Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology

15–43

Authors: PAVEL BARKOUSKI

The article concerns the significance of the semantic connective of understanding and playing in Gadamer’s hermeneutical analysis of the experience of art. In the spotlight is a question of constructing of imaginary (virtual) worlds as a play-based reality of understanding. It argues the appeal to the experience of art as a paradigmatic subject of hermeneutical work and emphasizes the importance of understanding of such experience as a special kind of play that takes us to the ontology plane, as opposed to the classic aesthetic view on this subject. Along with the explication of a general idea of the play in Gadamer’s hermeneutics, it also examines the main features of the artistic game itself, turning it into a multidimensional being of a special kind and a zone of gaining human freedom. The problematization of language also reveals it as the medium for the development of the artistic play and understanding, and the ethical aspects of the hermeneutic dialogue in the ongoing game is a theme of a special interest here too. The author develops his theoretical considerations based on comparative hermeneutic analysis of Hölderlin’s verses in the works of M. Heidegger and G. Gadamer, which reveals the diversity and non-linearity of our interpretation of culture, the ability to see in it an inexhaustible source of new meanings and associative connections as a result of a play of art and its understanding

69-101

Authors: ANDREI LAURUKHIN

The subject of this article is the debate of Gadamer and Habermas about the nature of critical thinking, the relationship between freedom and authority, the individual and traditions, documented in the book Hermeneutics and Criticism of Ideology (1971). Central to the author is the question: “What understanding of critical thinking would allow us to gain a higher degree of resistance to ideology?” The author consistently solves several problems. First, the author clarifies the meaning and significance of the key concepts of “ideology” and “criticism” in the critical theory of Frankfurt School and philosophical hermeneutics. Thanks to these explanations, becomes clear the basis for the possibility of a productive polemic between philosophical hermeneutics and critical theory. Secondly, in the analysis of the main lines of criticism by Habermas against the hermeneutical project of Gadamer, the author explicates the strengths and weaknesses in the argumentation of the opposing parties. The focus here is the problem of the relationship of critical reflection with prejudice, authority and tradition, the problem of theoretical maturity and methodological support of hermeneutics, the problem of forming a basic consensus of understanding and interaction. Based on a comparative analysis of the arguments and counterarguments of Gadamer and Habermas, the author shows the non-trivial nature of critical thinking and reveals new aspects in understanding the concept of criticism of ideology. The result of the comparative analysis is the idea of an integrative concept of ideology criticism, which allows productive use of the strengths of the critical and hermeneutic approaches, and thereby provide a higher resistance to ideology at the collective and individual levels.

129-142

Authors: VLADIMER JALAGONIA

Transcedental egology, which tries to follow intentional constitutive moments and explicate them, produces itself by following its guiding principe, evidence, where the presence („selbst da“, „unmittelbar anschaulich“, „originaliter gegeben“) of lived-experience in front of self-identical conscious subject has a mobilizing function. The differenctiation of evidences and phenomenological epoche, which aims to build self-transparent and rigorous scientific edifice, brackets those modes of givenness which might harbor the slightest possibility of doubt. Under this principle indirect givvences or absence is expelled or subordinated to the direct, straightforward giveness of presence: in this horizon arrises the problem of the otherness of the other. Despite this privilege and unavoidable prevalence of presence in the Cartesian way, I will try to reconstruct Husserls analyses of consitutution of the otherness and of intersebjectivity (in Fifth Cartesian Meditation) in such a way that the constitutive function of absence/non-presence will appear irreducible. Husserl, without leaving the immanence of Egology, explains the giveness of Other, and walks beyond solipsism and phenomenology of presence. I will anlyse how the irreducibilie absence of the otherness appears in the presence, participates and performs fundamental constitutive role in the constitutive process, after which, the phenomenology of otherness produced in the presence, will appear the process of exhausting the presence rather that subordinating absence to presence.

162-183

Authors: BENCE PETER MAROSAN

This article draws attention to certain features of Edmund Husserl’s theory of evidence and truth which, on closer look, reveal how his thoughts on the nature of experience and cognition are current and relevant even in the early 21st century. Many of his contemporaries and subsequent authors considered Husserl to be a late representative of traditional, modernist metaphysics—an idealist, a foundationalist, and an intellectualist, etc. The publication of his vast unpublished manuscripts has evidently dispelled such charges, and a thorough and attentive perusal of his published works (or works prepared for publication) clearly shows how highly problematic such charges were. In the article I aim to highlight the contextualist character of Husserl’s understanding of evidence and truth, of knowledge and Being. Every insight and every entity in his thought fits into a wider context of further experiences, insights, and entities. This conception is manifest at every level of his experience and knowledge: (1) everyday experiences, (2) scientific and (3) philosophical cognition. The evidence at every level is fundamentally open and contextual, and their correlation constitutes an essentially organic reality. With such formulations Husserl says something quite similar to what is now found under the label ‘epistemic contextualism’ in contemporary analytic philosophy. Next to the contextual character of evidence, the second main thesis of my essay is that Husserl’s stance in this question might serve as a fruitful field of dialogue between phenomenology and analytic philosophy.

216-234

Authors: TINA BILBAN

Niels Bohr, considered one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, formulated a complex interpretation of quantum mechanics that guided his understanding of quantum experiments. The contemporary dispute between realism and anti-realism, the two main approaches to the interpretation of quantum mechanics, is often based on different attitudes towards or even readings of Bohr. We propose that a better understanding of Bohr’s philosophical thought can contribute to the contemporary reconciliation of these opposing philosophical views and thus to a better understanding of the quantum world. Unfortunately, in many contemporary interpretations, Bohr’s philosophical approach to quantum mechanics has been misunderstood, re-interpreted or labelled as ambiguous. This is mostly due to the dispersion of Bohr’s complex and unique interpretation through different texts, never united in a single systematically conceptualized work. To comprehensively explain Bohr’s philosophical approach and his main philosophical concepts, we consider the many similarities between Bohr’s and Husserl’s philosophical approach to science. Husserl developed his philosophical standpoint in a cultural context similar to Bohr’s and shared Bohr’s objects of philosophical consideration as well as his approach to these objects. Parallel reading of Bohr’s and Husserl’s texts reveals the closeness between Bohr’s ontological realism—epistemological anti-realism standpoint and Husserl’s phenomenological standpoint. This explains their similar views on the relationship between mathematical language, scientific method and Nature. While Bohr’s use of the term phenomenon is not equal to Husserl’s, Husserl’s rigorous philosophical explanation of the term helps us to better understand Bohr’s use. Furthermore, the parallel reading facilitates better understanding of one of Bohr’s main philosophical theses, often labelled as ambiguous and interpreted in different ways, that it is necessary to use classical concepts to describe quantum phenomena. We claim that the thesis is connected with the advance of epistemological reconsideration of science at the time of Bohr’s writing. Thus, Bohr considers some parts of argumentation as self-evident, while they are not evident to the contemporary reader. Husserl’s analysis of the relationship between science and the life-world offers a much-needed background for a comprehensive understanding of Bohr’s thesis. The insight into the similarities between Bohr’s and Husserl’s philosophical approach to science and scientific phenomena enables a philosophically rigorous reading of Bohr’s texts; it can eliminate some of the disagreements between realists and anti-realists and provide a firmer philosophical ground for a dialog between them.

256-274

Authors: ANTON VAVILOV

The article constitutes an analysis of the question “why” in its transcendental and existential foundations. Based on Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, this question is shown to be the fundamental question of metaphysics. In his works written after “Being and Time” Heidegger increasingly focused on the “why” question, particularly as regards the inquiry as to “Why there is something rather than Nothing.” The latter constitutes the question of all questions and the key question of philosophizing. According to Heidegger, it is precisely though the capacity of “asking why” that human essence can be explicated. On this issue Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is at variance with Max Scheler’s philosophical anthropology, since “asking why” is more primordial than “saying no” favored by Scheler. However, Heidegger never seems to clarify the relationship between “why?” and “no!”. Therefore, in this article I will try to fill this gap by confronting Scheler with Heidegger as far as the problems of negativity, questioning, metaphysics and human essence are concerned. By reading Scheler’s The Human’s Place in the Cosmos and Heidegger’s What is Metaphysics? as reflections on the origin of metaphysics, one can draw the following conclusions: 1) Orientation to nothing is as fundamental for subjectivity as Scheler’s “saying no”; indeed, the Nothing which nothings gives access to that-what-is and establishes the World as openness. (2) The power of negativity in both cases reveals the strangeness and contingency of being. The fundamental question is made possible by the wonder at the experience of nothingness. (3) Therefore, Heidegger’s “asking why” appears to be derivative from “saying no”. However, in the conclusion I suggest an opposite interpretation based on the foundationless character of Dasein. Thereby “No” becomes possible only based on the permanent “Why” motivated by Dasein’s impossibility to know its own foundation.

283-305

Authors: MARC RICHIR, SACHA CARLSON, ANNA YAMPOLSKAYA

This is a Russian translation of the first of Phenomenological Meditations of Marc Richir. The text consists of two sections. In the first section, Richir develops Husserl’s remark on “movement in a zigzag pattern” and makes a distinction between the logical structure of phenomenology and the symbolic systems of the German idealism. The sphere of the phenomenological is not given from the very beginning; phenomena have essential indeterminacy which cannot be clarified in “one go.” In the second section, Richir analyses the distinction between the symbolic and phenomenological layers of sense, and offers a new version of phenomenological hermeneutics.

324-354

Authors: MARTIN HEIDEGGER, ARKADI CHOUFRINE

Heidegger’s Cologne address of 1924 is important in at least three respects. First, it represents the next stage in the genesis of Being and Time after the seminal text known as Natorp Bericht (1922). Second, it manifests a new landmark in Heidegger’s rethinking appropriation of Aristotle’s thought. This new synthesis includes, in particular, the groundwork on Aristotle’s Rhetoric from the summer course of 1924. The annotations to the translation,—based on the texts from 1922-24,—bring to light Heidegger’s working his way to this synthesis. The preface specifically uncovers Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle’s doctrine of the “mean” and compares Heidegger’s interpretation of Aristotle concept of ethical decision to an interpretation of it typical of modern Aristotle scholarship belonging to analytical tradition. Third, the Cologne address represents Heidegger’s first thematic approach to the question of the essence of truth (which even after Being and Time for at least a decade remained among his guiding threads). In particular, it develops the thesis (barely outlined in Natorp Bericht) that (contrary to the dominant view which Daniel Dahlstrom appropriately dubbed “the logical prejudice”) the proper “place” of truth is not judgement, but the being indicated in a judgement by the copula and in a human act by the goodness that motivates it; and that speech, for the most part, conceals the truth originally sighted.

366-372

Authors: ANNA YAMPOLSKAYA

This is my short reply to Adonis Frangeskou’s response to my review of his book (2017). I offer a careful reading of the passage from Levinas quoted in Frangeskou’s response. I discuss the idea of God-in-me in connection with the issues of sensibility, vulnerability, and suffering. I argue that interpreting Levinas within the framework of the analytics of the sublime is crucially important for the catastrophic dimension of Levinas’ approach to subjectivity.

382–383

Authors: No

No

418-434

Authors: EKATERINA ANANIEVA

The review of the collective monograph Vitality of Phenomenology: Tradition and Renewal traces various aspects of an interesting and peculiar design implemented in this publication. Non-thematic unity and community of traditions (philosophical and cultural) are united under the same cover of the authors of this monograph. Following the centripetal tendencies in the development of phenomenology, the authors nevertheless are united by a single task of finding the growth points of the phenomenological tradition and discovering new thematic areas in which phenomenological analysis can be applied. The problems of the life world and the position of phenomenology in modern discussions with representatives of analytical philosophy on the problems of consciousness, the thematic intersections of phenomenology with anthropology, hermeneutical philosophy, biological and linguistic research are becoming the subject of analysis. The authors of the sections not only trace the obvious lines of the development of phenomenology in the concepts of M. Heidegger, M. Merlot-Ponti or O. Fink, but bold parallels with the theory of deconstruction of J. Derrida, with modern ideas of bioethics or traditions of Japanese spiritual culture are discovered and argued.

446-455

Authors: LIUBOV IAKOVLEVA

The review presents the central ideas of the Phenomenological Writings of the modern German philosopher H. Blumenberg. The main issue of this review is to clarify the general positions in the method of Blumenberg; his critics of the phenomenology of E. Husserl and to show the role of Phenomenological Writings in the corpus of Blumenberg’s works. The main focus is to identify the significance of metaphorology and anthropology for Blumenberg’s phenomenological approach. One of the most important ideas of Blumenberg’s research is the problem of finite human consciousness. He reinterprets consciousness in the context of its “factuality,” depending on the specific historical human existence. In this regard, Blumenberg criticizes the phenomenological problems of evidence and objectivity, underlines the role of “non-obvious,” incomplete and other forms of negativity in human experience. Consciousness, according to Blumenberg, along with such spheres as the world, time or the Other cannot be given in its immediate presence, therefore it requires metaphorical means of description. The life world is also described by means of metaphors that can be found in E. Husserl’s phenomenological language itself—in the metaphor of the soil or horizon. These topics reveal the meaning of the earlier project Paradigms for Metaphorology by G. Blumenberg and his initial interest in the symbolic, incomplete means of describing human consciousness and life. Further clarification of the anthropological dimension of phenomenology is carried out in the context of intersubjectivity problems. The concept of intersubjectivity, from the point of view of Blumenberg, is necessary not so much to justify the criteria of the objectivity of the world, as to reveal the boundaries of human consciousness in the experience of the Other. The conclusion of the review presents Blumenberg’s interpretation of the phenomenological method as a special “life practice” that can cross the boundaries of the principle of evidence and include such areas as paradox, hypothesis and incompleteness in understanding the activity of consciousness.

466–468

Authors: INETA KIVLE, RAIVIS BICEVSKIS

No

471–472

Authors: ANDREI PATKUL

No