscape architecture might be presented as part of aesthetically arranged landscape environment that surrounds a human being. Due to its functional nature this level may be called a utilitarian-applicative one, a fundamental mechanism, the development of which is in satisfaction of material-economic needs with “involvement” of certain elements of beauty, and there are also direct “hints” to formation of “Nature-Paradise” formula. The presence of aesthetic component in this case contemplates a “preponderance” of the usefulness over the beauty. • Secondly, there is an intermediate form between aesthetic landscape environment and art, which is typical for fragmentary-imaginative level. In this case we observe an “intensification” of dynamics of decorative323 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 323–338. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_20, 

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beautification functions together with utilitarian meaningfulness, which means that perception of nature as paradise becomes more embossed and deep. In this connection, imaginative or emotional-notional beginnings accumulate artistic energy of separate fragments of architectural-landscape space, thus balancing the beauty and the usefulness. • Thirdly, which is important to prove, there is an architectural-landscape composition as archetypal artistic phenomenon. This stage in development of landscape architecture is presented as an integral artistic-notional one, in which the nature is perceived not just as paradise, but as complicated philosophical microcosm with its laws and order, as completed artistic subject matter of the cumulative idea of Man-creator. In this case cognitiveestimative beginning of functional nature serves as cementing link, and the beauty dominates the usefulness In this respect it is interesting to note classification of aesthetic principles of garden art, set forth by English enlightener and literator Henry Home. Home explicated fundamental provisions of aesthetic theory of garden art and architectonics in his three-volume work “Elements of Criticism”. The philosopher gives comparative characteristics to these two arts, distinguishing the principle of usefulness (relative beauty) and the principle of exquisiteness (absolute beauty). “. . . There is certain beauty in usefulness, and, when reasoning about the beauty, one should never disregard the beauty of useful. This allows us viewing the parks and buildings from different standpoints: either as dedicated exclusively for usefulness, or for the beauty, or for all of them”.1 Home believed that the reason for tastes differences in garden art and architectonics is in multitude of designations of these arts. Let us discuss each of these three levels of aesthetic manifestation in landscape architecture. The first stage is connected with expression of aesthetic ties by way of formal perfection of utilitarian-applicative functional beginnings. The notion of “perfect”, as is known, is an attribute of aesthetic in various fields of surrounding reality. The principle of beauty and usefulness, purposeful and beautiful serves as criterion of aesthetic evaluation of arrangement and improvement of corporeal environment. The “preponderance” of the usefulness over the beauty is typical for landscape architecture in its initial utilitarian-applicative meaning. We may trace the dialectics of such regular pattern both using historical material and by reference to modern aesthetic principles of landscape arrangement. The ability of rearranging landscape aesthetically resided in the nations of Ancient and Medieval East. Thus, available source materials make it

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possible to assess high aesthetic culture of Egyptians in the field of arrangement of natural environment. Fineness and exquisiteness of taste of ancient gardeners became apparent in their planting of greenery in straight, narrow and densely built streets of Egyptian cities. In order to conceal chaotic development of buildings, they were necessarily planted all around with palm alleys.2 In general, architectural landscapes of Assyria and Babylon, which were different from Egyptian ones due to huge dimensions and luxury, including more natural planning and arrangement, served as hunting and entertaining venues. Rich vegetation assortment allows us considering them as prototypes of botanic gardens. There was an abundance of utilitarian elements, but it gave birth to the beautiful. “Contemplation of amazing harmony and effectiveness of irrigation systems built by vanished civilization between Tigris and Euphrates became the reason for the first planned garden. All those gardens were an idealization of that imaginative panorama . . ..”3 Mainly utilitarian character resided in medieval monasterial landscapes. Located on fertile lands, monasteries were embowered with gardens, which served for horticulture, growing of medicinal herbs, flowers, and hunting. Tom Turner,4 English researcher of garden art believed that they were a kind of springs of scientific knowledge. It was the monasterial garden as a special genre of landscape architecture that Christian philosophers thought about “. . . not only as the most immaculate and divine type of activity, open to human being, but as a method of resurrection of paradise, which was once jointly created by Man and the God”.5 One ought to bear in mind that monasterial landscape was a kind of “continuation in time” of Persian garden-paradise yet with lesser imaginative-notional vibration and set on another national soil – Western European one. Such architecturalenvironmental space was destined to be a continuation of celestial life on earth. This feature of monasterial landscape was noted by the ideologist of Russian landscape architecture T.B. Doubyago. She wrote that monasterial garden in Kroutitsy in the suburbs of Moscow (twelfth century) with fruit trees, wellarranged water springs, living chambers and odoriferous herbs, were perceived “as real paradise”.6 There are examples, when aesthetic regular pattern of surrounding countryside was taken as top priority in creation of utilitarian monasterial gardens. Thus, Patriarch Nikon’s conception of building New Jerusalem monastery on the bank of Istra River in the suburbs of Moscow is a testimony to the fact that the beauty of surrounding landscape became determinant. Imitation of ancient Jerusalem topography in vicinity of that monastery, giving symbolic names to various landscape objects (“Siloam’s baptistery”, “Jehoshaphat Valley”, “Mauritius Oak” etc.) – all these testify to aesthetic development of natural environment, to the ability of subordinating its archetypal and newly

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created beauty to religious-utilitarian objectives.7 Notwithstanding high religious symbolism, penetrating all spheres of vital activity of human being (“. . . landscape art of Middle Ages was more intuitive rather than rational, and at the same time it inclined to symbolization . . .”8 ), only marginal significance was given to aesthetic aspects of these gardens. In most of the cases medieval monasterial landscapes represented objects with high domination of functional-practical attributes.9 Here, “relative beauty” of landscape as usefulness dominated “absolute” beauty, i.e. the aesthetic one. Researchers point out that only in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the utilitarian-aesthetic or religious canons of medieval monasterial landscape being “more emotional rather than intellectual” exerted “inspiring” influence on romantic garden art and became an “aesthetic standard” for asymmetric composition.10 With the lapse of time, the volume weight of the beauty made headway over the usefulness and “has overgrown” into a stylistic example or canon of imitation. Predominance of utilitarian functions over aesthetic is typical for various modern architectural-landscape variations, being constituents of aesthetic arrangement of environment. The natural space is being aestheticized in accordance with its functional specialization, landscape-genetic attributes of environment. Urban territories, forests, banks of water bodies, even agricultural and mountain landscapes become subject to cultural-aesthetic “rearrangement”. Accounting on genetic territorial features, people develop gardens, parks, boulevards, arrange rhythmical vegetation along the roads, embankments etc. All this as a whole, one may say, plays an additional decorative-beautification role, and is repeatedly brought to life due to socioeconomic and ecological needs. Thus, arranging roof gardens is known for thousands of years: Diodore’s and Strabo’s descriptions of Hanging Gardens of Semiramis; high prices for land in Greece germinated a custom of beautifying flat roofs and balconies with flower pots; description of gardens on verandas and roofs by poet Justinian and in Byzantine Gospel and Books of Common Prayer of eleventh and twelfth centuries; images of such gardens in Indian miniature painting. In Genoa and Venice arrangement of hanging gardens was due to lack of plain lands and other natural-economic reasons. Le Corbusier enunciated the specific theme of “roof-garden” and made it a constituent part of new architecture, as he believed that gardens were supposed to be on roofs of dwellings in order to economize on space. “Isn’t it against the common sense, when an area of an entire city is not utilized at all and the slate has nothing to do but to talk to stars?” – exclaimed Le Corbusier.11 Aestheticized nature enriches architectural ensembles of squares, exhibition and memorial zones, historical and architectural objects, accentuate meaningfulness of social centers. Moreover, it may serve as a recreational venue for local people, visitors and guests. In this context, tremendous creative

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interest was caused by German exhibition in Moscow, where artistsdesigners12 demonstrated incomparable art of introduction of natural elements into production sphere, as well as International symposium on landscape architecture in Singapore in 2001.13 However, notwithstanding the fact that during arrangement of such territories the designers apply aesthetic methods of landscape arrangement and that in its completed form they become carriers of certain cultural-aesthetic or mass-communicative load, in the initial momentum such form of landscape modification is differentiated by predominance of utilitarian-economic functions. Contributing to comfortization of natural space, ecological “cultivation” of human living space, by attaching it to the atmosphere of genuine natural beauty, applicative architectural-landscape combinations may induce various emotional moods. In this connection it is pertinent to get back to uniform Kantian approach to living nature and artistic creativity on the basis of purposefulness principle. Accentuating subjectivity of purposefulness principle in relation to natural forms, Kant pointed out an amazing correspondence of nature with that principle (in forms of crystals, shapes of flowers, internal structures of plants and organisms of animals14 ). In utilitarian-applicative architectural-landscape arts this aspect is depicted in the content of “concomitant beauty” category introduced by Kant alongside with “pure beauty”. “Concomitant beauty contemplates understanding of objectives, which predefine the designation of things”.15 Fundamental here is the practical interest inherent to aesthetically rearranged nature. Landscape architect beautifies local natural space. But this beauty is an accessory one. In other words, in this case there is too high doze of practical motivation. The cornerstone here is usefulness, which could be brought up by this natural-aesthetic object (it may be used for rest, rehabilitation, production of agricultural goods, making scientific investigation etc.), while aesthetic enjoyment from intercourse with that is of minor, “accessory” character. That is why emotional-sensuous sentiments of human being in this connection are so unstable: they are mainly concentrated for “obtaining” optimal benefit, which is happily aided by harmony and rhythm. Utilitarian-applicative landscape must, first of all, satisfy practical needs of human being. Otherwise no harmonious combination of natural elements may bring aesthetic pleasure, wherefore the surrounding will seem too contrived and intrusive. Landscape architect Simonds described the beauty and the usefulness as follows: «. . . Spaces delight us because the volumes, shapes and character of them are in exact correspondence with their original designation”.16 These words denote fairly enough the utilitarian-applicative variations of landscape architecture.

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As already stated, landscape architecture might be presented not only as an aesthetically arranged natural environment, which is evidenced by the above functional level of its development. There is also an intermediate level between aestheticized natural space and the art sui generis. In this connection the functional meaningfulness of architectural landscape is more saturated. Separate fragments deepen informative aesthetic potential: decorative beautification is “supplemented” by imaginative-notional and religious-philosophical gradations. In the history of world landscape architecture there are quite convincing examples when utilitarian or decorative elements accentuated not only the economic meaningfulness, but fragmentary and integrally “turned” the landscape into a philosophical-religious element of cognition and an aesthetic object. Quite interesting, in this respect, is the evolution of the concept of “NatureParadise”, which, it ought to be remarked, appears in most of religions – Islam, Buddhism and Christianity. Regardless of strict chronological sequence in historical process of formulating, the beautiful has always “stemmed out” from the utilitarian and, in this connection, has often served as “equal” feature of nature-paradise, whether it be Hanging Gardens in Babylon or floating ones in ancient Kashmir, gardens of ancient Persian villa Eshref or landscape bezel of Taj Mahal mausoleum in India . . .. This fact is supported by most of the garden art researchers.17 Initial conceptuality of the “Nature-Paradise” notion is connected with the genesis of Persian paradise. “The Garden of Eden, or ‘paradise’ in its ‘pure’ form, represented a territory protected from outside enemies but crossed over by multiple water channels and wonderful fruit trees, symbolized the celestial and an earthly paradise”.18 “Equilibrium” of the beauty and the usefulness, perhaps, was most optimally defined in ancient Persian model of paradise. Alongside with utilitarian-household dominants, the religious-symbolic rationale and aesthetic orientation in natural environment gain more permanence and definiteness. The passion and devotion of ancient Persians to trees and flowers was evidenced by Xenophan. Tsar Kir built the garden with his own hands; another emperor was so fascinated with a sycamore, that he decorated its beautiful branches with golden amulets.19 Aesthetic tastes were mixing with materialeconomic predilections, as well as with religious beliefs and philosophical searches for truth. This reciprocal causation becomes evident, if we thoroughly analyze separate fragments of garden-paradise in its religious and national dynamics. For example, the most illustrative compositional fragment of Persian gardenparadise is irrigative system of four intersecting water channels, which divide

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the square area of landscape into four spatial units accordingly. There is a deep religious-symbolic implication in this seemingly ingenuous, even primitive design. “This is an ideal example of irrigative system, in which the water is presented both symbolically and physically as the Author of Life . . .. The junction of water channels – lifelines – symbolizes the meeting point of Man and God in most of religions”.20 Meanwhile, in the Book of Guinness this point is defined as the “essence of the garden”, as communion of the spiritual and the material, as interaction between practical needs of human being with religious symbolism.21 The remarkable fact is that this most significant fragment of Persian landscape-paradise – the system of water channels – has been historically modifying on various national soils and attained its peculiar and new philosophical and aesthetic evaluation in Arabic landscapes of Alhambra and El Generalif in Spain, the gardens of the Great Moguls in India and most regions of Islamic East. The formula of “Nature-Paradise” “echoed” with a new vibrancy in West European monasterial gardens, which we intentionally did not relegate to fragmentary-imaginative functional-aesthetic level, but to utilitarian-applicative one. The reason, according to our reckoning, is in fact that monasterial architectural landscape is a new, as a matter of fact, idea of that archetypal Persian landscape-paradise, original – paradise. The garden in a monastery was designated, as we stressed already, for resurrection of paradise on earth, it served as a method of paradise revival (there is a belief that the idea of paradise was introduced to medieval monasterial gardens of France and England by crusaders22 ), that is why the useful prevailed, though the share of religious symbolism was big too. For instance, intercrossing alleys divided the landscape into four portions that, undoubtedly, replicated irrigative systems in Persian paradise. In general, monasterial garden as genre phenomenon in landscape architecture if compared with “original” nature-paradise is only a replica, in which dominating are utilitarian-economic objectives. Persian tradition of landscape-paradise made the most influential impact on India. In the gardens of the Great Moguls – Babur, Gumayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shalamar and others, the water was attributed with high utilitarian meaningfulness (channels were much wider taking into consideration hot Indian climate). At the same time there was an increase of aesthetic imaginative-notional assonance. Babur, the first of Moguls, is famous for perfecting the concept of “nature-paradise”, as well as for the use of aesthetic principles order, harmony and symmetry in Indian architectural landscapes. Intersecting channels here divide natural space into eight portions by analogy with the eight sections of the Koran and “. . . symbolize reconcilement of human flesh with the endless circle of eternity”.23 The construction of water basins is conjugated with

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Muslim system of measurement. Prior to making prayer the believers had to go through ablution in such heavenly basins. In addition to utilitarian-economic and decorative-beautification designation, other fragments of landscape-paradise also had a high degree of implication. Evergreen cedars, alternating with fruit trees planted along the water channels, symbolized eternal life, while spring blossoming trees – revivification.24 The aesthetic as fragmentary-imaginative phenomenon reflected in ancient Greek public gardens. We may call them a nunciate of modern urban gardens and entertainment parks. Alongside with tremendous utilitarian-functional significance, the social landscape was an incarnation of cultural-imaginative implication of the époque. Sacred groves (heroons), for instance, were arranged in favor of heroes and prominent public figures but, at the same time, they introduced certain utilitarian functions: they were places for horticulture and sports. Decorative-beautification opportunities of social landscape were gradually perfected – palm and sycamore boscages with ivy-encircled pergolas surrounded architectural structures; the alleys were beautified with statues and vases with flowers and fountains. All that served the role of effective aesthetic accompaniment to functional basis of landscape, thus accentuating its meaningfulness. Architectural-landscape space was gradually gaining another qualitative parameter – the social-philosophical one. The philosophers used to intercourse and sophisticate things in the boscages in the shade of trees. That was the outset of gymnasia – public places for open air rallies and agoras of the Greeks. It is on record that Plato organized a public garden, dedicated to Academes;25 Aristotle established the public school Lyceum and taught his pupil in sycamore “peripateas” – alleys, while successor Theothrast, the Father of botany, was also practicing in the lyceum garden. Horatio inspired by Plato and Epicurus studied philosophy in Academes in Athens . . ..26 Some utilitarian and decorative elements of landscape in Hellas, and later on in Ancient Rome, were reflected in the consciousness of contemporaries as completed philosophical bezel. If decorative compositions of Persian landscape-paradise mainly personified the magnificence or eastern extravagance, and the aesthetic was perceived through the prism of religious images, then the ancient Greek public garden embodied a sociocultural atmosphere. Its aesthetic and “useful” fragments were of philosophically cosmological and imaginative character. In case an aesthetic purposefulness becomes transparent through Parnassian palette, then architectural landscapes of Ancient Greece and Rome attain an integral artistic-ideal vibration, which we are going to dwell upon below.

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Having gone through temporal historical continuum, various elaborated models of architectural landscapes play and important role in perfection of functional and decorative-artistic features of modern urban, playground, sculptural and other aestheticized natural spaces of gardens, entertainment parks etc. Utilitarian-applicative side of such landscapes, constitutionally, has a priority in the total functional structure. However, there is quite high level of aesthetic values in artistic florist decorations, unique architectural-sculptural elements etc. The architectural-artistic image of landscape is defined by a combination of all aesthetic attributes with living natural environment. If we consider a very specialized form of landscape-architectural art such as playgrounds, then it appears obvious that they equally combine both utilitarian and aesthetic elements. Being designed for children, entertainment, sporting and cultural-educational events, most of playgrounds at the same time posses an imaginative-expressional feature. Their sublime aesthetic potential is an indispensable part of functional-applicative balance. Inclusion of various decorative structures made of wood or concrete into the natural and artistic landscape, including original playing sculptures, small architectural forms etc., creates an illusion of fabulous perception of reality. Being established for various purposes, the playgrounds have always had its individual character and inimitable image. Thus, the design solution of famous Disney Land in the USA was based on the fusion of two beginnings – functional-applicative and scenic-entertaining ones. Designated both for recreation and entertainment of children and adults, the park in its separate portions has a great imaginative-notional load. “. . . The design of Disney Land, presumably, includes all effectively functioning attributes, which make an impact of a masterpiece of arts presented most extensively and most purely”.27 The scenic-circus performances, which combine the facilities of separate attraction features in an adventure-type amusement, are based on the synthesis of arts. For instance, “convergence of fire and music” (S.M. Eisenstein) may animate fairytales, legends and cartoons. Festive communion of floral environment and scenic thematic performances does intensify the emotional status of the visitor. Active forms of amusement generate associations with carnivals and masquerades. The usefulness and the beauty in such parks are in harmonious equilibrium. Playgrounds as modern form of fragmentary-imaginative landscape architecture are in fact an aesthetic fusion of special utilitarian and emotional-notional aspects. It is recognized that imaginative-notional significance is inherent not only in specialized parks and playground. Many recreational parks both of central and regional importance, with successful planning and design solutions, due to their separate fragments’ specifics set the pattern of artistic

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expression. Poly-functional and multiprofile features of such architecturallandscape combinations never diminish their aesthetic and, to certain degree, ideological directional effect. For instance, the famous Hyde Park in England, with its Speakers Corner is dedicated not only for strolling and recreation. Their wide lawns serve as real venues for various meetings and events, which attribute to their greenery a kind of sociopolitical hue. This resembles public gardens of ancient Greece, where social content were deeply intertwined with natural-decorative background. Inimitable example of decorative methods applied in landscape architecture was given by Brazilian landscape architect Robert Burley-Marx. This guru of architectural landscape implemented artistic tasks using specific means of natural materials in a confined lot of functional-planning requirements. In contrast to ordinary landscape architect who, first of all, achieves certain functional objectives and incidentally creates scenic perspectives, lawns, alleys and groups of plants, Burley-Marx gives top priority to attaining artistic objectives. He was the first contemporary landscape architect, who began applying tropical plants in urban landscape architecture. Formerly it was believed to be a bad taste. Decorative-scenic method of Burley-Marx presumes a dismemberment of functionally uniform garden components (walkways, lawns etc.) into various parts with specific color and texture of vegetation. Special attractiveness is contributed by sidewalks paved with decorative mosaic. It looks like the geometricity of the pattern is reviving the old Brazilian tradition of street mosaic in dark and light cobblestones. These peculiar ornaments extended for hundreds of meters, confer to that walking zone absolutely unusual and, at the same time chamber but humane scale and character. The space in this connection is shrinking visually and disintegrates rhythmically, in which historical chords can be heard. The useful and beautiful beginnings here are interpenetrating and reciprocally determining each other. Just as painting with natural decorations so applying architectural-sculptural monumental tooling, in parallel with utilitarian opportunities, does introduce an additional effect of spirituality, implication and imagination. The atmosphere of such natural spaces is perceived not only as a place for walking, recreation or public entertainment etc., but some of their fragments may generate associations of much higher order – emotional-notional or, to certain degree, artistic-imaginative, as it happens when you are faced with a masterpiece of art. Functional content of architectural landscape here impenetrate with powerful emotional-associative charge, adding a note of deep notional vibration. An incomparable impression arises when visiting Vienna municipal garden, where functional-utilitarian content is expanded thanks to the input of artistic-monumental accent – the monument to Johann Strauss. The

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surrounding vegetation is, one may say, a background frame of a sculptural theme. The composer playing violin is in the foreground, and sculptural presentation of various scenes from his operettas serves as background. All this brings forth a musical-scenic image by means of statuary art and vegetation. The visitors of the park, who are willing to take a breath from everyday hustles, at the same time, experience emotional eruption in rendezvous with the monument. The well scheduled and purposeful promenade is interposed with an aesthetic wave of art. One may feel an impression of high melodious uplift, debonair humor and equivocal folk music of Austria. Natural movement of trees and bushes concords with the theme of classical “Wiener Waltz”. Architectural-landscape composition in intermediate level between aesthetically rearranged environment and art, undoubtedly, causes more stable emotions rather than those that arise when viewing trees rhythmically planted for utilitarian purposes only. However, imaginative informativeness of such compositions is still accessory and vulnerable, wherefore the nature of it is still “close” to utilitarian archetype. Understanding of landscape as paradise throws back to subjective-practical activity of human being. In this respect, the creativity, to a greater extent, is oriented to the sensation of pleasure, pleasantness, to satisfied economic-transformative ego of Man-creator, and then – to deep notional evaluation, as it happens when you face virtually with a masterpiece of art. This assertion may not be considered as absolute, it just testifies to existing tendencies. Depending on situation or sentiments or intellectual potential of personality, a mere pleasure may be also gained from the intercourse with atmosphere of artistic landscape and, vice versa, staying in forest-park may induce a multitude of deep associations and experiences. In this case we should again turn back to Kantian principle of “subjective purposefulness” with its fundamental notions of “concomitant” beauty and motivation. If in the art of utilitarian architectural landscape the dominating role belonged to practical interest, then for fragmentary-imaginative landscape architecture the typical is the decrease of the level of motivation through introduction of artistic-notional accents. However, the pleasure of intercourse with such gardens and parks is never free from sensations and reason. The motivation remains, but with lesser strain if compared with that on the preceding utilitarian-applicative level. As for manifestation of the refined as evaluative-cognitive aspect in landscape architecture, then most adequately it externalizes itself in the next functional-aesthetic level – an integral artistic-notional one. The artisticnotional architectural landscape as a piece of fine art may impersonate not only a “pure” beauty, free from any motivation, but may realize the “concomitant beauty”, as expression of ethical and aesthetic ideal rather than as an element accentuating the utilitarian-functional needs.28 That is, “Kant attaches deep

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gnoseological implication to the informativeness of pieces of fine art (here – artistic-notional landscape), by saying that «. . . their complete perfection requires a lot of knowledge”.29 Historical-artistic parks-museum, memorial-manor parks-monuments, artistic small gardens, ethnographic and sculptural parks (we relate them to integral artistic-notional level of landscape architecture) are committed to solving something more meaningful rather than approaching formally-compositional perfection – be in concordance with laws of rhythm, proportionality, harmony, eurhythmy and thus inducing various fleet emotions and sensations of predominantly hedonistic nature. We believe that architectural landscapes of such type due to their functional-aesthetic attributes may come well along toward pieces of art, wherefore their impact on us is akin to the influence of seemingly non-utilitarian arts such as easel painting, instrumental music, poetry etc. The integral artistic-notional architectural landscape represents a masterpiece of art in shape of creative self-sufficing subjectivity created in accordance with the laws of beauty, which imaginative features express historically-spiritual status of time in its dynamics, stratification of normative-ethical potentials of certain epoch and, therefore, it is a cultural-axiological landmark with “residual” utilitarian elements, which are also attaining aesthetically-axiological overtone. In this connection, architectural landscape appears as not just a material object created by the scales of rhythm and harmony; it expresses spirituallyethical implication of human life, and is serves as axiological medium. Here is the essence “of compound perception of an object” (A.V. Ikonnikov), in this case – the architectural landscape, as objective physical entity in its utilitarian function and as a carrier of meanings, symbols and signs.30 There is a question if the utilitarian element disappears from the orbit of artistic notional architectural-landscape composition for good? Hegel, as is known, never related decorative art to fine arts. However, he has been always noting instability and dialectical agility between artistic and non-artistic. It means that this interdependence and reciprocal transitivity of utilitarian-aesthetic and specifically artistic produces an overall, summarized insight on dialectics. The “insignificance of differences” between “spiritual utility” and material one was highlighted by Kagan.31 Artistic composition is more instrumentally connected with social practice, rather than the results of functional-utilitarian and aesthetically-applicative activity. However, this relationship is not completely excluded, but the artistic charge here becomes more eminent and dominating. We evidence cognition and evaluation of various aspects of social practice through the prism of artistic-imaginative views. Hence it appears that architectural-landscape composition as an art might not be assessed in form of artistic object absolutely deprived of

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utilitarian beginning. Its artistic existence has been always contemplating at least some presence of utilitarian-applicative nuances. “The beauty and usefulness are indeed connected; they are supplementing each other, they are associated in the same objects, but they neither amalgamate with nor dissolve each other”.32 Perhaps, this differentiates the landscape architecture as art from other types of arts, where utilitarian determinants do not have so much expressed, underlying-mandatory character. Even in cases when functional peculiarity of architectural-landscape composition is in carrying of artisticsymbolic or ceremonial-ideological load (for instance, Japanese tea garden), the point of departure for formation of such phenomena in landscape architecture is the utilitarian practice, which subsequently looses its field of force, thus reducing to a minimum, but never ceases at all. Reasoning about the beauty and usefulness in architecture, Borisovskiy accentuates the necessity of genesis of the “second, spiritual realm”: “Important is that utilitarian usefulness would turn into spiritual. This is what makes architecture the art”.33 This process is deeply dialectical. Most of architectural-landscape compositions, before attaining relative status of a piece of art, prior to turning into evaluative-cognitive objects, have undergone various metamorphoses in their historical development. Initially created without intentional orientation to artistic-imaginative content, which, however, have enough potential and, in general, which represent genuinely planned utilitarian-aesthetic objects, – the compositions of landscape architecture with the span of time were capable of multiplying spiritual-axiological potential, thus compensating fragmentarity of imaginative notions. What specific features of architectural-landscape art allow us contending that? Firstly, this is the depth of artistic beginning with its imaginative lexicon; the memorial-documentary elements being both environmental and corporealpersonified. Secondly, here we would need a real feeling of unique and inimitable stylistics of landscaping maestro; an imprint of synthetic amalgamation of art; a viewable incarnation of the entire complex of characteristics in museum existence. For us to define an integral, artistic-ideal status of landscape architecture, it is necessary once again to bring in some logical clarity to the dialectics of its functional-aesthetic level. If at utilitarian-applicative stage of its development the aesthetics of nature-paradise was generally defined by economical regular patterns, and at the fragmentary-imaginative level – mainly by certain religious and philosophical landmarks, then at the artistic-notional level the landscape gains universally integral image of creation. The most spectacular example to that is Japanese philosophical landscape.

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As distinguished from other cultures, where a human being sometimes occupied an ambivalent or even antagonistic position in relation to the nature, Japanese tradition for centuries preserved deep commitment to harmony with nature,34 – wrote Japanese researcher of garden art Michio Fujioka. Based on subjectivistic Dzen-Buddhism philosophy (dzen – contemplation), which denies logical thinking and maintains intuitive comprehension of concealed essence of things, Japanese artistic landscapes were created as deep philosophical-symbolical structures. The ideal of major types of such landscapes – arid landscape, flat garden or tea garden – was “the formula of existence”, distillation, the essence of nature as Universe, “cosmic body of Buddha”. This is the Japanese symbolic garden where less important are utilitarian “sources” of such art. They are strictly subordinated to semiotics, the philosophy of nature. The aesthetic value of plants, stones, water etc. is in similar dependence too; it is accessory if compared with what these elements of the garden symbolize. The artistic image in consciousness of recipient emerges through signs and symbols. The principle of self-sufficing consilience as synthesis of artistic-axiological, normative-cognitive and “residually” utilitarian functions is the most apparent feature of traditionally Japanese genre of landscape architecture such as tea garden. Here, the utilitarian becomes the subject of artistic reworking. The cult of tea (tya-do) originated in China, was subsequently rethought and creatively transformed in collective consciousness of Japanese nation. There was the emergence of two constituents of the organic whole: a special building – tea house (tya-sitsu) and tea garden (tya-niva). The tea ceremony is referred to as tya-noyu. The ideological foundation of the ceremony is in Buddhistmonasterial tea-drinking rituals. The very procedure is based on aesthetic principle of “beauty-usefulness”. “The beauty and true essence of any object can be discovered and comprehended only through utilitarian implication of such object in the very process of its utilization”,35 – wrote Nikolayeva. The brightest correlation of useful and beautiful is manifested in the tea garden (tya-niva), which became a nodule of artistic-symbolic and ritual-aesthetic principles. The artistic self-sufficing of this complicated and unique phenomenon in landscape architecture is undisputable; beautiful and utilitarian in it do not contradict each other, on the contrary, they are “squeezed” through the art and, therefore, become the subject for aesthetic cogitation. Two interrelated aesthetic categories – “Vabi” and “Sabi” became the foundation for the genesis of artistic rules in tea gardens. “Vabi” sentimentalizes such qualities as modesty and tenuity, meanwhile having quite significant ethical nuances; “Sabi” accentuates beautiful in forgotten and abandoned, old and inconspicuous. The artistic-imaginative “text” of tea garden was shaping up in accordance with these aesthetic canons. Its practical designation is being

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aestheticized. Inconspicuous “useful” attributes – stone vase for water, lantern, and footpath through the garden – discover their exact artistic implications. This is due to their inelaboratedness, simplicity and even roughness. Each element of the garden has a hint, an emotional symbol. This explains their equivocation: in one case it is apparently utilitarian, in the other case – veiled symbolic. For instance, the lantern served not only as a lighting devise, but symbolized the light of truth that dispels darkness of ignorance. Natural “performance”, inspirited with utilitarian simplicity, used to allow the human being to be “released”, abstracted from vanity of vanities and troubles. Dialectics of this association became a kind of “foothold” for conscious changeover to absolute submergence in the world of aesthetic experiences and pleasures. The tea garden, gradually infusing emotions by way of movement, is drawing attention to genuine thematic views, which, at first glance, are dominated by absolutely utilitarian objects, as though unveiling the next stage of the art of aesthetic pleasure inside the tea house (tya-sitsu). Therefore, Japanese tea garden embodying a unique link between the beauty and the usefulness, which turns a utilitarian function into the object of aesthetic pleasure, may be assessed as artistic-imaginative, self-sufficing objectivity attributive to a masterpiece of art. Both Chinese and Japanese garden arts have been tendentiously aimed at these objectives. High artistic semiotics and imaginative pictorialism, produced by creative thinking and energy of landscape artists, are assessed as prevailing. In summary, the dynamics towards the beginnings of masterpiece of art in landscape architecture has always found its shape in the framework of “beautyusefulness” system. In this context we observe significant preponderance of the beauty, which subordinates the functionality of useful. Accordingly, relative dissociation of artistic beginning in landscape-architectural art, appropriation of the essence of a piece of art dedicated for making aesthetic impact on the consciousness of people, is evident. In the process of this interaction the architectural landscape is “breaking away” from underlying empiricism and creates with its recipient a “delusive duplication” of life and its imaginative models. This means that at a certain stage of development architectural landscape turns into a piece of art. The State University of Land Use Planning and Control, Moscow

NOTES 1 2

H.Home, Elements of Criticism. – M., 1977. – p. 514. Zhirnov A.D. Garden Art – Lvov, 1977. – p. 14.

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Jelleicoe G., Jelleicoe S. The landscape of man (Shaping the environment from prehistory to the present day). – London, 1975. – p. 139. 4 See: Turner T. English garden design: history, styles since 1650 5 Ibid. – p. 9. 6 See: Doubyago T.B. Russian Regular parks and gardens. – L., 1963. – p. 19. 7 See: New Jerusalem: Historical Description. – M., 1903. – p. 4–6. 8 Jelleicoe G., Jelleicoe S. Op. cit. – p. 139. 9 On Monasterial Gardens. See: Hazlenhurst F. Jacques Boyceau and the French formal garden. – Athens, 1966. 10 See: Jelleicoe G., Jelleicoe S. Op. cit. – p. 139. 11 Cited: Holwitzer H., Wirsing W. Roof Gardens / Translation from German – M., 1972. – p. 6. 12 See: Grub G. Greenery between houses. “Task Green”. Ideas, Concepts, Examples of introduction of natural elements to the sphere of production: Catalogue of Exhibition in Moscow. – 1990, July. 13 See: 38th IFLA World Congress Singapore 2001 Conference proceedings, 26–29 June 2001 Sicec, Suntec city, Singapore. 14 See: Novikova L.I. Principle of Purposefulness in Kantian Aesthetics//Bulletin of Moscow State University. Philosophy – 1974. – No. 4. – p. 20. 15 Kant, Works – M., 1966. – Vol. 5. – p. 233. 16 Simonds J. Landscape and Architecture. – M., 1965. – p. 214. 17 Sm.: Lehrman J. Earthly Paradise (Garden and courtyard in Islam). – London, 1980; The gardens of Ifughul India. A history and a guide. – Delhi, Bombay, London, 1973; Shalamar. Karachi. – Pakistan, 1984; Stuart Y.C.M, Gardens of the great Mughuls. – New Delhi, 1987. 18 Jelleicoe G., Jelleicoe S. Op.cit. – p. 23. 19 M.: The gardens of Mughul India . . . – pp. 16–17. 20 Ibid. – p. 17. 21 Ibid. – p. 16. 22 Ibid.– p. 21. 23 Ibid. – p. 20. 24 Ibid. 25 See: Jelleicoe G., Jelleicoe S. Op.cit. – p. 117. 26 See: Turner T. Op.cit. – p. 10. 27 S.M. Eisenstein. Disney//Problems of Synthesis in Artistic Culture. – M., 1985. – p. 214. 28 Kant, Works – M., 1966. – Vol. 5. – p. 240. 29 Ibid. – p. 240. 30 See: A.V. Ikonnikov. Research on the problems of forming aesthetic values in industrial products//Research on the problems of forming aesthetic values and aesthetic evaluation/Tr. VNITE. Mechanics. Aesthetics. – M., 1983. – p. 6. 31 See: Kagan M.S. Morphology of Arts – M., 1972. – p. 318. 32 C. Cantor. Beauty and Usefulness. Sociological aspects of material-artistic culture. – M., 1967. – p. 18. 33 Borisovskiy G.B. Beauty and Usefulness in Architecture. – M., 1975. – p. 41. 34 Fujioka M. Japanese residences and gardens. A tradition of integration. – Tokyo, N.Y., San Francisco, 1982. – p. 47. 35 Nikolaeva N.S. Japanese Gardens. – M., 1975. – p. 174.

BENEDETTA GIOVANOLA

HUMAN FLOURISHING BEYOND ECONOMIC WELL-BEING: THE CONTRIBUTION O F P H E N O M E N O L O G Y T O W A R D S A “R I C H E R” IDEA OF PERSONHOOD

ABSTRACT

The paper aims at showing the necessity of a sound anthropological and ethical foundation of economics. In this framework it is also discussed whether Phenomenology can contribute to a renewed interpretation of economic and ethical issues and, in particular, of the relationship between ethics and economics. More specifically, the phenomenological approach is taken into account with regard to its contribution to the development of a complex and dynamic idea of personhood, which relies on the notion of human flourishing and underlies the relationship between ethics and economics.

INTRODUCTION: ETHICS, ECONOMICS, AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

Well-being is usually considered as a primarily economic notion, hence the expression “economic well-being” to qualify it. However the notion of wellbeing has been widely investigated by philosophers too; moreover, at a closer glance, we can notice that policy making, economic evaluation, sociological analysis and philosophical inquiry have dealt and cannot do anything but dealing with this concept. More specifically, in the framework of economic analysis, well-being is often related with (or equivalent to) happiness, whose fundamental role in mainstream economics is to be ascribed to the influence of Utilitarianism as a theoretical underpinning of neoclassical economics. Moreover well-being is basically understood as an economic well-being, namely a merely quantitative one, resting on the propriety over (and consumption of) goods and services. From a philosophical perspective however, other (and more fundamental) elements of well-being arise: on the one side well-being can still be linked to 339 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 339–351. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_21, 

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happiness, but – as we shall see below – the latter needs to be understood not in utilitarian terms, but rather in Aristotelian ones, namely as human flourishing; on the other side, and consequently, well-being is nor only, neither primarily, to be understood in economic or quantitative terms, but rather as a qualitative well-being, strictly connected with an anthropologically richer idea of personhood. This is why an ethical-anthropological inquiry into the notion of personhood is required, in order to gain a sound understanding of well-being and also to go beyond any form of reductionism or mere subjectivism. Moreover, with regard to economics, a deep reflection on its underlying vision of the human being is needed, since economics itself relies on a specific anthropological ideal, namely homo oeconomicus, whose shortcomings have been widely shown especially in recent years. However, even if a correct understanding of human values and human nature is crucial for economics, the latter still lacks an adequate anthropological investigation. The above mentioned issues, as well as the core of this paper, could be summarised by the expression “Economics, Ethics, and the Human Condition”. In fact the major questions underlying the argumentation are the following ones: which is the relevance of a philosophical-anthropological inquiry for economics? Is economics able to improve the human condition? Is it oriented to human fulfilment and to the development of human virtues? Are its descriptions and prescriptions about economic agents’ behaviour consistent with the way in which people do behave and ought to behave as human beings? Or is there a conflict between acting as an economic agent and acting as a human being? Keeping these questions in mind, this paper aims at presenting an approach able to provide a sound anthropological and ethical foundation of economics, also by discussing the contribution that can be offered by phenomenology. This aim can also be considered in the broader framework of the analysis of the relationship between philosophy and natural sciences, an analysis that has been carried out by phenomenology too (remind Brentano’s and Husserl’s inquiries on this issue): in fact economics aims at being, and even claims to be, as exact as natural sciences (this aim and this claim are at the basis of “positive economics”). Furthermore the focus on the human condition might recall some of the most recent developments of phenomenological inquiry: let us think, for example, at A.-T. Tymieniecka’s phenomenological inquiry, which is focused on the keyidea of “human condition”, even if it is mostly understood in cosmological terms. According to her vision, in fact, the human being <> but, thanks to his creative function –

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which leads to the Imaginatio creatrix – he is also <>,1 for he has <>.2 Now, with regard to the human condition, it is also necessary to highlight its ethical significance and thus to develop an ethical-anthropological inquiry into the notion of personhood. With regard to this central issue, this paper does not take phenomenology as a starting point or a theoretical framework, but tries to find out whether phenomenology can contribute to such an ongoing debate.

WELL-BEING IN ECONOMICS AND BEYOND: HAPPINESS THEORIES AND CAPABILITY APPROACH

One of the major disputes involving both philosophers and economists concerns the interpretation of notions like welfare and well-being, with further implications regarding the concept of happiness as well. In fact, economists seem to understand happiness mainly as subjective well-being, that is, as a subjective evaluation of each person’s life taken as a whole, and often related to other notions like pleasure or desire fulfilment, or, more broadly, utility. Such an equivalence between subjective well-being and happiness is not only typical of the early Utilitarianism but is also at stake in the recent discussion on the so called “paradoxes of Happiness”, which is playing an important role in the contemporary economic debate. The “paradoxes of happiness”, which are also known as “Easterlin paradox”, being Easterlin the first scholar who systematically studied this subject,3 designate the phenomenon according to which beyond a certain threshold there is an inversion of the positive correlation between income and personal perception of happiness (or well-being). The debate on these paradoxes is ultimately aimed at <>4 and has generated the so called “Happiness Theories” – also known as “Life-Satisfaction Approach” or “Subjective Well-Being Approach” (SWB) – which understand well-being and happiness in terms of utility, even if they try to “broaden” the range of elements that can influence utility, in comparison to the classical edonistic approach developed by Jeremy Bentham and his followers.5 However SWB scholars mostly do not make a distinction between happiness, life-satisfaction and subjective well-being, and use these terms mutually6 : in fact they do not aim at defining happiness, but rather at measuring it, on the basis of surveys on subjective perception of life-satisfaction. As a result of these surveys, not only economic elements but also psychological and cognitive features turn out to be important in people’s perception about their own well-being. However such a “broadening” of happiness ultimately relies

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on a merely subjective evaluation and does not require any objective evaluation (namely an evaluation external to the subject). Despite their limits however, these approaches try to foster a broadening of economic rationality, by taking into account extra-economic elements too. Such a broadening of economic rationality is also at stake in the so called capability approach (CA), which has been mostly developed by the Indian economist Amartya Sen and the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum.7 The CA focuses on the notion of capability, namely <<what people are able to do and to be>> according to the idea of human dignity.8 Especially in Sen’s thought, the CA is a general theoretical framework to assess individual wellbeing and social welfare, and to elaborate sound social policies. SWB and CA are nowadays the most prominent approaches for the evaluation of human well-being, but there are some major differences among them. On the one side SWB mostly explores positive psychological features related to well-being and put emphasis on the quantification of causes and processes underlying human happiness; on the other side the CA argues for the enlargement of the informational space in normative assessments of well-being and puts emphasis on autonomy and human agency as crucial dimensions.9 Furthermore the CA is very critical towards the notion of happiness as a general standard for evaluating well-being, and considers it as a too subjectivistic notion. In particular Sen’s critique of happiness is strictly connected with that of utilitarianism, which ultimately rests on utility only, taking it as the unique informational basis for every evaluative approach (although different forms of utilitarianism have defined it in different ways). Consequently, even if utilitarianism has the merit of taking into account both the results of social arrangements and the well-being of the people involved, it suffers from the fact that, when judging social arrangements and their results, it reduces well-being itself to a particular and limited concept of happiness and utility.

THE BIASES OF ECONOMIC RATIONALITY

The issue of well-being is strictly connected with the notion of rationality; in economics in fact rationality prescribes the way in which agents should act in order to realize an optimal level of well-being. According to mainstream economic theory, economic rationality consists in maximizing one’s utility function (which is expressed in terms of individual preferences hierarchically ranked) under a resource constraint. More specifically economic rationality is mainly based on the rational choice model and concerns the relationship between preferences and choices: a choice is rational

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if it is determined by a rational set of preferences, and the set of preferences is defined within the contexts of utility theory. This means that an individual is rational if, and only if, his or her preferences can be represented by ordinal utility functions, and his or her choices maximize utility. Therefore economic rationality entails two fundamental elements: having an ordered set of preferences, and maximizing them. The former means to have consistent preferences and to be able to rank them hierarchically; the latter means to perform an optimal preference-satisfaction depending on external constraints. It is thus clear that economic theory does not offer any specific prescription regarding the nature, the content, or the value of preferences, whose rationality is assured by two purely formal conditions: completeness, according to which it is possible to express a preference or a rational indifference among all the possible alternatives; transitivity, according to which, if option A is preferred to B and option B is preferred to C, then option A is preferred to C too: this means that preferences for A, B, and C are not on the same level, but are hierarchically ranked. These formal conditions have also been defined in terms of “internal consistency of choice”, which is at the basis of the so-called “weak” form of rationality.10 Such an understanding of rationality however does entail some serious flaws.11 In particular, the possibility to rank all the preferences in a hierarchic and transitive way presupposes an informational completeness: in other words it requires that, every time an individual makes a choice, he or she has a perfect knowledge of all possible alternatives, and that he or she has the capability to represent and to rank all possible alternatives, in order to make a rational choice, that is a choice that maximizes utility. The requirement of perfect knowledge, together with that of self-interest maximization, defines the so-called “strong” form of rationality,12 which leads to very serious shortcomings. Its fundamental assumptions in fact are particularly problematic, especially if we analyze choice behaviour in conditions of risk or uncertainty, since our rationality, far from being unlimited, is a bounded rationality, as Herbert Simon has shown in an excellent way.13 Furthermore, research on cognitive biases in experimental economics and experimental game theory has shown that human behaviour frequently deviates from rational choice theory.14 Moreover, although the prerequisites of rationality are formal and no assumption about the content of preferences is made, economics cannot be “value-neutral”, as it claims. In fact, even if nothing is stated about the content of preferences, the principle of “minimal benevolence” – according to which, other conditions being equal, it is morally good that people enhance

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their own well-being and satisfy their own preferences – rests upon a view of economic agents as utility maximizers and self-interested individuals.16 Such a view leads to the so called Homo Oeconomicus model, a great part of contemporary economic theory refers to. Just to recall his fundamental components, we can say that homo oeconomicus is an exclusively self-interested individual, seeking to maximize self-interest and perfectly conscious of the consequences of his choices. The last but not the least, by stating that economic choices are aimed at utility maximization, neoclassical economic theory assumes utility as a fundamental value. Assuming utility as a value however means to endorse a consequentialistic structure and to introduce an evaluative and normative dimension, by identifying the principle on whose grounds economic processes can be described and evaluated. Therefore, far form being value-neutral, economic theory adopts a specific ethical theory, Utilitarianism, that was born indeed as an ethical theory, before it became the theoretical framework of neoclassical economics.17 To sum up, the standard notion of economic rationality is based on the idea of a calculus, whose object is the identification and representation of all the relevant consequences of one’s actions, and the choice of the preferred alternative, depending on external constraints. This view of rationality as a calculus is strictly connected to a view of rationality as maximization, that is welfare improvement: in fact, as we have seen, according to mainstream economics, preference maximization means welfare enhancement.18 However, as it has been argued, economic rationality and, in general, economic theory cannot be completely neutral to ethics. From these considerations it follows that the notion of economic rationality needs to be re-defined, in order to overcome some flaws and biases of rational choice theory and neoclassical economics.

ECONOMIC BEHAVIOUR, HUMAN EXPERIENCE AND PREFERENCES: THE CONTRIBUTION OF PHENOMENOLOGY

Many attempts to overcome such limits go in the direction of experimental economics and cognitive economics, which highlight the psychological complexity of human choices, often with a contribution from neurosciences (hence the so called branch of neuroeconomics). Much of such scientific inquiry stems from Herbert Simon’s theory of bounded rationality and from the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman,19 who argued for the necessity

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to abandon the so called “folk psychology” – on which the standard notion of economic rationality relies – and to pay attention to the framing of decisions. Analyzing the context (the frame indeed) of a decision, means to analyze the cognitive processes at the base of a decision, and to focus on the elaboration of a “mental model” that is able to represent all the possible alternatives in the decision itself (namely, to elaborate an appropriate mental representation). Following these premises, Kahneman criticizes the monistic conception of rationality at the base of mainstream economics, and highlights the role of the so called affect heuristic, that is a set of inferential procedures that are lead by emotional and intuitive variables, and are fundamental in many economic decisions.20 Furthermore Kahneman criticizes most of the contemporary happiness theories because they are exclusively based on the “remembering self ”, namely the “remembered happiness”, since they focus on questions such as: “How satisfied are you with your life as a whole?” o “How happy do you think you are in these days?” But subjective happiness, that is “remembered happiness”, according to Kahneman, is not always perfectly correspondent with objective happiness, that is “experienced” happiness. In other words experienced well-being, i.e. objective happiness, cannot be precisely deduced from subjective well-being and thus needs to be measured with adequate methodological instruments.21 To sum up, experience plays a fundamental role in Kahneman’s theory. Furthermore, according to Kahneman, experience is always to be considered together with the framing of decisions, namely the subject’s cognitive processes at the base of his/her decision. The underlying presupposition is that experience is lead by an intentionality component which leads the choices and the behaviour of a subject. These elements might recall some of phenomenology’s basic assumption. In fact phenomenology can be broadly defined as is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object.22 Furthermore, as we have seen, according to Kahneman experience (as well as its “reconstruction” through the DRM) is the element that can mostly foster an objective account of well-being (remind the importance of “experienced” well-being over “remembered” well-being). In this framework however, objective means measurable, and the assessment of one’s own well-being ultimately rests on the subject: therefore also objective well-being or happiness is somehow subjective. This might be called a first-person perspective too. Kahneman’s focus on the cognitive framing of decisions, thanks to which all the possible alternatives of the decision are represented, recalls

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phenomenology’s overcoming of merely natural experience through the subject’s opening towards the horizon of the whole of meaning, <>.23 Therefore experience is both fundamental and “relative”: in fact it is open to a transcendental process, through which it turns out to be relative to the “whole” of other possible experiences, as “framed” by the subject’s cognitive faculties. With regard to experience, it is very important to point out that is a very central issue not only in Kahneman’s thought but also in mainstream economics. First, it is evident from economics’ focus on choice behavior and individual preferences. In fact, according to mainstream economics, agents’ preferences are revealed by their choice behavior: this means that individuals’ behavior can be seen as rational if and only if it shows consistency of choice and is aimed at utility maximization. However such a view of rationality as internal consistency of choice and utility maximization leads to a view of human beings as “rational fools”.24 Second, according to Samuelson’s well-known theory of revealed preferences,25 if an agent A chooses X, being Y available too, he “reveals” a preference for X rather than for Y. The underlying presupposition is that individuals always choose what they prefer, and thus the analysis of their choice behavior can allow to infer their preferences. The philosophical underpinning of this theory is the hypothesis of “preferences manifestation” and an understanding of rationality as connected with the relationship between preferences and choices.26 Experience and behavior however, even if they are an important source of information about one’s preferences, are not the only ones. Furthermore, as recent research on “adaptive preferences” has shown, deprivation and adaptation can make human behaviour deviate from rational choice theory’s assumptions and people’s actual choice do not always reveal their true preferences.27 To use Amartya Sen’s words, people do not always have the real freedom to choose. The centrality of experience is thus very questionable. It is interesting to notice that such a centrality has also been criticized with regard to phenomenology, and such a critique entails further implications with regard to the role of remembering and, more broadly, cognition (which has been addressed by Kahneman, as we have seen). In particular John Searle has argued that <
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self referentiality <>.28 The problem of phenomenology thus seems similar to that of economics: the causal conditions of a choice, as well as the causal conditions of intentionality, are not always present to consciousness, and require some enabling conditions that go beyond consciousness itself. First, the problem of adaptation and mental conditioning can always persist, as we have seen before.29 Second, not all human actions are intentional. As researches on affect heuristic and in the field of neuroeconomics have shown, many emotional or, broadly speaking, non-intentional elements can highly influence people’s choices, behavior and preferences.30

CONCLUSION: PHENOMENOLOGY, HUMAN FLOURISHING AND CAPABILITIES

The previous considerations show that phenomenological investigation can be a very fruitful starting point also for the inquiry into the relationship between ethics and economics: in fact it is very helpful with regard to the examination of consciousness, intentionality and subjective experience. However the previous considerations also show that phenomenological investigation is not enough and requires both the investigation of logical structures at the basis of experience and intentionality (namely their “conditions of satisfaction”) and an inquiry into their enabling conditions, namely into the capabilities that can foster or limit experience and intentionality. In other words, even if phenomenology is very important and helpful, there is a need to overcome a kind of “Phenomenological Illusion”, according to which what is not phenomenologically present is assumed as not real, and that what is phenomenologically present is assumed as an adequate description of how things really are. Moreover phenomenology ultimately focuses on the subject and takes it as a starting point for any further inquiry. Such an emphasis on a first-person perspective could lead to a sort of reductionism, either in the form of solipsism or in the form of subjectivism. Even if the first risk (solipsism) can avoided through the subject’s opening towards the life-world, the second risk (subjectivism) still persists. In fact a fundamental question arises: can the subject be an ultimate point of reference? Is the subject only subjectively defined? Or is the subject something that transcends his/her mere subjectivity and thus requires a different kind of foundation? Is the subject himself not always

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“inter-subjective”, namely relational, too? These questions point to some limitations of phenomenology, namely to its incapacity to fully address the problem of the constitution of the self, that is, the formation and basic features of identity. In other words, if the subject is taken as a starting point, as somehow a priori, no inquiry into his “enabling conditions” is needed: as a result that no inquiry into the subject’s constitution is needed either. To sum up, with regard to the main issue of this paper, the major merits of phenomenology can be found in its attempt to give importance to the subject’s experience as a whole, which ultimately can lead to an understanding of economics as a life-dimension, and thus neither as an exclusive dimension, nor as the most important one. Very important is also phenomenology’s inquiry into the structures of consciousness and intentionality, which is very fruitful in order to better understand and to “broaden” the notion of rationality in economics. At the same time however, such an emphasis on experience and intentionality can also turn out to be a limitation. The reason lies in taking the subject as a starting point, that does not need any further foundation. On the contrary such an inquiry seems to be necessary, even in order to explain the reason why economics is not the only life-dimension that counts, and why human beings need much more than the increase of economic well-being in order to flourish. However, in order to pursue these inquiries, an investigation beyond phenomena and beyond the subject is needed. Here we face the need to investigate the fundamental human capabilities at the base of our experience, cognition and constitution. Only an inquiry into these capabilities, which do have an objective and universal value, can foster the overcoming of an utilitarian account of well-being and happiness, and point out the importance of human flourishing, where different life dimensions are all fundamental for one’s fulfillment.30 Such an inquiry however needs to be grounded in an anthropological reflection: only an investigation into the fundamental features and the constitution of identity can provide the ethical-anthropological foundation of a different model of human being in economics, by enabling a shift from the notion of the egoistic (economic) individual, to the concept of personhood. Such an investigation also means to understand the concept of human being as a normative concept, and to focus on the notion of “common humanity”31 ; such a focus on “common humanity” requires the overcoming of any kind of subjectivism and, conversely, an investigation into the “universal” features of humanity, which are common to each and every human being. At this point a central notion enters the scene: the notion of anthropological richness, that dates back to Marx and provides us with a broader conception

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of personhood and a more fruitful perspective from which to examine the relationship between ethics and economics too.32 In fact the notion of human richness allows an inquiry into the subject’s constitution and basic features, without degrading into mere subjectivism. In particular such a notion is able to express the following dimensions of identity: the intrinsic plurality of capabilities and life dimensions, that we could define as the intrapersonal relationality of the self; the interpersonal relationality, namely, the socio-relational dimension of the self, according to which human beings are intrinsically “relational”, so that each one “needs” to be in relation with the others; the dynamical dimension of the self, according to which identity is a dynamic notion, for human flourishing is an ongoing and never definitively defined process.33 This is why the notion of human richness, I would argue, can serve as an ultimate foundation for the concept of personhood and can be fruitful for a re-consideration of economics as well. Department of Philosophy and Human Sciences, University of Macerata, Italy

NOTES 1

A.-T. Tymieniecka, “Tractatus brevis. First principles of the Metaphysics of Life charting the Human condition: man’s creative act and the origin of rationalities”, Analecta Husserliana, XXI (1986), pp. 10–11. 2 Id., “Logos and Life. Creative experience and the critique of reason”, Analecta Husserliana, book 1, XXIV (1988), pp. 25–26. 3 R. Easterlin, Does Economic Growth Improve the Human a Lot? in Nations and Households in Economic Growth, P.A David-M.W. Reder, (eds.) Academic Press, New York 1974. 4 R. Easterlin, Building a Better Theory of Well-Being, in L. Bruni and P.L. Porta (eds.), Economics and Happiness. Framing the Analysis, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, pp. 29–64. 5 Among the most important SWB studies see also B. Frey and A. Stutzer, Happiness and Economics: How the Economy and Institutions Affect Human Well-Being, Princeton University Press, Princeton 2002; E. Diener, D. Kahneman, N. Schwarz, Well-Being: the Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, Russel Sage, New York 1999. For an overview on these issues see Bruni-Porta, Economics and Happiness. 6 Easterlin, Building a Better Theory. 7 For a general introduction on the CA see I. Robeyns, “The Capability Approach: a Theoretical Survey”, Journal of Human Development, vol. 6, n. 1, 2005, pp. 93–114; D.A. Crocker, “Functioning and Capability. The Foundations of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s Development Ethics”, Part 1, Political Theory, 20, 1992, pp. 584–612 and Id., Functioning and Capability: The Foundations of Sen’s and Nussbaum’s Development Ethic, Part 2, in M. Nussbaum and J. Glover (eds.), Women, Culture, and Development, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1995, pp. 153–198.

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8 The idea of human dignity is central in M. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development. The Capabilities approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000. 9 For a discussion on differences and similarities between SBW and CA see F. Comim, Capabilities and Happiness: Potential Synergies, in Review of Social Economy, vol. 63, n. 2, 2005, pp. 161–176. 10 A. Sen (1977), Rational Fools, in A. Sen, Choice, Welfare and Measurement, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1982, pp. 147–178. 11 A more detailed criticism of the standard notion of economic rationality has been developed by B. Giovanola, Razionalità etica, razionalità economica e ricchezza antropologica, in F. Totaro and B. Giovanola (eds.), Etica ed economia: il rapporto possibile, Messaggero, Padova, 2008, pp. 165–201, where the interconnection between economic rationality and ethical rationality is also show. 12 Sen, Rational fools. 13 H.A. Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., vol. 1, 2 (1982), vol. 3 (1997); Id., “Bounded Rationality in Social Sciences: Today and Tomorrow”, Mind & Society, vol. 1, 1/2000, pp. 25–41. 14 Also deprivation and adaptation can make human behaviour deviate from rational choice theory’s assumptions. Such issues however, even if they are very important, cannot be addressed in this paper. 15 D.M. Hausman and M.S. McPherson, Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge – New York 2006 (2nd edition of Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy), pp. 64–65. 16 On the connection between neoclassic economic theory and utilitarianism, Amartya Sen’s works are an obliged point of reference (see, among the others, A. Sen, Rational Fools; Id., On ethics and economics, Blackwell, Oxford 1987; Id., Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1999; A. Sen and B. Williams (eds.), Utilitarianism and Beyond, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1982). In fact Sen aims at overcoming the neoclassical model of rationality and its vision of the human being and, to this purpose, he sharply criticizes utilitarianism, the limits of which would depend on the combination of three basic principles: consequentialism, according to which all choices must be judged by their consequences, that is, by the results they generate (consequent state of affairs); welfarism, according to which the judgement of state if affairs is restricted to the utilities in the respective states; sum-ranking (expressed by the notion of “aggregate utility”), according to which utilities of different people are simply summed together in order to get their aggregate merit, with no attention to the distribution of that total over the individuals. 17 M. Egidi, Dalla razionalità limitata all’economia comportamentale, in R. Viale (ed.) Le nuove economie, il Sole24Ore, Milan 2005, pp. 173–202, here p. 179. Actually mainstream economics is not only concerned with the issue of individual well-being, but also with the definition and measurement of social welfare, which is defined by the principle of Pareto-optimality. The latter however identifies optimality with efficiency (a Pareto-optimal state of affairs defines an efficient allocation of resources) and generates serious problems, the major being the impossibility to tackle equity reasons and to solve the trade off between efficiency and equity. 18 D. Kahneman and A. Tversky, Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk, <<Econometrica>>, vol. 47, n. 2/1979, pp. 263–291; D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, and A. Tversky (eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge University Press, New York 1982; D. Kahneman-A. Tversky (eds.), Choices, Values and Frames, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000.

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19 D. Kahneman, “Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioural Economics”, The American Economic Review, vol. 93, 5/2003, pp. 1449–1475. See also P. Slovic et al. The Affect Heuristic, in T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, D. Kahneman (eds.), Heuristic and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Thought, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge – New York 2002. 20 Kahneman’s methodology is the so called “Day reconstruction method” (DRM) 21 Item “Phenomenology” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 22 F. Totaro, “The Human Telos Beyond The Instrumental Closure. The Contribution Of Phenomenology And Existentialism”, Analecta Husserliana, vol. CIV, pp. 443–449. 23 A. Sen, Rational Fools. 24 P. Samuelson, Foundations of Economic Analysis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass 1947. 25 A. Sen, Comportamento e concetto di preferenza (1973), in Choice, Welfare and Measurement, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 105–131. 26 J. Elster, Ulysses and the Syrenes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1979; A. Sen, Development as Freedom. 27 J. R. Searle, The Phenomenological Illusion, in M. E. Reicher and J. C. Marek (eds.) Experience and Analysis. Erfahrung und Analyse. Proceedings of the 27th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg, Austria, August 8–14, 2004 (Vienna, 2005), pp. 317–336; see also Id., The Limits of Phenomenology, in Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honour of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Vol. 2, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 2000, pp. 71–92. 28 On this issue see also Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, Chapter 2. 29 Experimental economics and cognitive economics, by further developing the major assumptions and results of Kahneman’s theory, point out a “cognitive duplicity” of Mind. In fact they distinguish an intuitive mind and a rational mind at stake in cognitive processes at the basis of economics: the rational (and intentional) mind would be like the top of an iceberg, and the intuitive mind the major (and fundamental) part of it. 30 Here the theoretical points of reference are Aristotle and the CA as the most influential attempt to endorse an Aristotelian approach in order to address contemporary economic matters. In fact the CA can be defined as an Aristotelian-informed approach, that addresses the relationship between ethics and economics, and recognises the fundamental role of an anthropological underpinning. For a further development of these issues see B. Giovanola, “Sulla capacità di essere felici: riflessioni su ricchezza, benessere e libertà a partire dal capability approach”, Meridiana, 56, pp. 83–104.; Id., “Re-Thinking the Anthropological and Ethical Foundation of Economics and Business: Human Richness and Capabilities Enhancement”, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 88, n. 3, pp. 431–444, DOI 10.1007 / s10551-009-0126-9. 31 M. Nussbaum, Non-Relative Virtues: an Aristotelian Approach, in M. Nussbaum and A. Sen (eds.), The Quality of Life, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1993, pp. 242–269. 32 B. Giovanola, “Personhood and Human Richness. Good and Well-Being in the Capability Approach and Beyond”, Review of Social Economy, vol. 63, n. 2/2005, pp. 249–267. K. Marx introduces this notion in his Oekonomisch-philosophische Manüskripte aus dem Jahre 1844. 33 Giovanola, “Personhood and Human Richness”.

SECTION VI

ANE FAUGSTAD AARØ

PHENOMENOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON PHILOSOPHICAL DIDACTICS Enhancing a Historical Understanding Through Explication of Subjectivity, Life-World and Historicity.

ABSTRACT

I would like to explore the field of phenomenology with the aim to find resources within phenomenology to help understanding the learning processes better, and, if possible, make use of phenomenological methods in teaching philosophy to students in A-levels and freshman levels at universities. My paper is particularly aimed at the learning processes in philosophy in general, not necessarily in phenomenology. However, a certain pedagogical strengthening of the early introductions to phenomenology would probably facilitate the interest in phenomenological training, and widen its scope for practical applications in schools. As a basis for discussion I take a closer look at the historical understanding, as phenomenology views it. The theoretical framework of subjectivity in phenomenology, and the goals of pedagogical theories of learning are in some basic way compatible, where they seek to enhance the individuals understanding and meaning for its self, and this may be an opportunity to establish a primarily practical application of phenomenology in teaching. The obvious similarity, despite theoretical differences, between phenomenology, hermeneutic theory and pedagogical strategies, could be further developed into fruitful theories that could have a wider scope within the field of philosophical didactics. Using phenomenological approaches for pedagogical purposes is by far a novel idea in European universities. Its application in concrete teaching situations is, however, rather rare. With an explicitly pedagogical purpose, I would like to make use of the central concepts of historicity and life-world in exploring the situatedness of the self in contexts concerning relatedness to the Other of, for instance, history. In teacher – student settings such a framework can focus the effort on bringing to awareness the historical element

355 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 355–364. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_22, 

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in our self, as in our understanding, as well as serving as basis for exploring the historical Other, or transcendent, meaning of others, for instance in interpretations of historical expressions of human activity in distant times. A criterion stated in hermeneutics for such interpretations may be useful, and I will briefly show its relevance in this field. And I would like to discuss how the historicity of subjectivity and the life-world can become an integral part of teaching history, or at least how it may contribute to make the transition from technê, or rhetoric, to a more epistemic or dialectical relationship between student and historical others (or their expressions). With a view to bringing forth the polarity of self and expressions of historical others, the concept of “Einfühlung” can be introduced as a means to enter into dialogue with the historical other and interpret him/her based on own subjectivity and life-worldly experience. Why, then, is a phenomenological pedagogy in teaching of interest? In general, its thoroughness, focus on subjectivity, formations of meaning/knowledge based on historicity, all add up to a credible and in-depth theoretical foundation for understanding learning processes. In addition, phenomenology’s (and hermeneutic’s) aims and pedagogy’s aims seem to coincide where they seek to enhance the individual’s understanding and meaning for its Self. In both phenomenology and hermeneutic theory, and in pedagogical strategies, the goal is that the students will, by their own motivation and intentions, form meaning within the situational complex, internalize knowledge to form part of their own sphere of subjective horizon. In a phenomenological tradition the subject’s meaning formations take place within the structures of lived experience and sedimented, historical layers of meaning (noesis). New, transcendent meaning has to be structured around previous formations and be made coherent with, or in accord with, previous cognitive content. This understanding of the unknown, or the transition from not knowing to understanding and incorporating new, transcendent meaning material, is of great importance within this thematic, since it is a vital point in learning processes. Particularly this specific feature of phenomenology is useful, in my opinion, in trying to understand learning processes. In pedagogy, however, especially American pedagogy, it is often Dewey’s theory and pragmatism that has been used, with its emphasis on problems and problem solving in learning. In pragmatist views what stimulates the student to develop skills to solve new problems is the individual’s interaction with her environment. The student experiences the situation as a whole and makes use of all the skills and all the knowledge that is required to solve the problem. In dialogue we experience a dialectic with others, we get the other’s responses and corrections, and dialogue therefore may represent a very basic

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activity that brings with it the best from several theoretical standpoints in the sense that it will inevitably have elements of conceptual knowledge, problem solving, interaction and experiences of self and situation. Basic phenomenological viewpoints on learning may not be very far from pragmatist theories, i.e. “learning by doing”, interaction with the environment, (i.e. Dewey). In what way does a phenomenological pedagogy differ from these theories? There are several characteristics of this difference in its very fundamental positioning of subjectivity and its relationship with the world, such as Husserl and transcendental genetic account of meaning (noesis – noema correlation), “leib”, and lifeworld; and Merleau-Ponty and bodily reversibility with the world, and speech, intersubjectivity and “flesh”. That is in essence to say that not only the special status of the self is in fact quite unsurpassed with phenomenology, but also its very deep inherence in the world and of the world within the self is of consequence to a phenomenological pedagogy. Even if a pragmatist theory in its practical implications and in results may be basically in agreement with the fundamental principles of phenomenology, there is an entire field of possibilities for deeper learning experiences through an even steadier focus on the dialectic of self and world, of actions, nature, emotional and relational interaction. So, if the practical approaches may not differ substantially from pragmatist techniques that are used in schools, their theoretical bases are indeed different. This suggests that there could be a wider scope of uses of phenomenology in schools, and there could as well be a basis for studying the possible learning results if we, teachers and theorists, take into account the close-knit dialectic of self and world.

HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING AND TEACHING

How can we teach historical traditions in philosophy and at the same time enable the students to make use of philosophical concepts in their own reflective thinking? The major pedagogical challenge in teaching philosophy is to teach in a way that doesn’t merely increase the amount of knowledge, but makes available resources that the students can make use of in their own reflections. To develop a historical consciousness, and see oneself connected to a historical development, as well as learn to see that all people are situated in a historical context are key elements in developing the self. Now, here lies also the motivation and intentions that the individual student may or may not have, and the experience of relevance of the field. The future success of the field may very well rest on how well teachers succeed in waking the student’s awareness of the value of philosophical approaches to man, history and science. This

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might imply that philosophy is taught with close attention to the students own home-world. There is an emphasis in philosophy on the individual thinker’s reflective abilities in regard to solving problems, finding viable perspectives, or arguments that are defendable. That inevitably entails a view of the individual as a rational being. But the entire make up of a person includes aspects such as being engaged in life, uniquely dedicated to tasks with “Einfühlung” and emotions. This dedication is for many people representative of what makes the person an autonomous agent; a person is autonomous when we can claim that she is functioning in the totality of own understanding and perspective. In philosophical education the individual is engaged in a study that will enable her to reflect on her culture in a historical, social context. An instruction merely by means of information about historical epochs and history of philosophy gives the impression that there is a complete objectivity in the ideal of knowledge, which is based on tradition. This makes of the students passive recipients of information. There are some “great” traditions in both theory and method within philosophy as systematic investigations, and the pedagogical task is very difficult without a certain introduction to the most central of these. However, philosophy is in its essence also a praxis where different participants communicate their perspectives and search together for good, viable understandings of world, its people and history. With regard to a mere transfer of knowledge I can, if I may, point to the Norwegian philosopher Hans Skjervheim, who pointed to Plato’s view of dialectics, and reminded the philosophical community of the danger that lies in confusing the distinctions between persuasion through a rhetorical technê and to convince by means of a dialectic that produces genuine knowledge.1 There is a division line between rhetoric and dialectic, as Plato dealt with in Gorgias and the State, where persuasion by means of rhetoric is basically to defeat an opponent by driving arguments at her, whereas convincing, or dialectic, allows the student to contribute actively with her resources, and is what leads to true insight and genuine knowledge (epistême). In other words, it represents a qualitative change. Convincing presupposes participation and springs from an inner motivation. This is a very ambitious ideal to hold in a teaching context. As a guideline for our motivation to teach, it seems to be promising, though. Skjervhein also warned against the instrumentalistic fallacy as a foundational problem in pedagogical philosophy.2 School policies’ focus on goals and achievement are mainly based on teaching as a form of rhetoric where teachers are primarily engaged in what he classifies as persuasion.3 That represents a view of knowledge formation based on a pedagogy that resembles a technique, or technê, by which we form students into meeting

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certain desired standards. This leads to the objectification of students, according to Skjervheim. The students fall victims of a ends – means calculation. Aesthetic perspectives are by and large absent in accounts of learning. There is, now, more than ever, a need to educate also in themes such as existence and situatedness; i.e. to make conscious of the subjectivity’s own situation and personal choices in relation to the historical and cultural context. This is in a way every individual’s project; to search in its social foundations after meaning beyond the momentary, concrete existence. There is every reason to believe that this type of reflections would enable the students to understand their own selves and their sense of belonging to a community with historical implications, and to make present the polarity in their lives between the self and the historical Other. This is also an aesthetic dimension of existence that is particularly flourishing in philosophical reflections, but could also be encouraged in other fields of study, such as history and sociology, as part of a critical reflection side by side with the analytical tools. (In no way can it mean a turn to relativistic practices in the humanistic and social sciences. Merely as a safety valve against instrumentalistic ends – means approaches that it is essential to prevent from gaining foothold in teaching.)

HISTORY, INTERPRETATION AND UNDERSTANDING

Teaching history, interpretation and understanding are closely connected activities. To have the student experience an imaginative, compassionate encounter with historical subjects presupposes a confidence in the text material available. Using a narrative form may inspire to an increased experience of imagination and compassion, where the student enters into a dialogue with the historical expressions of human activities. The historian, or the author, inhabits the text – but we may as well discover expressions of the earlier humans through original text material from the age in question, or in paintings, photos and artefacts. This encounter is characterized by understanding and imagination more than clear-cut knowledge. There is great emphasis on re-thinking history in phenomenology. Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote that we must look further than to the amount of historical facts or ideas in a theory, i.e. what objectivism focuses on; we must rather try to discover the overall intention in people during a revolution, in a narrative or in the philosophers’ writings; there is embedded a unique form of existence that can affect us if we imagine ourselves in their place. Merleau-Ponty says:

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It is a matter, in the case of each civilization, of finding the Idea in the Hegelian sense, that is, not a law of the physico-mathematical type, discoverable by objective thought, but that formula which sums up some unique manner of behaviour towards others, towards Nature, time and death: a certain way of patterning the world which the historian should be capable of seizing upon and making his own. These are the dimensions of history.4

This is not to say there can be a complete correspondence between historical persons and our attempts at imagination, because everyone uses her own repertoire in the process of understanding, and there is a surplus of meaning in the transcendent object of interpretation that is never fully attainable. This is where the distinctively pedagogical problem appears, as far as I can see. Teaching is generally connected with a desire to tell, show or give a compilation of facts, as in a historical presentation or in the history of philosophy. But the pedagogical aspect that especially characterizes teaching, or the didactics of philosophy, is the task of reconstructing the philosophical message with its implications. The purpose of teaching philosophy should be, at least in part, to enable the students to reflect critically on historical and cultural phenomena by themselves. Teaching a certain amount of facts and ideas as characteristics of a historical event or an epoch without entering into dialogue with the history, and imagine the lives, situations and motivations of the people in a concrete time, at a concrete place, will not contribute to making philosophy a part of the students own horizon for understanding, nor will it, therefore be part of their critical reflections. All forms of learning should include elements of this resonance in own horizon for understanding. It is a question of how well the students internalize knowledge, and whether they set out with an interpretive and engaged perspective. This is also a central aim in hermeneutics. In the words of Josef Bleicher: There is, accordingly, a third canon to be followed in every interpretation which I would like to call the canon of the actuality of understanding, and which Rudolf Bultmann has drawn attention to recently. It states that an interpreter’s task is to retrace the creative process, to reconstruct it within himself, to retranslate the extraneous thought of an Other, a part of the past, a remembered event, into the actuality of one’s own life; that is, to adopt and integrate it into one’s intellectual horizon within the framework of one’s own experiences by means of a kind of transformation on the basis of the same kind of synthesis which enabled the recognition and reconstruction of that thought. It follows that the attempt of some historians to rid themselves of their subjectivity is completely nonsensical.5

We see how the focus on subjectivity and the actuality of our own lives reminds us of the importance for students of experiencing in some fundamental way their subjectivity, if it is taken to be transferable to learning. At this point it may seem that the aims of pedagogy is not only coherent with, but synonymous with, the aims of phenomenology and hermeneutics, i.e. that in these different

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perspectives understanding is achieved as an integral part of the student’s own sphere of reflection only by recreating meaning for herself. Paul Ricoeur has been a proponent for a combination of hermeneutical theory and phenomenology, for instance in “Existence et Herméneutique”, 1965, in the understanding of an hermeneutic as a philosophy.6 He states in a later article, “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics”, 1975, that “phenomenology remains the indespensible pre-supposition of hermeneutic theory”.7 Ricoeur focuses on texts, but with a primacy of experience in relation to linguisticality, as we can find in the late Husserl of the Krisis and its universal lebenswelt, the constitutive role of historicity and intersubjectivity as dynamic processes with relation to life-world and subjectivity and, most importantly, the eidetic method as a means to revealing those basic elements of being. However, he has reservations as to implementing an interpretation founded in the ownness of subjectivity, or in the sphere that has traditionally been conceived as the immanence of the cogito.8 His approach inevitably entails pursuiting transcendence, openness and plural meanings. It seeks to lead to an ontology of understanding, as in Heidegger, but not as an Analytic of Dasein. It is rather a question of reversing the question of method: “how do we understand?” into “what is it in Dasein that understands.” It is Ricoeur’s conviction that historicity cannot mean anything like historical knowledge as a method, but must be conceived as a manner of being, and the relation between the interpreter and the object of interpretation therefore becomes an ontological trait. Understanding becomes an aspect of Dasein’s ‘project’ and of its ‘openness to being’. The question of truth is no longer the question of method; it is the question of the manifestation of being for a being whose existence consist in understanding being.9

The ontology of being thus indicated certainly does complicate matters in regard to the problem of the being that is learning and understanding history. The question that is most markably present in this context is whether the being itself is able to transpose experiences of time to possible lifeworlds without coloring the understanding of the historical other with its ownness. Ricoeur objects, therefore, to Bultmann’s emphasis on the actuality of subjectivity. The remedy for this problem is, however, the phenomenological reduction (epoché), which is something that makes thematic the input from our own contributions and can provide distance to the object of interpretation. It should therefore be applied as a general principle to obtain insight into the otherness of that object. The eidetic method, therefore, means in this context that we, by free variation, reach a core that is not fused with experience or own actuality, provided that we perform the reduction needed to obtain an interpretative distance. But, this ontology of understanding is evasive and cannot be fully attainable, which is

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evident also in interpretations of the historical other that is our concern just now. And it is reminiscent of the late Merleau-Ponty in a remarkable way, who in his Le Visible et L’Invisible made efforts to show the fundamental evasive nature of the most basic, constitutive elements and structures of being. Ricoeur’s objections are undoubtedly valid and should be taken into account. Historical interpretations cannot be legitimate when they are fused with content from own, subjective actuality. The concern of this paper is, however, not to reach full-fledged legitimate historical interpretations, holding an objectivity with regard to its object of interpretation, to the extent that we can provide just that. The extended use of the actuality of ownness is rather proposed in order to facilitate the student’s ability to relate to and begin to understand the other of history, be it a philosopher or a more general “Zeitgeist”. The eidetic method may even be too advanced and difficult to achieve at the ages that we are discussing here, and may perhaps be more easily made use of later in life, a limitation that I base on the assumption that the accumulation of experience can lead to a greater ability to vary imaginatively possible experiences and meanings. As regard our consciousness of an historical impact on our subjectivities and our cognitions, the question arises: Can historical-cultural phenomena be bases for a reflection on what mechanisms in our cultural consciousness it might be that influence our present, subjective thinking? In order to interpret the religious and cultural behaviour of early man we need to analyze what cultural behaviour is based on generally in the formation of knowledge and language. The evidently historical nature of our knowledge and understanding was by all probability embedded in the early man’s ability to understand and to know, leading Edmund Husserl, as we know, to categorize the concept of historicity under the transcendental functions for the genesis of meaning formations, and it is used by phenomenologists in analyses of the subjects formation of knowledge, memory, understanding and imagination. All knowledge and language is built on previous generations’ knowledge and need for nuances in language. All our thinking and understanding take place within language, which contains a historical heritage, active as an element in the synthesis of new meaningcontents. Transmitted meaning is an active element partly also as a factor in the common, universal foundation for all experiencing. Historicity entails for Husserl that history is within us as the vital interweaving of original formations and sedimentations of meaning.10 History is an inner synthesis, with its deep, inner structure of meaning, like a thread made up of strings of inherited meaning and new experiences. This may also imply that there are “ur- erfahrungen” that may be “recognised”.

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So, to recreate the historical meaning of a text, painting or a story, is to think again the traces, and reconstruct the extraneous Others’ meaning. This undoubtedly entail some form of “Dichtung”, or “poetic invention” as suggested by Merleau-Ponty, for one. Objectivity is to be found in the phenomena where our understandings meet, and are accountable towards each other. Me having my understanding and meaning presupposes that others exist, having their understanding and meaning, which I must confer with in order to maintain a legitimate perspective. History is where my understanding meets the Other’s understanding, and there is a dialogue between the two subjective perspectives. A polarity is formed in our lives when it is confronted with the historical individual. Now, how do we recreate and maintain this polarity, based on Einfühlung, in the classroom? Perhaps by means of narrativity? Or a chance to poetic invention? If we accept that the primary theoretical framework of subjectivity in phenomenology, and the goals with pedagogical theories of learning are in fact compatible, where they seek to enhance the individuals understanding and meaning for its self, we may try to take this opportunity to establish a primarily practical application of phenomenology in teaching. The obvious similarity, despite theoretical differences, between both phenomenology and hermeneutic theory, and the pedagogical strategies, could be further developed into fruitful theories that could expand even on the entire field of philosophical didactics. The first goal is that the student will, by their own motivation and intentions, internalize knowledge to form part of their own sphere of subjective horizon. What interests us, how new, transcendent meaning can be structured, and be made coherent with the student’s previous cognitive content, seems to be an open field of possibilities with a thorough understanding of subjectivity. This understanding of the unknown, or the transition from not knowing to understanding and incorporating new, transcendent meaning material, is of decisive importance within learning processes. Particularly this specific feature of phenomenology is useful, in my opinion, in trying to understand learning processes. University of Bergen, Norway

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1

Hans Skjervheim, Deltakar og tilskodar og andre essays, Aschehoug, Oslo, 1996. Hans Skjervheim, Filosofi og dømmekraft, Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 1992, p. 172. (Skjervheim is perhaps best known for his Objectivism and the study of Man, Gyldendal Forlag, Oslo, 1974.) 3 Hans Skjervheim, “Eit grunnlagsproblem i pedagogisk filosofi”, Minervas Kvartalsskrift, 1965. 4 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. xviii, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1965. 5 Josef Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics, Routledge, London and New York, 1993, p. 62. 6 Paul Ricoeur, “Existence et Herméneutique”, in Festschrift für Romano Guardini, Echtor Verlag, Würtzburg, 1965; translated as “Existence and Hermeneutics” in Josef Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics, Routledge, London and New York, 1993. 7 Paul Ricoeur, “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics”, Noûs, vol. II, no. I, 1975, p. 95; in Bleicher, 1993, p. 221. 8 Husserl’s treatments of the cogito sometimes point to a more open transcendence, especially in The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1970, where it can be said to be untied from its immanence by the understanding of lifeworld and historicity and their impact on the transcendental. 9 Paul Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics”, in Josef Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics, Routledge, London and New York, 1993, p. 242. 10 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1970, p. 371. 2

RIMMA KURENKOVA AND LARISA VYSOTSKAYA

PHENOMENOLOGY OF EDUCATION: CONTEMPORARY DIALOGUE OF PHILOSOPHY AND PEDAGOGICS

ABSTRACT

In the report phenomenological ideas of the dialogue between philosophy and pedagogics of today are being considered. The status-modus and types of linking between phenomenology and practice of education and upbringing, socio-cultural and axiological problems of modern education. Its philosophical and anthropological essence, cognition and gnosiological aspects of the process of education and upbringing are shown. Fundamental concepts of phenomenology such as “experience”, “intentionality” “horizons of mentality”, “emotion”, “phenomenological reduction”, “intersubjectivity”, “the world of vitality” and others are interpreted from the pedagogical point of view. Category-conceptional system including “methodology of education”, “paideutics”, “aesthesis”, “ideatics”, “locus of reflection” as well as the principles of the phenomenology of education – “unity of all living”, “individual genesis of life”, “self-individualization” and “cognition creativity” – get their formulation. Innovatory methods of teaching socio-humanities and art-aesthetical disciplines are set forth in the report. In the process of interpreting the essence and purposes of the contemporary education an important role has to be played by the philosophy of education, as the definition of them depends on what philosophic-anthropological positions the understanding a person and a personality of a child has been developed from, or what the anthropological base of education is; what gnosiological principles the comprehension of the processes of cognition and training is supported with, or what the methodological base of didactics is; what world-outlook reference points characterize the position of a personality in the contemporary culture, or what the line of comprehension of the sociocutural fundamentals of life of an individual or society. The conceptual elaboration of these issues was being accomplished by the authors on the base of the phenomenological philosophy.

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So long as the problematic centre of the phenomenological philosophy is the human consciousness, its application to education is connected with constituting individualized senses and meanings during the teaching activity. The traditional methodology issues from the positivistic model, when the didactic principles appear as an analogue of regularities of a natural scientific cognition. Due to this, a number of axioms, principles and concepts directing toward the standards of exact scientific knowledge have become firmly established in the pedagogical science. The noneffectiveness and incompetence of the systems of education without returning to individual senses, meanings and necessities of a personality are shown by the authors. The phenomenology of education is void of this defect; it leans on the model of the humanitarian cognition and arranges the priorities on the base of individualization of meanings and senses of the existing reality. Here it suits the requirements of the contemporary humanistic pedagogics, which applies to a child’s personality, to the world of his feelings, desires and interests. As “the philosophy of cognition”, phenomenology can become an effective method of investigation the children’s consciousness and, consequently, is capable of taking a significant place in a series of methodological ideas. The Russian centre of phenomenology of education and aesthetics works up a problem of applying the resources of phenomenology to the sphere of education. The tasks of the project contain the following: (1) to identify a status, moduses and types of connexion of the phenomenology, as one of the prior tendencies in the contemporary philosophic thought, and of cultivating and educating practice; (2) to work out a system of theoretical and methodological principles on the base of a phenomenological approach that will allow to solve problems of school education and cultivating more effectively; (3) to carry out practical approbation of the obtained results in a concrete educational situation of the school. While solving the presented issue the scientists (E.A. Plekhanov, Rogatcheva, Kurenkova) leaned on works of classical authors of phenomenological-hermeneutical philosophy (Husserl, Dilthey, Scheler, Jaspers, Heidegger, Schütz, Gadamer and others) where the phenomenological method forms the base of the analysis of the cultural-historical sense of education, its place, state, role and intention in the contemporary society. The experience of Russian phenomenologically directed pedagogics (representatives of spiritual-academic pedagogics: Ushinski, Jurkevich, Tolstoy, Zenkovski, Ventzel, Fedorov and others), that correlates education to formation of spiritual-moral integrity of a personality, was taken into account. A

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conception of “ontopoetics of life” of a contemporary American philosopher A.-T. Tymieniecka, as well as investigations of Hurst and Scheffler, in which the connexion phenomenological, existential and pedagogical ideas is based, is significant for definition the methodological Co-ordinates of the approach of an author. The experience of the European (above all, German) phenomenological pedagogics (Bolnow, van Manen, Lochner, Fischer, Schulz, Langfeld, Heningsen and others), that develops the ideas of the “the world of vitality” of Husserl, represents vast materials for theoretical comprehension. In Russian literature, only separate investigations in the sphere of phenomenological pedagogics have appeared for the last years (Smirnov, Fedotova, Kulnevich); in contradistinction to our work, they have no complex methodological and theoretical-practical character. The phenomenological understanding of educational processes proposes a dialogue of philosophy and pedagogics, during which knowledge of a certain kind is formed that is designated by the authors with a concept “methodology of education”. It implies a critical look at the nature of education, proceeding from a pedagogical and philosophical experience, and reveals itself as an aggregate of initial aims and principles of educational practice that are formed on the base of phenomenological philosophy. Firstly, a phenomenological approach in pedagogics must take into account deep connexions of a human being with everything alive. In essence, the phenomenology of life and human state appears as a disclosure of internal mechanisms of the evolution of nature and a constructive extending of the space of everything alive in organic, vital and cultural spheres. Abilities of a personality to self-determination through aesthetical-poetical, moral, rational senses root into the depths of life. In this light in an absolutely new way appears the essence of those reals with which education has to do. The traditional pedagogics that originated from opposing nature to culture turns to be vitally not premising. But as for the phenomenological pedagogics, like other sciences about the human being, it must find a dominant in the depths of functioning of the life itself. Therefore, the comprehension of the aims and tasks of education can be carried out only in a complete context of life. Secondly, an individual life genesis of a person is needed for contemporary pedagogics, in its process the development of his character traits occurs. Virtual life strengths are crystallized around the four unique human centres – imagination, memory, intellect and will. In the conception of the phenomenology of life, the determining thing is a self-individualizing character of life. The question, how this or that individual forms a spiritual and a physical projects of self-development and what place is devoted to the teacher, is among the most important ones in the phenomenological pedagogics. If the authoritarian

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pedagogics declared the value of a creative personality, but actually fulfilled a social order to form an individual of a certain type, in the phenomenology of education, exactly the centres of self-individualization allow the person to make the whole system of sensivity, thinking and morality and will more active. Thirdly, an idea of a dialogue between a teacher and a student as unique, original personalities becomes the key idea. A dialogue is a means and a state of self-realizing and individualizing a child. Self-individualization in education must let him become active, independent, and able to carry out such kinds of activity as labour, communication, cognition. The task of education is to help a person choose his own position in life, become a subject of cooperation in this life, a subject of the accomplishment of the individual Logos of life. Fourthly, an important criterion of the phenomenological pedagogics is cultivating a person as a subject of a deed, a creator of his own life. The task of the school is, while leaning on the individuality of a child, to help him gain a responsible experience of free behaviour. Thus, the pedagogical culture in the space of phenomenology is not only a culture of relation to life itself, but also a culture of revelation and development of a self-individualizing character of the person. Finally, from the point of view of the phenomenology of life, the nature of intellectual, moral and aesthetical abilities appears in a new light. These abilities form the core of the creative activity of a personality. Namely creativeness expresses a measure of human universality and intellectual and lets a person expand the horizons of his own life. By dealing together, poetical-aesthetical, intellectual and moral feelings determine the content of an act of creativeness. All the three factors together establish a new creative type of thinking. By understanding this, a pedagogue can look at the choice of means for coming into being and development of children’s creativeness in another way. The functions of creative orchestration during the educational activity must be correlated with the triumvirate of the highest values: the truth, good and beauty. Therefore, the parameters of a human act of creativeness, set by the philosophic conception, are extraordinarily important for educational purposes. The phenomenological pedagogics in a pedagogical-methodological plan is: (1) the culture of relation to life in the process of its constructive expanding; (2) the culture of revealing and developing children’s individuality; (3) the culture of formation the creative thinking during the educational activity of a student that (activity) is enlightened with the positiveness of aesthetical, intellectual and moral feelings.

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To return the processes of education vitality, to make them more organic with respect to nature, life, space, a human being is namely to give a start to new phenomenologically orientated pedagogics. Pedagogical university, Vladimir, Russia

CONCLUDING

MARIA-CHIARA TELONI

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL WAY: A PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW ON THE VITALITY OF BEING

INTRODUCTION

The daring and problematic aim of the present study is to address and survey the development and the contribution of phenomenology in several fields since the beginning of the last century to date.1 Focusing on phenomenology, with an intending look in a phenomenological way, that is “phenomenology reflects upon itself”,2 is what this study is about; all the more challenging due to our lack of a strong experience in the field. We may well be in a disadvantaged position, but still it is a good starting point in order to understand the whole phenomenological process. Not to be forgotten is that, as Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka3 and Daniela Verducci4 stressed, grasping the entire process of phenomenology is nearly impossible due to the great power and to the disseminating action that phenomenology exercises on several often unexplored fields of contemporary culture. As Anna Teresa Tymieniecka5 points out, the phenomenological method is based on the process of self-reflection and self-criticism. Husserl himself shared the same view in his prolific, indefatigable, and ever-improving work. “Here is not”, in Husserl’s thought, “that kind of speculative thinker who seeks to unify his, various insights. Husserl follows an analysis to an obvious end and then takes up deeper questions”.6 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka had previously written: “the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as this constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called «method» in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inépuisable reservoir for philosophical reflection in which all the above mentioned work has either its core or its source”.7 Moreover Daniela Verducci clarifies: “The phenomenological speculation is a living thought: every seed provides the poietic-creative potential of the origin, then it sprouts in the new germination and when the fruit is finally ripe, it is time for the new dissemination”.8 373 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 373–390. C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5_24, 

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Consequently it is necessary to reconsider Husserl’s definition of the phenomenological method which is used and defined in Logische Untersuchungen,9 even if it is only in Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie10 that Husserl specifies the main features of the method. Going back to Husserl’s definition helps us in achieving our goal, that is to stress phenomenologically the vital expansion of the phenomenological tree. Moreover Husserl’s method is the very heart of phenomenology which brings a total innovation in response to the deep cultural crisis the West11 has gone through, since the beginning of the last century to date. The phenomenological method is therefore the first intentional object of the present study; it will clarify the nature, that is the very essence, of phenomenology. In doing that a rigorous chronological pattern will be followed along two different lines but still closely linked by the quantum of continuity in the ever-improving process they provide. Firstly, Edit Stein’s reflection upon phenomenology will be addressed. Edith Stein is one of the first disciples of Husserl, she belongs to the first generation of phenomenologists and she testified the genetic process of phenomenology due to the profound and vital exchange with Husserl’s thought and with his other disciples. Then Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s theoretical interpretation of phenomenology will follow. Several decades ago she was the protagonist and the responsible for the vital turning point of the phenomenological trend. Edith Stein and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s thoughts will be enriched with Daniela Verducci’s contribution about the unequivocally and inevitably disseminating role of the phenomenological spirit.

THE ORIGIN OF THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL SCHOOL

In 1924 Edith Stein wrote Was ist Phänomenologie?12 in which she describes precisely the phenomenological method in the light of what she had learnt from Husserl and constantly used later on in her works. To highlight certain anthropological facts, Edith Stein will always use the phenomenological method (together with some analyses of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, both mystical personalities) even in the last theological works she wrote after her conversion, such as Science of the Cross.13 While trying to outline the nature of phenomenology, through the description of the method of phenomenological analysis, Edith Stein justly refers to the complex figure of Husserl, who was her creator and founder and whose

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scientific and philosophical story is briefly resumed in the above mentioned article. This is the only way to understand Husserl’s reasons and concerns which led him to his research and on which the foundation of the phenomenology itself is based. Stein’s activity gives rise to the problem of authorship. Although a group of scholars led by Max Scheler, achieved a remarkable success at that very time, only Husserl is to be considered the true founder and the father of phenomenology. As Edith Stein stated in her essays and articles, beside the fundamental difference between the two in the range of their interests, Husserl applied a significant and coherent scientific rigour which on the contrary was less assertive in Scheler. Edith Stein’s manuscript Die weltanschauliche Bedeutung der Phänomenologie14 is therefore very interesting because it compares Husserl and Scheler; she gives Scheler the credit for widening the research field to ethic, to the philosophy of religion and to philosophical sociology, that is to the sphere of material values and to the formation of personality. Although these issues are analysed with “a pure objective attitude”, Scheler did not have “such an objective and rigorous attitude towards research like Husserl did, and he rejected from a theoretical point of view Husserl’s idea of philosophy as a rigorous science”.15

THE FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE

The scientific conception of the philosophical research is therefore the first discriminating feature of phenomenology which separates it from other philosophical thinking. The scientific philosophical research is what Husserl believes in and, according to Edith Stein, he got “the spirit of the scientific rigour”16 from Franz Brentano. Husserl was particularly interested in finding an infallible method of philosophical research, which was able to reach unquestionable truths in opposition to Hume’s scepticism. It should not come as a surprise that phenomenologists are considered “those who, much like the master does, aim at getting into the external historical events of philosophy «with a profoundly sceptical attitude but not entirely negative». To favour the happening of the event they wish, phenomenologists «investigate, experience and assess the inner meaning and the hidden theology», that is a «fundamental and essential change in the overall meaning of philosophy».17 The very meaning, never questioned, which went through all historical forms of philosophy preventing it from joining the becoming fluidity of life”.18 If “philosophy” is originally to be considered the “love for knowledge”, as the etymology of the name says, Husserl’s objective is anything new. Before

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him Descartes and nearly all the philosophers of the modern age pursued the same objective that is looking for the rational and philosophical foundation of knowledge. This is why Husserl argues with Descartes in Cartesianische Meditationen,19 and he probably finds certain affinities with the creator of cogito ergo sum. However, as far as we know, it was not the approach and the reflection upon Descartes’s work, that led Husserl to work on the method.

PHENOMENOLOGY AND SCIENCE

As Edith Stein points out, it should not be forgotten that before becoming a philosopher and before Franz Brentano got him in the philosophical research, Husserl was a logician and a mathematician. His original interest in mathematics, as a rigorous form of knowledge, derives from the confidence in reaching an unquestionable knowledge through a rigorous procedure. This way he rejected the idea of the knowledge of that time which was going through a profound crisis. Husserl speaks about this crisis in his latest and posthumous work, published in 1954, The crisis of the European sciences and transcendental phenomenology; besides the tragic events of the First World War brought into light the vital and dramatic questions of meaning, which were left aside for too long to be stressed later on by the painful events of the Second World War. Several phenomenologists were victims of the conflicts, Edith Stein died in Auschwitz gas chambers and even Adolf Reinach lost his life in the battlefield during the First World War. In this regard Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka points that The crisis of the European sciences and transcendental phenomenology is Husserl’s main work and it gained power of persuasion “with the starring questions raised by World War II ushered in what was arguably phenomenology’s most vigorous period”.20 Moreover “since the Second World War, Husserl research and the influence of his thought have followed the progressive advance of Husserl himself”.21

THE LIFE-WORLD

According to Husserl’s analysis, the crisis of the knowledge was due to the predominance, from Galileo on, of the objective conception of the knowledge typical of the sciences of nature, and to the fact that scholars of that time claimed to find in this knowledge all the answers to the questions of human research. Husserl on the contrary believes that natural sciences cannot answer to the questions of meaning and to the inner needs of men about “the intuitive and pre-reflective life-world”22 that is the concreteness of life. This is a crucial

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issue for all those who want to deal with the phenomenological research today, research which is oriented by philosophy toward life-world platform addressed by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. According to Husserl referring to the “life-world as a scientific theme, makes the life-world itself appear a secondary and partial issue of the whole issue of the objective science”.23 Consequently Husserl didn’t feel the need to eliminate the scientific speculation, but he wanted to “reach the point of observation above it”. This would allow him “to look at its theories and achievements in the systematic link of predicative thinking, and to look at life, daily scientific work, goals, final terms and final evidence”.24 What arises is the need to find a new scientific approach able to reconsider and to enhance life-world in all his evidence. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka had previously explored life-world but it was Husserl who first intended it in his philosophy. In the above mentioned work, he writes “the way in which life-world stands for foundation and the way in which its prelogical validities are founded in relations to logical and theoretical truths have never been scientifically investigated”. He adds “probably the universal lifeworld requires a peculiar scientificity, not a logical and objective one; moreover if the scientific nature is to be considered fundamental, it should be placed on the highest position on the scale of values”.25 In outlining the nature of this new scientificity which is necessary to life-world as “a world of original evidences”,26 Husserl refers to some peculiar features of the method of research he devised. Firstly it is necessary to be aware and get rid of the attitude of the science which tends to contrast the idea of objective truth to “idea of truth of the prescientific and extrascientific life”.27 The latter comes from pure experience, meaning not the immediate experience of senses but “«the mere subjective and relative» intuition of the prescientific life in the world”.28 Philosophy, which has always been wary of the so called dòxa, rejected the scientific attitude as well. Therefore, Husserl’s conclusion was: “the opposition between the objective element of life-world and the «objective» and «true» world lies in the fact that the latter is a logical and theoretical construction which is not perceptible and cannot be experienced, while the former can be always experienced”.29 Thus phenomenological philosophy confronts a new task not only towards the life-world, drawing the evident give-ness of its being pre-scientific, but also towards the science itself in a fundamental direction of the “logical and objective” knowledge. As Edith Stein points out, Husserl “claimed to have founded those disciplines, such as pure logic, pure mathematics and the pure science of nature, based on scientific procedures. He refers to these disciplines as formal or material ontology and they do not need empirical determination”.30

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The original vocation of phenomenology remained unaltered and spread over the last century, and it was warmly welcomed over the past few decades. Moreover it found a clear response in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s activity in favour of the life-world, in the ongoing phenomenological dialogue and debate and, in particular, in the peculiar phenomenological research which is the Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of life including sciences such as biology, neuropsychiatry, mathematics, logics to name but a few. Addressing Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s analysis and the adventure she went through during the second half of the twentieth century will better clarify to what extent and how this process took place. In the last part of his intellectual journey Husserls revaluates life-world. In this revaluation, one of the several roots coming out from phenomenology, at its embryonic stage, to reach the ground of philosophy, can already be found. Over the last century the same root came out of the big tree of phenomenological research, which is the existential interest of Heidegger and his disciples. Daniela Verducci dealt with this subject which will be addressed further ahead in this study. It was however Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka who brought into light in a completely new way the phenomenological platform of life-world. She underlined a new alliance between man and nature through the detection of the human condition in the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive, developing, this way, the potential of the phenomenological seed. Indeed, according to Tymieniecka, “it was essential achieving «that sphere at which both reality, which is in question, and consciousness, which emerges in correlation with it, become intuitively present in their emergence together»,31 in order to achieve the integration, also desired by Husserl but never reached up until that point – despite the remarkable contributions of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty –, between the world of ideas and life-world”.32 What has been said so far about life-world doesn’t belong to reflections carried out by Stein we aimed to address, but I believe that dealing with this aspect of Husserl’s research was necessary and essential in order to better understand the development and the contribution of phenomenology over the twentieth century.

PHENOMENOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Before going ahead with Stein’s observations, it would be useful, at this point, to focus on two fundamental aspects of phenomenology that have emerged so far: its most intimate prophetic charge, and the responsibility it took for

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the problems of modern society in the Western European culture. But that is not all. In fact, as Tymieniecka points out: “phenomenology [. . .] did not fold its wings after one or two generations as did NeoKantianism but rather is being acutely heard within the world, not only Occidental, or Oriental, but within the world wherever the present culture calls for genuine philosophical inspiration”.33 Phenomenology, as it has been already mentioned, brought into light both life-world in a clear-cut fashion, liberating it from its subordinate position assigned to it by modern science, and the problem of truth in terms of a renewed self-confidence. The prophetic nature of phenomenology lies in identifying these two issues which are clearly far from being solved or settled in the centuries after Husserl. To use Hans Jonas’s words, in today’s technological civilization these issues appear even more demanding and urgent. If the invasiveness of science in the field of the human action potential through the eugenics drift and the uncontrolled manipulation of nature has reached critical levels, to the point of endangering the human survival and as such life on earth itself, rising a whole series of new and disturbing ethical and existential issues, then globalization, instead of favoring an authentic and profitable encounter between cultures, favored a massive relativistic drift on the field of an already well – know nihilistic existentialism addressed by Heidegger. As already mentioned, Husserl’s goal was, thus, to achieve absolute and objective knowledge worthy of being called truth, unchanging and eternal, contrary to the changing beliefs of people. Therefore, the attitude of Husserl and his disciples as regards to relativism should be more than clear. The modern philosophy already dealt with such a relativism through the –isms (naturalism, psychologism and historicism) all accountable for the already mentioned crisis of science which took place in Europe in the early Nineteenth century and became also the focus of Stein’s philosophical reflections. The way of achieving the truth is another peculiarity of the phenomenological method. Despite the clear objectivistic goals in the application of a deductive procedure, which is typical of mathematics instead, the way truth is achieved has nothing to do with it, but it is based on the act of intuition, through which the human being, far from grasping the truth, limits oneself to catching it in its manifestations. It is the truth that shows itself. In this regard “phenomenology” does not refer to phenomena traditionally understood as mere appearance, but rather to their objective essentiality.

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PHENOMENOLOGY BETWEEN MODERN AND CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

There is also a third aspect that needs to be dealt with. Once again Stein’s contributions are of crucial importance and help to clarify further the nature of the phenomenological method. Indeed, as we have already seen, phenomenology does not only deal with exact sciences, but is also extremely opened to other issues of a clearly religious, even theological nature. According to Stein, it was probably Brentano that gave Husserl the “imprint of scholastic spirit”.34 This assertion should not be confused with an interpretation of phenomenology as Christian philosophy, or philosophia perennis, in contrast with the modern philosophy which goes from the Renaissance up to Kant, who was mentioned in relation to Descartes. Many contemporaries of Husserl tried to subsume the phenomenology inside the two above mentioned categories, Stein stresses how the true spirit of phenomenology lies in its ability to realize the meeting between the two instances of purely Christian, scholastic, Thomist philosophy, and modern philosophy. This may easily be one of many merits acknowledged to the phenomenological research which manifested itself not only in the many roads it has taken and ploughed since its starters throughout the entire last Century, but also thanks to the more recent interest of Anna Teresa Tymieniecka, and her constant encouragement of a dialogue and a confrontation between different philosophical positions and various areas of investigation. Although many of those who accepted the Husserl’s rule (Stein was one of them) converted to Christianity later on, philosophy cannot, as already mentioned, be labeled “Christian” or “modern”. This should not be interpreted as a refusal of any of the two categories, which would mean on the other hand accepting the second, but rather as a complete embracement and acceptance of both their contributions as regards to themes and truths. Therefore, if this characteristic has prevailed to this day, it can only be accepted as an intrinsic part of the phenomenology’s nature itself. What would reasons for such confusion in culture of that period be? Although phenomenology cannot be reduced to the two above mentioned categories, in particular as regards the absolute peculiarity of the phenomenological method, is in no way to be considered as alien to the problems and procedures typical of both modern and Christian philosophy. Herein Stein foresees a solution to the enigma in the separation of the different opinions of modern, cotemporaneous ideas and the rich medieval philosophic tradition. The former is more inclined to take themes and suggestions from the ancient

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philosophy, the latter brings along with itself “a spiritual attitude”35 towards which modernity felt mainly scorn and indifference. In relation to the former, phenomenology – and its method which is the basis – inherits the fundamental problem closely linked to the initial Husserl’s mathematic vocation. This problem was widely spread in the scientific circles in the early Nineteenth century, and consists in the reduction of nature, secluded and separated from the physical world, to mathematical laws. Therefore the driving force of Husserl’s philosophic activity will be the search for the origin of the modern conception of nature. On the contrary, according to Stein, there are many, even if mostly unconscious, links between phenomenology and scholastic philosophy. First out of many is the love for the methodological rigor, typical of medieval argumentations and treaties, the importance of intuition and later on the concept of essence. Therefore, amongst Husserl’s teachers, weather implicit or explicit, direct or indirect, next to Brentano, Descartes, Hume e Kant, are to be mentioned Plato (one of the most important ancient sources of the medieval philosophy before the translation and the diffusion of Aristotle’s works), Augustine (the most important Christian interpreter of Plato) and Thomas (and therefore Aristotle himself). It was not a coincidence that initially Husserl was wrongly accused both of Platonism, for he often referred to Plato’s ideas, and of scholasticism which were, as already mentioned, pronounced inaptly.

THE IMPRINT OF SCHOLASTICISM

After converting, Edith Stein familiarizes herself with some works of Aquinas and compares Husserl’s phenomenology to Aquinas’s philosophy.36 Despite all differences and the temporal gap between them, she finds some similarities. Edith Stein deals with this comparison in Husserl’s phenomenology and Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy, 1929. She underlines the contribution of phenomenology not only to the foundation of knowledge deriving from other disciplines, but also to the resolutions of philosophical issues. This way phenomenology is on the one hand philosophia prima, and on the other scientia universalis. In this regard Daniela Verducci referring to the “irradiation flux of the phenomenological theory”, addressed by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, defines it as “that in which the creator gets energy to create a project not only of philosophia prima but also of scientia universalis, that is a cognitive comparison «with perpetual enigmas, which

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universe and man present us»”.37,38 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka herself states: “such a concept of philosophy as was his [of Husserl] was not new. Leibniz had dreamed of a philosophical foundation for all knowledge, a mathesis universalis. This project also corresponds to the Aristotle’s «philosophia prima», which stands prior to all the sectors of philosophical investigations”.39 Indeed, she also points out how Husserl, affirming «the principle of all principles» – our interest focuses on everything that shows itself in a self-giveness way-opened a “valid access to all kinds of experienced realities in their own specific light and standing”,40 and doing that “he extended the world of giveness to life-world”.41 Edith Stein specifies: “phenomenology differed from neo-kantianism and criticism because it focused on things rather than on the methods of particular sciences”.42 However Husserl’s purpose didn’t originally focus on the metaphysical interest, but aimed instead at redefining and clarifying those aspects of logics that, contrary to common belief, from Aristotle on were left unresolved. Traditional metaphysics, as “essential science of this world”43 seems to be in contrast with Husserl’s ontology. Dealing with logical issues, Husserl realised they were familiar with mathematics and with the wide research field they could provide. It was while he was trying to find solutions to logical questions, that Husserl developed the phenomenological method. However, as Edith Stein points out, “every philosophy addresses, clearly or implicitly, in the final analysis, a rational understanding of the world”44 that is to say a metaphysics. Husserl arrived to define the vision of essence, as intuition which is at the basis of the phenomenological method, is to be understood, starting from issues pertaining to the real sense of words, that “we can precisely defined” only “when we bring to a clear vision the same things intentioned through words. This way the twisting of the intellectual glance, typical of the phenomenological method, focuses on the things themselves, meaning “the idea or the essence of things (Wesen der Dinge), like the meaning of words” rather than “single empirical events”.45 The change phenomenology produced, as Edith Stein underlines, was “indicated as a return to the object” and phenomenology marked itself “science of the essence (Wesenwissenschaft)”. This shift was seen as a return to the most ancient tradition: Plato, Aristotle and scholasticism.46 What do phenomenology and scholasticism have in common and in what do they differ? Which role play differences and similarities in the phenomenological method and in the subject we are dealing with? Answers to these questions can be found in the above mentioned work of Edith Stein, Husserl’s phenomenology and St. Thomas Aquinas’s

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philosophy. In this work Edith Stein drew an analogy between Husserl’s and Thomas Aquinas’s ideas of philosophy, either explicitly expressed by them or deduced from their way of doing philosophy. According to Stein both of them considered philosophy a rigorous science. At this point it should be explained what the adjective “rigorous” exactly means. For the philosophermathematician “rigorous science” certainly did not mean “exact science”, which on the contrary Husserl wanted to found. “Rigorous,” a term that belongs to Husserl himself, simply means that the philosophy they both conceive and constantly do has nothing to do with “feeling and fantasy”: “it is not a matter of taste but a fact of reason that investigates seriously and dispassionately”.47 This idea of philosophy derived from the shared and strong belief in the action of a logos in everything. Moreover their philosophical speculation aimed teleologically at finding out and gradually clarifying the logos. To this point Husserl and Thomas Aquinas shared the same view, but later they differ in the limits of the research of logos. The differentiation lies in the different idea they have of reason. Indeed, when Husserl refers to reason, he means the so-called natural reason, while Thomas Aquinas distinguishes the natural reason, typical of men, from the supernatural one, typical of angels and eminently of God. On the contrary we could say that such a distinction, according to Husserl, doesn’t make any sense for he addresses the reason as such, that is “what is to be applied for the debate on the reason to make sense leaving aside the empirical distinctions”.48 Indeed, Husserl’s philosophy is a transcendental criticism that doesn’t have much in common with the purposes of Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy which aimed instead at organising a great amount of knowledge including the catechism, the Holy Scriptures, the Church Fathers and the thought of “new and ancient philosophers”. The culture of that time took possession of this knowledge in response to a contingent need. This way Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy committed itself to a challenging task. Moreover, “despite the fact that Thomas Aquinas and medieval philosophers acted as pure theoretic philosophers” they did not consider philosophy as a mere “theoretical issue [. . .] on the contrary they pursed the understanding of world as the basis for a right practical behaviour in it.”49 Edith Stein believes that although the criticism to knowledge could have been possible in Thomas Aquinas’s system, it was just considered by him “a preliminary and unnecessary work” because he mainly focused his attention on “the what (Was) rather than on the how (Wie)”.50 On the contrary phenomenological and gnoseological issues play a pivotal role in the modern philosophy from Descartes on. Modern philosophy pursues an unquestionable starting point for doing philosophy, an absolute and incontrovertible certainty.

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As far as Thomas Aquinas and medieval philosopher are concerned, the starting point is already given: faith, so God himself. Consequently Stein refers to phenomenology as egocentric philosophy and to scholasticism as theocentric philosophy because the former doesn’t have from the very beginning the basis of knowledge and it seeks and finds it in the human person, the latter on the contrary is deep-rooted in God. Talking about the foundation of knowledge means talking about philosophia prima, meaning that philosophy that, from Aristotle on, investigates the whole reality in order to find out the first causes, the first principle that is to say the first truths. In this regard Emanuele Saverino could object that is not a prerogative of Aristotle’s philosophy but it is instead a peculiar task of philosophy itself and it must be traced back to naturalist physicians51 as well. However Thomas Aquinas strongly believed that the truth comes from God, the principle behind all things, and main object of the theoretical reflection. To face such an “Object”, natural reason cannot be suitable. Consequently Thomas Aquinas realises the limit the natural reason can reach, expressing its cognitive activity because it is stuck into its borders. Indeed, in this regard Edith Stein states: “if we imagine that Thomas Aquinas lived and saw things from this perspective [that is to say that of transcendental criticism] that would be perfectly conceivable he would affirm that there is lot to say about the essence of ratio as such the ratio of ratio that is not involved in differences of different cognitive essences. However this is not enough to mark the frontiers of our knowledge”, because “we have to work with our gnoseological tools. Getting rid of them is impossible as getting rid of one’s shadows is”.52 The attempt of the reason to found itself tracing its limits would be a tautology from Aquinas’s point of view. The reason should instead look for its “fulcrum outside itself”53 that is in the supernatural reason and in the faith as long as faith doesn’t mean something irrational, as modern philosophers have considered it for many centuries distorting its authenticity. If faith was irrational indeed it would have nothing “to do with the truth or with the false” and what has been said about Thomas Aquinas’s idea of philosophy as a rigorous science would have to be revised. Thomas Aquinas on the contrary believes that the faith “is a path to the truth and for the truth which otherwise would be impossible to reach”.54 As Thomas Ryba points out the “notion of theory which is the most highly spiritual, for Thomas, is the one which is the equivalent of beatific vision and whose Latin designator – «contemplatio» – signifies a unitive understanding focused on a divine project. For Thomas, the pinnacle of theoretical intellection is the knowledge of God that the saints have in the afterlife”.55

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According to Aquinas, faith, that is the “revealed” truth, plays two different roles, on the one hand “it reveals truths that otherwise would be impossible to achieve” generating a “material dependence on the philosophy of faith”. On the other it generates a “formal dependence”56 because the truth of faith is the ultimate criteria to verify that all the other truths are actually true. What it really matters is “understanding the reality in the best possible way”, to achieve this goal every tool we have is welcomed as St. Paul’s proverb says “examine everything and keep what is good”. Elsewhere Edith Stein says “only who has a criterion can examine. Our faith and the rich heritage of the greatest catholic thinkers: our Fathers and the Doctors of the Church are our criteria”.57 According to Thomas Aquinas the unlimited trust in the natural reason and in the possibility that it can achieve independently but gradually the truth has no found. This is the view of the modern philosophy and of Husserl’s phenomenology that deeply contrasts with Thomas’s idea that only God can possess the “whole truth”,58 angels can partially achieve it, as well as human beings when “they will achieve the destination, in heaven. Here with a unique intuition they will grasp everything is understandable to them, except for all the abysses of divine truth which only God can embrace”.59 For man in statu viae instead the sure knowledge, though not “apodictically evident”,60 comes from faith. Edith Stein underlines that phenomenology would label this attitude as “dogmatic” because “it goes on as if there were no frontiers for our reason”.61 Thomas Aquinas on the contrary believes that “philosophy is a matter of reason”, reason which is conceived “in a comprehensive way”,62 that is natural and supernatural. Therefore even when supporting his statements with human authorities, he never accepted, on the basis of the simple human authority, what was accessible to his personal judgment”.63 INTUITION

The subject of intuition needs further attention. This concept belongs to both the philosophical and methodological approaches we have been dealing so far, and many its aspects are still misunderstood. Contrary to common belief the idea of intuition Thomas Aquinas and philosophers of the Middle Age had is different from the one of the phenomenological method. For the formers the intuitio is the visio beatifica which is “a free gift of liberalitas Dei”64 and cannot be achieved through human efforts. God, on account of his fullness, communicates his knowledge to other spirits in different ways and proportionally to their understanding.65 Different is Husserl’s idea of vision of essence. In this regard it would be particularly useful to provide Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s contributions. In

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Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times she points out the “primordial role” of intuition in defining the nature of phenomenology. She does it by analyzing the dual intrinsic dynamism of the intuition. She mainly stresses the interaction of several intuitions in the phenomenological method “each sustaining a level of «intuitive visibility»”66 and each corresponding to a peculiar platform of investigation. Underlying the importance of the “primordial givenness of the objective correlates of our intuitions”, which “owes nothing to theory, viewpoint, tendency, or any sort of preconception and is to be relied upon in itself, in its «bodily selfhood»”,67 Husserl places intuition at the center of phenomenological investigation. In every intuition the thematization of objects takes place “within a specific network” as well as the formation of a new platform of investigation. The next step is the search for the conceptual meaning of the datum so that objective correlates are given intentionally and therefore subjectively: so “we plunge into the vast field of consciousness”.68 Therefore at this level two channels of driving “self generating forces – objective and subjective” arise because “reason/logos is not a mere structuring line of construction, it is simultaneously its prompting force”.69 Consequently a distinction can be made between horizontal and vertical logos. The former is where singles objects distinctly come from, the latter is on the other hand subjective and fluctuant. However a definitive explication of the constitutive scheme cannot be reached even at this level. This is why Husserl explored the depth of life-world “essential thug pluridimensional correlate of the first platform of essential structures in that it offers a field in which to investigate the entire universe of reality in its becoming as the world”.70 In the multiform platform of lifeworld the plot of objective and subjective forces goes on along an endless line leading to a new and further intuitive platform “that of the genetic perspective” where “the genetic intentions operative in the constitution of the life-world”71 takes place. As for the intuitive platform, both the eidetic and purposely constructive devices of conscience are not sufficient enough to grasp and clarify the “multiplicity of life-world interactions”72 but however cannot be put aside and kept inactive. T H E H U M A N C O N D I T I O N I N T Y M I E N I E C K A ’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE

The phenomenology of life at the very end of the last century brought into light another platform of investigation that is the human condition of life-world from which a new anthropological conception developed. At this

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level the “creative experience” arises in all its centrality. Here we are “beyond Husserl’s horizons” but always in the same line of intuition: the creative act is the “fulcrum that life has come to have in human becoming”.73 Through the human condition of life-world the fluid and transforming “becoming” typical of the living existence becomes ontopoietic because it expresses the “self-individualizing singularity of human beings” and eventually it reveals the “intuitive genesis of the sacral interpretation of the human being-in existence”.74 In conclusion Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka states that the eidetic “multisphere framework” spreads from the most inner part of the phenomenological method which aims at the “critical fulfillment of the phenomenon under investigation”. The “multisphere framework” is eidetic with reference to the identity of the phenomenon, transcendental in relation to its constitution in the consciousness, and it is linked to life-world as far as interactive and intergenerating aspects are concerned. The fourth sphere of logos of the real, is the ontopoietic one from which the “absolute grounding”75 comes from. However Daniela Verducci76 clarifies that the anthropological conception deriving from the phenomenology of life it is not to be considered from a moral point of view, but from a cosmological point of view, taking into consideration the relationship between man and nature. According to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s phenomenology, man comes out from the classical transcendental phenomenological conception to plunge “in the turmoil of a generative progress”. The intentionality of the innovative human condition doesn’t deprive man of the primacy he has in the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive. The primacy comes from the creative function of the imaginatio creatix which makes the human being “the vortex of the universal sense”.77 Moreover the priority of creativity reverses the hierarchy of traditional human roles, the poet becomes the “creator” and the philosopher becomes the “witness”.78

CONCLUSIONS

Daniela Verducci’s words are a suitable conclusion for the present work: “those planted in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s theoretical activity are authentic intellectual seeds that stimulate the progress of the philosophical knowledge because they show themselves to our intuitive faculty before they are totally unfoldedereveal”.79 It is therefore our task now to let “the becoming vitality of the disseminated germs of being burst out” and develop “that solidarity between spirit and life80 which is the only one that can grasp and use”81 this becoming vitality. University of Macerata, Italy

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1

All English translations from Italian editions hereinafter are by the Author. Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology Reflects Upon Itself, I–II in «Analecta Husserliana», Vols. II–III, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1971–1972. 3 “We acknowledge that the vigor, decisiviness, conciving force, dissemination, as well as its launching as a new philosophical approach by Husserl . . .” (our italics), cf. AnnaTeresa Tymieniecka, World-wide phenomenology fulfilling Husserl’s Project. An Introduction, in «Analecta Husserliana», Vol. XXXV, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 1991, p. xi. 4 From the ancient need to “save the phenomena”, addressed by Plato up until Hegel’s The phenomenology of spirit many phenomenological seeds have been planted on the ground of philosophical speculation which, in the twentieth century, not only grasped the fruits of the ripe phenomenological tree, but also used them to fertilize the cultural context of that time. Daniela Verducci, Disseminazioni e innovazioni teoretiche, in Disseminazioni fenomenologiche. A partire dalla fenomenologia della vita, ed. D. Verducci, EUM, Macerata 2007, p. 11. 5 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times, Phenomenology world–wide. Foundations, expanding dynamics, life-engagements. A guide for research and study, ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002, pp. 1–8; it. tr. by D. Verducci, in collaboration with D. Mancini, La fenomenologia come forza ispiratrice dei nostri tempi, in Disseminazioni fenomenologiche. A partire dalla fenomenologia della vita, op. cit., pp. 31–49. 6 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times, op. cit., p. 3. 7 A.-T. Tymieniecka, World-wide phenomenology fulfilling Husserl’s Project, op. cit., p. xiii. 8 D. Verducci, Disseminazioni e innovazioni teoretiche, op. cit., p. 20. 9 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Niemmeyer, Halle 1928; It. tr. E. Husserl, Ricerche Logiche, EST, Milano 2001. 10 E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, in Husserliana, Den Haag, Kluwer academic publishers; It. tr. E. Husserl, Idee per una fenomenologia pura e una filosofia fenomenologica, ed. E. Filippini, Einaudi, Torino 1965. 11 “It was truly a significant moment in the history of Occidental culture that gave rise to this trend”, A.-T. Tymieniecka, World-wide phenomenology fulfilling Husserl’s Project, op. cit., p. xii. 12 E. Stein, Was ist Phänomenologie?, in «Wissenschaft/Volksbildung», scientific supplement to «Neuen Pfalzischen Landes Zeitung», n. 5, 15th May, 1924, republished into the review «Teologie und Philosophie», 66 (1991), pp. 570–573; It. tr. E. Stein, Che cos’è la fenomenologia?, in E. Stein, La ricerca della verità. Dalla fenomenologia alla filosofia cristiana, ed. A. Ales Bello, Città Nuova Editrice, Roma 1993, pp. 55–60. 13 E. Stein, Kreuzeswissenschaft. Studie über Joannes a Cruce, in Edith Steins Werke, Band I, Ed. Nauwelaerts, Louvain 1950. It. tr. E. Stein, Scientia Crucis, ed. C. Dobner, Edizioni OCD, Roma-Morena 2002. 14 E. Stein, Die weltanschauliche Bedeutung der Phänomenologie 1932, in Edith Steins Werke, band VI, Herder, Louvain-Freiburg i. Br. 1962; It. tr. Il significato della fenomenologia come visione del mondo, in E. Stein, La ricerca della verità, op.cit., pp. 91–107. 15 Ibid, p. 101. 16 E. Stein, Che cos’è la fenomenologia?, op. cit., p. 56. 17 Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie,Hrsg. Von Walter 2

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Biemel. Nachdruck der 2. verb. Auflage. 1976; It. tr. La crisi delle scienze europee e la fenomenologia trascendentale, ed. E. Filippini, Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1961, p. 152. 18 D. Verducci, Disseminazioni e innovazioni teoretiche, op. cit., p. 20. 19 E. Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Parisen Vortrage, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von S. Strasser, Haag: Nijhof, 1963; It. tr. E. Husserl, Meditazioni cartesiane con l aggiunta dei discorsi parigini, ed. F. Costa, 1997. 20 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times, op. cit., p. 2. 21 A.-T. Tymieniecka, World-wide phenomenology fulfilling Husserl’s Project, op. cit., p. xiv. 22 Nicola Abbagnano, Fare filosofia, Paravia, V. III, Torino 1999, p. 235. 23 E. Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, op. cit., p. 152. 24 Ibid., p. 151. 25 Ibid., p.153. 26 Ibid., p. 157. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 E. Stein, Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des heiligen Thomas von Aquino. Versuch einer Gegenuberstellung, in «Jahrbuch f˝ur Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung»; Husserl zum 70. Geburstag, 1929; It. tr. La fenomenologia di Husserl e la filosofia di san Tommaso d’Aquino. Tentativo di confronto, in E. Stein, La ricerca della verità, (pp. 61–90), op. cit., p. 76. 31 A.-T. Tymieniecka, A Note on Edmund Husserl’s late Breakthrought, in Phenomenology worldwide, ed. A.-T. Tymieniecka, p. 686. 32 D. Verducci, Disseminazioni e innovazioni teoretiche, op. cit., p. 21 33 A.-T. Tymieniecka, World-wide phenomenology fulfilling Husserl’s Project, p. xii. 34 E. Stein, Che cos’è la fenomenologia?, op. cit., p. 56. 35 E. Stein, Edmund Husserl, la crisi delle scienze europee e la fenomenologia trascendentale, in La ricerca della verità, op. cit., p. 230. 36 Thomas Ryba deals with the comparison at the level of the relationship between reason and spirit in Reason and Spirit in the Thought of Edmund Husserl and St. Thomas Aquinas: Some Complementarities and Supplementations, addressed during the 57th International Phenomenology Congress, held in Istanbul in 2007. 37 A.-T. Tymieniecka, From The Editor, «Analecta Husserliana», Vol. I, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1971, p. vi. 38 D. Verducci, Disseminazioni e innovazioni teoretiche, p. 22. 39 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times, op. cit., p. 1. 40 Ibid., p. 8. 41 Ibid., p. 45. 42 E. Stein, Il significato della fenomenologia come visione del mondo, op. cit., p. 99 43 E. Stein, La fenomenologia di Husserl e la filosofia di san Tommaso d’Aquino, op. cit., p. 76. 44 Ibid., p. 68. 45 E. Stein, Il significato della fenomenologia come visione del mondo, op. cit., p. 98. 46 Ibid., p. 99. 47 E. Stein, La fenomenologia di Husserl e la filosofia di san Tommaso d’Aquino, op. cit., p. 63. 48 Ibid., p. 64. 49 Ibid., p. 77.

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Ibid., p. 71. Cf. Emanuele Severino, La filosofia antica, Rizzoli, Milano 1990. 52 E. Stein, La fenomenologia di Husserl e la filosofia di san Tommaso d’Aquino, op. cit., p. 64. 53 Ibid., p. 67. 54 Ibidem. 55 T. Ryba, Reason and Spirit in the Thought of Edmund Husserl and St. Thomas Aquinas: Some Complementarities and Supplementations. 56 E. Stein, La fenomenologia di Husserl e la filosofia di san Tommaso d’Aquino, op. cit., p. 68. 57 E. Stein, Il significato della fenomenologia come visione del mondo, op. cit., p. 107. 58 Gv 16, 13. 59 E. Stein, La fenomenologia di Husserl e la filosofia di san Tommaso d’Aquino, op. cit., Ibid., p. 65. 60 Ibid., p. 67. 61 Ibid., p. 64. 62 Ibid., p. 67. 63 Ibid., p. 72. 64 Ibid., p. 79. 65 Ibid., p. 65. 66 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Phenomenology as the inspirational force of our times, op. cit., p. 3. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 72 Ibid., p. 4. 73 Ibid. p.5. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., p. 8. 76 Cf. D. Verducci, Disseminazioni e innovazioni teoretiche, op. cit., pp. 24–26. 77 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Tractatus brevis. First principles of the Metaphysics of Life charting the Human Condition: man’s creative act and the origin of rationalities, «Analecta Husserliana», Vol. XXI, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986, p. 3. 78 A.-T. Tymieniecka, Eros te Logos. Esquisse de phénoménologie de l’intériorité créatrice, illustrée par le teste poétique de Paul Valery, Louvain-Paris, Learned Pubns, 1972, p. 112. 79 D. Verducci, Disseminazioni e innovazioni teoretiche, op. cit., p. 26. 80 Cf. D. Verducci, La meta-ontopoiesi di Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka come teoresi di solidarietà tra spirito e vita, «Annali di studi religiosi», 5 (2004), pp. 315–335. 81 D. Verducci, Disseminazioni e innovazioni teoretiche, op. cit., p. 27. 51

NAME INDEX

Abrams, E., 71 Adarno, T. L., 113 Alber, V. K., 70 Alichniewicz, A., 122 Anaximen, 102 Aquinas, T., 381–385, 389–390 Aristote, 99, 104 Avelina, M., 149 Bacon, F., 8, 215 Ba´nka, J., 112, 116, 122 Bauman, Z., 112, 116, 122 Bello, A. A., 133, 135–136, 147–149, 286, 298, 388 Bentham, J., 341 Bergson, H., 101–106, 132, 135–137, 141, 147–149, 286 Binswanger, L., 282, 295–296, 298, 312 Bleicher, J., 360, 364 Boelderl, A. R., 70 Böhme, G., 126, 130 Bollnow, O. F., 250 Borisovskiy, G. B., 335 Boyce-Gibson, W. R., 71 Bradley, F. H., 99 Brentano, F., 48, 209, 273, 306–307, 340, 375–376, 380–381 Bruzina, R., 28, 35–36, 70 Buber, M., 168, 210, 213–215, 219–220, 249, 282, 287–288, 299 Buceniece, E., 207 Burley-Marx, R., 332 Caird, E., 139 Calloni, M., 34

Camus, A., 116, 285, 291–292 Cantor, C., 338 Carnap, R., 97 Cavaciuti, S., 298 Celi´nski, C., 122 Cichowicz, S., 223, 227 Cie´sli´nski, C., 122 Cogito, C., 100, 105 Colli, G., 35 Collins, J., 250 Copleston, F., 149 Cozma, C., 123–130 Cristin, R., 34 Dastur, F., 66 de Condorcet, M., 9 de Gruyter, W., 35, 227 De Luca, A., 297–299 De Unamuno, 282 Dentone, A., 298–299 Depraz, N., 28, 36 Derrida, J., 113, 155, 157, 272 Descartes, R., 78, 376, 381, 383 Desmond, W., 215, 220 Diener, E., 349 Dilthey, W., 258 Doubyago, T. B., 325 Dupre, L., 227 Dussel, E., 159, 169 Easterlin, R., 341, 349 Ebeling, H., 35, 70 Egidi, M., 350 Eisenstein, S. M., 331, 338 Ellenberger, H. F., 319

391 A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana CV, 391–394, C Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010 DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3785-5, 

392

NAME INDEX

Elster, J., 351 Erickson, M., 299, 304, 311–312 Eriksonians, M., 307 Fink, E., 4, 19, 27, 33, 35–36, 40–41, 49–50, 69–70, 72–74, 76 Fleischer, M., 74 Foucault, M., 113, 159 Francke, R., 34 Frankl, V. E., 210, 301–302, 304, 306, 308–312, 314 Frey, B., 349 Frings, M., 34 Fromm, E., 112, 116, 122 Fuchs, W. W., 250 Fulda, H. F., 250 Gehlen, A., 113 Gesell, A., 62, 75 Ghigi, N., 34 Gindes, B. C., 315 Giovanola, B., 350–351 Giroux, H. A., 122, 320 Goethe, 257 Goodhart, S., 160 Grinder, J., 319 Guardini, R., 171, 179, 189, 292, 364 Gurwitsch, A., 302, 304, 306–307, 310, 319 Habermas, J., 19–22, 34, 113, 193–194, 196–197, 199–207 Hare, R. M., 122 Harries, K., 249 Hartmann, K., 103 Hausman, D. M., 350 Hegel, G. W. F., 48, 103–105, 153, 249, 334 Heidegger, M., 3, 20, 27, 34, 40, 66, 72, 101, 103, 134, 144, 149–150 Henry, M., 7 Heraclite, 102–105 Hering, J., 160 Hesiod, 103

Hobbes, T., 8, 101 Hohengarten, W. M., 34 Holl, J., 35 Holwitzer, H., 338 Hume, D., 101, 104, 381 Husserl, E., 3–4, 14, 19–22, 25–28, 30–37, 39–40, 42–76, 78, 99, 101, 103, 127, 130, 133–134, 143–144, 147, 153, 160–164, 166, 169, 171, 177, 189, 193–194, 197, 199, 201, 203–205, 209, 211–212, 214, 216, 249, 255–275, 281–282, 294, 298–299, 301–304, 306, 308, 311, 315, 318, 357, 361–362, 364, 366–367, 373–377, 379–383, 386, 388–390 Jabès, E., 151, 167 Jacórzy´nski, W., 122 James, W., 99, 101, 105–106, 220 Janicaud, D., 159, 167 Jaspers, K., 89, 101, 123–130, 221–227, 229–250, 271, 281–283, 366 Jaynes, J., 318 Jelleicoe, G., 338 Jelleicoe, S., 338 Jonas, H., 112, 126, 130 Jung, C. G., 273 Kagan, R., 334, 338 Kahneman, D., 344, 345–346, 349–351 Kairos, 85, 88, 92 Kant, I., 14, 48, 101, 104–105, 116, 129, 134, 153, 166, 211, 213, 217–220, 244, 250, 258–259, 306–307, 312, 327, 333, 338, 380–381 Kersten, F., 68 Kieres, H., 122 Kierkegaard, S., 98, 157, 168, 222, 281–282, 290, 306, 313 Kirkpatrick, R., 214, 220 Klostermann, V., 72 Kóhler, D., 149 Kolle, K., 249

NAME INDEX Kotarbi´nski, T., 112 Krasi´nska, E., 122 Kronos, Q., 85, 88, 92 Kurenkova, R., 365–369 Laing, E. T., 271 Latzel, E., 250 Le Corbusier, 326 Leibnitz, G., 116 Levinas, E., 151–154, 156, 158–160, 162, 164–170, 210, 284, 288, 297, 299 Locke, J., 8, 101 Lom, P., 71 Luft, S., 74 Lukács, G., 21, 34 Lyotard, 113

393

Oliver, K., 205–206 Oll, J., 70 Øyen, S. A., 193–207 Palmer, P. R., 34 Paris, J., 159 Pascal, B., 168, 295 Patoˇcka, J., 40–41, 71, 153–158 Perls, F., 319 Pfeiffer, J., 73 Plato, 71, 77, 79, 97, 104, 145, 148, 153, 156, 166–167, 210, 257, 273, 330, 358, 381–382, 388 Plümacher, M., 251 Popper, K., 308 Portmann, A., 63 Promie´nska, H., 122

Malata, P., 221–227 Malka, S., 160 Marcel, G., 215, 281–282, 286, 289–290 Marek, W., 122 Marion, J. L., 159, 166 Maturana, H., 33 Matuštík, M. B., 152, 167–168 McPherson, M. S., 350 Merleau-Ponty, M., 3, 20, 41, 55, 58, 61–64, 75, 104, 152, 160, 205, 282, 286, 298, 307, 357, 359, 362–364, 378 Mezzanzanica, M., 35–36, 70 Million, J., 71 Minkowski, E., 282, 296, 298 Miron, R., 229–251 Montinari, M., 35

Rainova, I., 148 Reinach, A., 376 Renouvier, C. B., 105 Ricoeur, P., 69–71, 86, 172–173, 187, 189–190, 222–223, 226–227, 282, 289, 361–362, 364 Rilke, R. M., 288 Robeyns, I., 349 Rogers, C., 301 Rojcewicz, R., 69, 205 Romano, C., 175–176, 179, 183, 185, 187–190, 292, 364 Royce, J., 99 Russell, B., 99, 118, 122 Ryba, T., 130, 142, 149, 384, 389–390

Nabe, C., 35 Nardone, G., 304 Nesci, D. A., 225 Nietzsche, F., 23, 35, 97–98, 101, 104, 106, 156, 257, 259, 273, 306 Nijhoff, M., 35, 67–69, 74, 76, 130 Nikon, P., 325 Nussbaum, M., 342, 349–351

Samuelson, P., 346, 351 Saner, H., 251 Sartre, J.-P., 3, 20, 100, 104, 116, 160, 193, 196–201, 203–206, 209–210, 214–215, 220, 288 Scheler, M., 3, 23, 34–35, 290–291, 306, 311, 366, 375 Schnadelbach, H., 227

394

NAME INDEX

Schopenhauer, A., 116, 222, 227, 257, 263, 274 Schuhmann, E., 34 Schuhmann, K., 34, 37 Schuwer, A., 69, 205 Schwarz, N., 28, 70, 349 Schweitzer, A., 112 Scotus, D., 288 Searle, J. R., 346, 351 Sen, A., 342, 350–351 Simon, H. A., 343–344, 350 Simonds, J., 327, 338 Singer, P., 112, 122 Skjervheim, H., 358–359, 364 Skolimowski, H., 112 Slovic, P., 350–351 Smid, R. N., 34 Sokolowski, R., 205 Spiegelberg, H., 301, 303 St. Augustine, 81, 95, 168, 283, 290, 295, 381 St. Catherine, 94 Stein, E., 72, 90, 95, 140, 147–149, 281–282, 285–288, 290–291, 298, 374–378, 380–385, 388–390 Straus, J., 122, 298, 320 Stutzer, A., 349 Szcze˛sna, A., 122 Szewczuk, W., 122 Szmyd, J., 122

Tunz, T., 122 Turan, H., 205 Turgot, A. R. J., 9 Tversky, A., 344, 350 Tymieniecka, A.-T., 3–4, 7–16, 19, 29–33, 36, 39, 77–88, 90, 93–95, 97, 111–112, 116, 119–123, 127–134, 137, 139–142, 144–152, 159, 164–166, 205–207, 299, 323, 367, 373, 376–381, 387–390 Van Breda, 20 van Kerckhoven, G., 27, 35–36, 70 Varela, 33 Verducci, D., 4, 35–36, 373–374, 378, 381, 387–390 Volontè, P., 34, 189 Vysotskaya, L., 365–369 Wahl, J., 4, 97–107 Walther, G., 71 Watzlawick, P., 304 Weiler, M., 73 Wichrowski, M., 122 Williams, F., 214, 220, 350 Wittgenstein, L., 215, 305, 309, 313–314, 318, 351 Wundt, W., 26, 35 Young-Bruehl, E., 249, 251

Tarnas, R., 145, 150 Tatarkiewicz, W., 122 Tester, K., 122 Thales, 102 Totaro, F., 35, 350–351

Zambrano, M., 287, 290, 292, 296, 299 Zhirnov, A. D., 337 Zizek, A., 155 Zychowicz, J., 122