Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology

16-53

Authors: George Heffernan

Abstract In Heidegger und der Mythos der jüdischen Weltverschwörung (2014), Peter Trawny claims that in his Black Notebooks (2014/15) Martin Heidegger is guilty of «ontological-historical anti-Semitism» (seinsgeschichtlicher Antisemitismus). There can be no doubt that Heidegger describes «the Jews» as «a kind of humanity» that lives by «the principle of race», displays «empty rationality and calculative capacity», and employs «the machinations of world Jewry» to propagate a «homeless» and «worldless» way of life accompanied by «ahistorical» and «atemporal» thinking — as «a people» that took advantage of «the metaphysics of the West», «especially in its modern development», to pursue «the uprooting of all being(s) from Being» as its «world-historical task». The question is whether in his narrative Heidegger assigns a relevant or pivotal role to his former mentor, colleague, and friend, Edmund Husserl, the founder of the phenomenological movement and a Jewish convert to Christianity, because he seems to suggest that there is a connection between Husserl’s Jewishness and his philosophy, as well as that his break with him was the result of the latter’s failure to deal with Being in terms of time or history. This paper investigates whether Heidegger’s remarks and Trawny’s reflections have any significant implications for an understanding of the philosophical relationship between Husserl and Heidegger. It finds that Trawny makes a strong case that a number of Heidegger’s statements in his Black Notebooks reveal him to be generally guilty of «ontological-historical anti-Semitism», but that he does not present a convincing case that in these texts Heidegger’s critique of Husserl specifically is motivated by «ontological-historical anti-Semitism». Key words Heidegger, Husserl, Black Notebooks, Trawny, ontological-historical anti-Semitism, phenomenology, Being.

70-89

Authors: Francesco Tava

Abstract The aim of this article is to show how both Jan Patočka and Jürgen Habermas, starting from a reinterpretation of the idea of «lifeworld», engaged a critique of modern civilisation, aiming (with different outcomes) at a redefinition of the concept of political community. In order to achieve this goal, I firstly focus on Patočka’s understanding of modern rational civilisation and its attempt to fix the fracture between «life» and «world». At this stage, I take also advantage of Hans Blumenberg’s distinction between these two terms, in order to better clarify Patočka’s stance on this problem. Secondly, I analyse Habermas’ ideas of lifeworld and system, and their uncoupling in modern societies, as well as the reemergence of this issue in Habermas’ recent works on the European economic and political crisis. Finally, I focus on the very different ways in which Patočka and Habermas tackled the ideas of conflict and crisis in contemporary world, also in view of a possible path out of this crisis through a re-constitution of Europe. Key words Lifeworld, civilisation, communicative action, system, crisis, Europe, solidarity, community.

115-132

Authors: Inga Römer

Abstract The article outlines the central lines of László Tengelyi’s intellectual path and hints at some perspectives that could be continued on the basis of his last writings. The first part shows the development of his thought from the first Hungarian works on Kant up to his last book, so as to pose the question of a possible unity in his work. Such a unity can be seen in the diacritical tension, systematically enlarged in each period, between freedom, the story of a told life, expression and the finite projection of a world on the one hand, and guilt as an event of destiny, the region of a wild sense, a wild responsibility and an open infinite on the other hand. A second part presents the main ideas of «World and Infinit. On the Problem of Phenomenological Metaphysics», especially the programme of a phenomenological answer to the problem of metaphysics. The core of this programme is a metaphysics of facticity in the realm of which a methodological transcendentalism and a metontological transcendentalism become possible. A third part tries to situate László Tengelyi’s ideas within the context of contemporary «realism». Two of Meillassoux’ central arguments are discussed in order to show how László Tengelyi’s approach provides a phenomenological answer to their challenges. Key words Phenomenology, metaphysics, transcendental philosophy, realism, Kant, Tengelyi, Meillassoux.

150-170

Authors: Bence Péter Marosán

Abstract The main topics of the following article are Edmund Husserl’s conception of phenomenological anthropology and its reception in László Tengelyi’s philosophy. Thematically the paper is made up of two parts: the first treats the development of Husserl’s notion of the transcendental subject and the particular role the transcendental person played in his idea of a phenomenologically founded anthropology. The second examines the special influence of Husserl’s idea of the transcendental person on Tengelyi’s concept of the history of life (Lebensgeschichte) and on his thought of the metaphysics of contingency and experience. In the first part (which is made up of four sections) I analyze the development of Husserl’s notion of the subject, and I show how Husserl arrives at the concept of the concrete transcendental person in his genetic phenomenological researches of the 1920s. The idea of the transcendental person was the core of Husserl’s late conception of phenomenological anthropology. Husserl’s late concept of the transcendental subject could be characterized as a fragile and complex form of self-identity, and he even used the notions of «life path» («Lebensweg») and «history of life» («Lebensgeschichte») in this context. The crises of human life, crises of self-interpretation became analyzable problems within this sphere and with the means of transcendental phenomenology. The second part (which is made up of two sections) investigates the details of Husserl’s influence on Tengelyi’s work of life, with a special regard on his interpretation of the subject, the experience and metaphysics. Husserl played a fundamental role in the elaboration of Tengelyi’s own notion of self-identity, where self-identity was constituted through certain events of destiny (Schicksalsereignisse), which confronts us with radical alterity and strangeness (Fremdheit). Husserl was also an important source for Tengelyi, when he elaborated on his concept of the passive formation of sense (Sinnbildung) and his metaphysics of contingency. The ultimate foundation of the last formulation of Tengelyi’s phenomenological metaphysics (in his posthumous work, Welt und Unendlichkeit) was the idea of a concrete transcendental person, which we could find in the late Husserl. Key words Phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, Edmund Husserl, László Tengelyi, phenomenological metaphysics, transcendental ego, formation of sense (Sinnbildung), self-identity, history of life (Lebensgeschichte).

183-193

Authors: Mikhail Khorkov

Abstract This article is written in the form of a brief research note and reports on the role and significance of the reception of Max Scheler’s phenomenological philosophy of values in the axiology of Polish philosopher Tadeusz H. Czeżowski (1889-1981) and in the works of his Russian student Larissa A. Chuhina (1913-2002), who played an important role in the studies in philosophical ideas of Max Scheler in Russia and Latvia during the Soviet period. Particular attention is paid to the fact that due to the influence of Czeżowski Chuhina interpreted Max Scheler not so much as one of the founders of philosophical anthropology, but primarily as proposer of the original phenomenological theory of values. The emphasis is also made on a significant modification which Max Scheler’s philosophy of values experienced in axiology of Czeżowski and Chuhina. Key words Max Scheler, theory of values, phenomenology, axiology, Polish philosophy of the 20th century, Tadeusz H. Czeżowski, history of reception of phenomenological theories in Russia and Latvia, Larissa A. Chuhina.

214-231

Authors: Jaroslava Vydrová

Abstract This study derives from the genealogy of phenomenological and cubistic aims and their thematic interests at the beginning of the 20th century in the Central-European milieu. In the first part, we observe common and close questions of Husserl’s philosophy on the one side and the new artistic initiative of cubists on the other. This level of observation and comparison is in the second part recognized and deepened thanks to the analyses of Czech philosophers (Bayerová, Patočka, Mathauser), theoreticians (Vlček, Kramář, Lamač and others) and works of cubists themselves (Kubišta, Filla, Hofman and others). The philosophical scope of the consideration also opens the principal question — which is the topic of the third part of the study — of the intertwining of phenomenological and cubistic methods (epoché, reduction and pictorial elaboration). Because it is not one unitary style, Cubism brings with it a complicated interpretative task: in relation to this, we present the polemic concerning the use of polyperspectivity and geometrisation; thanks to phenomenology, their deeper meaning can be revealed. We identify as phenomenological tendencies in cubistic works of art, their claim to liberate perception, to create pure forms and to refuse the symbolic, representative and imitative function of art. We analyse these questions with respect to the creative possibilities of the subject/artist as well as the pictorial/ perceptive character of the world. Key words Husserl, Czech cubism, Central-European philosophy, phenomenological method, perception, object, work of art

247-257

Authors: Olesya Bessmel'tseva

Abstract The following fragment represents the aesthetical researches of the German philosopher Moritz Geiger acted in the first half of the 20th century, whose works are considered to have initiated the phenomenological approach in the aesthetic domain. Being a fellow by many bright personalities, the representatives of the psychological aesthetic (Wundt, Lipps), Geiger favours on the one hand the psychological approach for it leads out of the speculative philosophism into empirical experience. On the other hand Geiger gets close with phenomenology and Husserl and belongs since 1907 to the Munich school of phenomenology. Geiger sees in the phenomenological approach an opportunity to shift the focus from the feeling subject to the aesthetic object. He insists on the permissibility and rather necessity of speaking about the objective aesthetic characteristics of an artwork. They are the aesthetic values, which mark an object of aesthetic enjoyment. So in the fragment below Geiger focuses first on the phenomenological nature of the aesthetic enjoyment. In the attached fragment Geiger proceeds from the Kantian argumentation about the particularities of aesthetic enjoyment and analyses the aesthetic enjoyment in its relation to the interest and the will of an individual as an enjoying subject. The preface introduces the general structure of the article, its stepwise concretizing of the problem domain beginning with the outline of the phenomenological bounds of pleasure in general and moving toward the narrow analysis of the aesthetic enjoyment in particular and its relation to the axiology and the psychological phenomenology. Thus the main peculiarities of Geiger’s phenomenological method could be put to the scrutiny of his analysis of the chosen distinct domain as well as his tendency to avoid any schematism and any simplification within the domain. That makes Geiger’s language such an subtle and sensitive instrument for it should be able to articulate the slightest nuances of pleasure types. Key words Phenomenological aesthetic, psychologism, aesthetic enjoyment, will, interests, Kant, Schopenhauer.

272-280

Authors: Roman Sokolov

Abstract This publication is a translation into Russian of Marc Richir’s article Phenomenology of the poetic element, accompanied by a preface of translator. In his article Richir reveals «poetic element» of phenomenal experience as its fundamental condition, relying on it as a tradition and techniques of transcendental phenomenology and the empirical study of psychoanalysis. Richir gives concrete empirical content borrowed from Husserl’s concept of perceptual fantasies, referring to the theory of D.V. Winnicott’s «transitional object», and then extrapolates the results to the experience of creation and perception of the «poetic» work (knowing the latest in a broad, Aristotelian sense). Perceptual imagination of Richir’s phenomenology should be separated from «pure fantasy»: the latter is a «minimum level of conceptual self-image». It has been in existence as «the rudiments of sense», which take place in a passive synthesis of «extra-linguistic peace schematism». Pure fantasy becomes perceptive fantasy just when there is inversion (revirement) «germ of meaning» in the «sense bud», thanks to some fancy a change of perspective. This process involves the formation of a special «field of play» (Winnicott), or transcendental interfact space, which establishes a primary (preintentional) type of relationship between the two egos: the baby and mother, spectator and actor. In this respect, perceptual «sees» in fantasy not an object, and the other perceptive imagination in the fantasy that belongs to another. This formed the primary locus of communication: interfact transcendental space that is being «played intentionally», then it becomes a space of intersubjectivity. Dating back to some fancy-affective sphere, perceptive fantasy (or «poetic element») has a «phenomenological redundancy» in comparison with the logical concept. Therefore, one can speak about a special type of knowledge of reality beyond its objectivist and logical explication. Key words Transcendental phenomenology, perceptive fantasy, poetic element interfact transcendental, transitional field transcendental bosom, the phenomenon of language, formless, fantasy-affectation, the experience of the sublime.

299-304

Authors: Witold Płotka

Abstract The report presents an overview of the International Conference on «Horizons Beyond Borders. Traditions and Perspectives of the Phenomenological Movement in Central and Eastern Europe» that held on June 17–19, 2015 at the Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, Hungary. The report sketches the mina idea of the event, and points out organizational background of the meeting. Moreover, the report summarizes the main theses of key lectures given by the guests, and it shows the structure of the conference schedule. Key words History of the phenomenological movement, phenomenology in Central and Eastern Europe, politics, practical involvement, Michalski, Tengelyi.