Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology

13-29

Authors: James Mensch

Husserl’s Crisis contains his final attempt to understand the world in terms of an ultimately constituting consciousness. The path he chooses is that of a reduction to the “life-world,” the world that appears when we bracket the results of the objective sciences. His claim is that “the ‘objective’ a priori [of the natural sciences] is grounded in the ‘subjective-relative’ a priori of the lifeworld”. It is from the latter that he attempts to achieve his vision of “a universal, ultimately functioning subjectivity”. In this article, I question whether this is possible. If the world were the product of this functioning subjectivity, the latter could not be part of the world. But, the inherent sense of the reduction to the life-world leaves us with the sensuous embodied subject, who is a part of the world. How can we think of the a priori in terms of this subject? I conclude by considering both Merleau-Ponty’s and Patočka’s attempts to conceive of such an a priori.

46-65

Authors: Alice Pugliese

The paper presents an assessment of the Husserlian concept of Lebenswelt (life-world) on the basis of the late manuscripts on genetic analysis. The reflection on the concept of the life-world intends to evaluate the contribution of phenomenology to the philosophical debate beyond the contention between realism, naturalism, and subjectivism. The paper starts by evaluating the idea of the “universal correlation”, thereby stressing the egological figure of the “Ich-kann” (I-can) as the proper candidate to achieve the constitution of the life-world. The author claims that the constitutive activity of the I-can is based not only on intellectual and perceiving acts, but rather on a comprehensive praxis, which also bears ethical meaning. The sense-borrowing activity of the I-can is namely responsible for the inner articulation of the plural particular worlds (Sonderwelten) within the encompassing life-world. Such a relation between interest-centered worlds and the encompassing life-world is not merely empirical and cannot be explained in causal and factual terms. It rather points out a peculiar subjective responsibility intended as a specific access to the world that bears a significant moral meaning. Here appears a pre-predicative and pre-normative form of responsibility rooted in the temporal and intentional structure of experience, connected with the first forms of socialization and with the essential structure of the life-world as a world “for everybody”.

82-99

Authors: Beat Michel

It is well known that Husserl never accepted to publish Ideas II. During one of his conversations with Cairns, he explained his failure to complete the second volume of Ideas by a “feeling of inadequacy to his task”. In this paper I argue that the apparent simplicity of the subject of Ideas II – the successive constitution of the material and animal nature and of the world of spirit – hides a much more difficult question: the relation between nature and spirit, and even more specifically the relation between mind and body. We will show that in Ideas II this problem leads to an aporia in both senses of the word: contradiction between two apparently valid positions and obstruction of a passage. Husserl may well have noticed this aporia when he spoke of a “vicious circle”. However, he was probably not conscious of its severity and did not really develop a solution. We will argue that Husserlian phenomenology simply does not have the conceptual means to tackle the difficulty. To surpass the aporia one must go beyond the strict context of phenomenology to reason in terms of a phenomenological metaphysics.

121-148

Authors: Victor Molchanov

Communication and intersubjectivity are considered as correlative problems of the phenomenology of consciousness. The term “communication” is taken in the narrow sense and refers to already formed communities with relatively independent subjects. Intersubjectivity is understood as a double constitution: the goals and means for their achievements, on the one hand, and their coherence of action, on the other. The source of intersubjectivity and communicative consciousness as a whole is the discriminating ability of consciousness, and above all the ability to distinguish between one’s own and another’s, as well as between what is real and what is unreal. The first difference is correlated with the problem of a common understanding of goals and objectives, the second with efforts for coherence. In this paper, I analyze Husserl’s approach to the problem of intersubjectivity. I show that the concepts of one’s own and others’ must be supplemented by the concept of real and unreal. Criticism of the Husserlian conception focuses on the premise of the early phenomenology of the primacy of perception in relation to judgment and all other modes of consciousness. In this paper judgment is regarded as the primary ability of a person to communicate, to determine the relationship between parts and the whole in search of common solutions and a common understanding, which remain relative and factual also through judgments. I conclude that the difference and correlation of the act of consciousness and meaning is the source of communication; any communication involves internal communication on the type of feedback. Any communication has two levels: (1) communication and (2) communication of communication.

164-176

Authors: Georgy Chernavin

The article raises the question of possible common philosophical experience, a more fundamental one that the usual division into schools or traditions of philosophy. I propose to seek for such an experience in a typical (for the twentieth-century philosophy) form of a philosophical wonder which I would call the “oddity of the obvious”. Using the example of the Husserl’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophies, I try to demonstrate how this experience works, showing the important discrepancy between the two philosophers: a differently placed frontier between the sense and the nonsense. The most striking feature that characterizes the types of philosophical wonder established in the analytical and phenomenological traditions is an element that escapes their view: in the first case it is the being-in-itself which is considered absurd (widersinnig); in the second case it is pre-predicative experience which is proclaimed meaningless (unsinnig). I specify what strategies Husserl and Wittgenstein use, dealing with the experience of the “oddity of the obvious”; namely, they try either to retain the incomprehensibility of the obvious or to dissolve the “mental cramp”. The philosophical tradition (phenomenological or analytical one) takes one of the possible forms of the philosophical wonder to be the basic form. For the phenomenological philosophy, quite an emblematic feature is the effort to retain the “oddity of the obvious”, and for the analytical philosophy (of wittgensteinian provenance) – the dissolution of “mental cramp”, of philosophical bewilderment, the release from vague intellectual disquiet. Concluding the article, I propose to consider the alteration of the philosophical wonder models as a possibility of overcoming intrashop discrepancies between the philosophical traditions.

191-225

Authors: Alexey Savin

The article aims to explain the connection of Marcuse’s concept of dehistorization with his interpretation and criticism of the Heideggerian concept of historicity. Dehistorization in Marcuse’s philosophy, according to my tentative definition, is the kind of transformation of the creative social forces and human abilities denying an existing reality that makes them elements of the mechanism producing and reproducing the existent reality, and thereby makes them a manner of repression of the human striving for freedom and happiness and a way to perpetuate domination. According to Marcuse, dehistorization is the main form of reproduction of the false totality. The idea of dehistorization is the prevailing critical concept in Marcuse’s philosophy. It appears in the course of his criticism of fascism. The basis of the formation of the dehistorization concept is Marcuse’s criticism and interpretation of Heidegger’s conception of historicity during his “Heideggerian Marxism” period (1928–1933). This Heideggerian conception is the ultimate achievement of contemporary philosophy. The ultimate character of this achievement is given to it, according to Marcuse, that it treats history from the viewpoint of being in contrast to Hegel’s idealistic dialectics and German historicism of the 19th century, which interpreted it from the viewpoint of consciousness or the spirit. There are four main tendencies in Marcuse’s criticism and transformation of Heidegger’s conception of historicity. 1. The deformalization of Heidegger’s treatment of historicity of Dasein. The explanation of the material substance of historicity, i.e. the explanation of the material character of conditions of human existence (Dasein) as the definitive feature of historicity. 2. The concretization of Dasein, its treatment not as an individual, but as a class in view of substantial differences of the environment (Umwelt), material conditions of its existence. 3. Following from both the deformalization of historicity and the concretization of Dasein – the rehabilitation of the “being-with” (Mitsein) and the public sphere (Mitwelt), and, thereby, of the space of political struggle as the sphere of authenticity. 4. The disclosure of the fundamental role of the phenomenologically considered spatiality (Räumlichkeit) in the constitution of concrete historicity, i.e. historicity determined by the material, social and political character of Dasein and the world. Marcuse’s interpretation and criticism of Heidegger’s conception of historicity and his criticism of dehistorization based on it paves the way to his ontological interpretation of Marxist dialectics as the method of the struggle against dehistorization and false totality and as the only truly revolutionary way of thinking.

250-281

Authors: Natalia Azarova

In this article, we examine Heidegger’s poetry, which was published in the 81st volume of his collected works. We consider it as an independent discursive practice that could express existence in a different mode of philosophical discourse, which could either be called “philosopher’s poetry” or “discourse of a thinker” — the experience of thinking in a pure form. With the help of poetry, Heidegger establishes the very possibility of poetic thought. Heidegger’s poetry during all his life, his work is ever-changing, from rhymed text to rhythmical vers libre, while simultaneously varying formats: counting rhyme, ecphrasis, a poem-commentary, aphorism, and so on. At the same time, the format of Heidegger’s poetry, as wells as its graphics, the attention to short (simple) words, form a connection with the Avant-garde poetry contemporary to him and in particular the minimalism of the middle and second half of the 20th century. The actual form of the poem (the rhyme, the length of the verse, and its vertical dimension, the iconization and the ductility) of the poetical word allows the philosopher to build connections that are equal in value without using common discursive elements such as cohesion tools and semblance. An etymological explosion sounds more persuasive in a poem than in a philosophical text, not only because of consonance, but also due to the graphics of the verse. Heidegger is attempting to “achieve” an untranslatable text, and thus his poetry is a manifestation of the possibilities of his native language, which is may be conceived as the universal discourse of a thinker. The most important aspect in the poetry of the philosopher is a new concept of text creation, an experience of a contemporary discussion through the speech of Parmenides. The non-linear nature of a poetical text, the dialectic of fragmentation/unity could materialize the lack of linearity in the wandering in front of the opening (Lichtung). The thinker’s discourse is characterized by a procedure of recurrence that is achieved by the cyclical nature of Heidegger’s poetry, the main unfinished text, and his gravitation around mini cycles and open cycles. Poetical discourse is a way towards antipropositionality, whereas poetry allows to stop perceiving language as a tool for creation of expression devices. It is also a theological approach: not to deduct the unknown from the known. Heidegger’s poetry can be seen as theological poetry as well.

303-319

Authors: MAX SCHELER, Trans.: Daniil Dorofeev, Alla Shapkina

We hereby present to the reader a translation of a fragment of one of Max Scheler’s main works, The Nature of Sympathy. Max Scheler was the most important figure in the philosophical life of Europe in the 1910-20s in phenomenology, axiology and philosophical anthropology. This work is an example of expressive, original and deep interconnection and intersection of these directions. The book was published in 1923 and was a significantly expanded, supplemented and rethought version of the book Phenomenology and Theory of the Feeling of Sympathy and of Love and Hate (1913). One of the central themes of this work is the development of a holistic theory of phenomenology of intersubjectivity (which first appeared in printed form) on the basis of the examination of the problems of personal relations between the “I” and “Other” by the experience of emotional sympathy. In the presented translation, Scheler carries out a detailed phenomenological analysis of the phenomenon of “sympathy” (Mitgefühl), in the course of which he criticizes theories of the Other (such as that of T. Lipps) and reveals various forms of “sympathy.”

329-357

Authors: EDIT STEIN. Trans.: Anastasiia Kartcheva. Editors:Natalia Artemenko, Alexei Krioukov

This publication is a translation of the article by Edith Stein, a German-Jewish philosopher, in which she analyses and compares philosophical positions and theories of Edmund Husserl and Thomas Aquinas. The selection of such central figures results from two main directions in Stein’s life and research: on the one hand, from phenomenological work as Husserl’s scientific assistant and editor of his manuscripts, and, on the other hand, from her conversion to Catholicism, which led her to a detailed learning of Thomas Aquinas’ legacy and initiation into the Carmelites religious order. The challenge that Edith Stein offers in this work is to bring these two ways together, to break the boundary between faith and knowledge and to show the possibilities of productive interaction between both phenomenological and scholastic methods. Despite their great divergences caused by historical background and different starting points of philosophical thought, Stein shows us, that these methods share common basic foundations and are able to complement each other in solving philosophical problems arising from experience, knowledge and practical action in the world. Thanks to studies that have been undertaken, the author draws the conclusion that the scholastic legacy of Aquinas could be promising for findings ways to deal with some internal problems of Husserl’s phenomenological project and to overcome its limitation. The first attempt of such a comparison that was realized in this article provides the basis for another of Stein’s works, namely her book Finite and Infinite Being (Endliches und ewiges Sein), where she tries to build her own ontological project based on the synthesis of the scholastics and phenomenology but is placed mostly in the coordinate system of Aquinas’ theoretical field.

366-375

Authors: Vadim Prozersky

The main ideas of Eugen Fink’s book Play as Symbol of the World and Other Writings are discussed in the review and the most significant thoughts of the German philosopher on the problems of ontology of play are highlighted. O. Fink has managed to give a new solution to the ontological problems of play, as one of the basic phenomena of human existence, to uncover its previously unknown aspects and to show its dual nature and worldliness. In general, O. Fink’s analysis of play shows the productivity of the phenomenological investigations in new areas of research.

390-410

Authors: Andrei Patkul

In this review, I emphasize and analyze the main outcomes of the philosophical investigation presented in Victor Molchanov’s book. I state that Molchanov’s interpretation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, which is based on the so-called “model of production” as well as his reconstruction of F. Brentano’s thought, could be very fruitful for the contemporary understanding of the essence and the limits of phenomenological research. I think that the phenomenal primacy of differences over identities and the methodological primacy of analysis over interpretation in phenomenology defended in this text are authentic theses that could renew the phenomenological way of thinking. The thesis of the primacy of space-experience over time-consciousness and the genesis of such consciousness as a kind of fiction from the space-experience is contentious, but could also be productive for the understanding of phenomena and the phenomenal world. The conceptions of the primordial body-judgments and space as condition of historicity are of great interest and well-reasoned applications of the main theoretical thesis of the primacy of space-experience over time-consciousness. Finally, I conclude that the author of the book formulates an original version of phenomenological philosophy. We could characterize this type of phenomenology as an “analytical phenomenology.” I am sure this version should be detailed and developed in the future investigations by the book’s author and his followers.

9-44

Authors: Sergei Nikonenko

The matter of the article is to give an outline of American theories of intentionality and to compare it with E. Husserl’s phenomenology. It is one of the first Russian systematic studies of American theories on intentionality that is represented here. It is John Searle’s philosophy that is the main American theory of intentionality. Some other thinkers (R. Chisholm, J. Findlay, N. Rescher, E. Thompson, D.W. Smith, etc.) are studied here too. Searle treats intentionality as a natural quality of consciousness. He forbids the linguistic approach; intentionality is understood from the point of view of humanistic (internal) realism. Intentionality is successive when the subject is satisfied by his acquaintance with the object. The main feature of intentionality is aspectuality that has the subject of not eliminated subjectivity of any conscious act and the first person ontology. Searle proposes the collective intentionality that is analogous to phenomenological intersubjectivity. E. Thompson proposes the synthetic theory of intentionality that unites phenomenology, philosophy of consciousness and neural science. D.W. Smith proposes the theory of intentional context. He rejects the study of atomistic intentional acts. Husserl’s and Searle’s theories of phenomenology may be united in several main points: 1. Experience is an internal process; 2. Experience cannot be separated of aspectuality; 3. Intentionality cannot be eliminated in any conscious act; 4. The other mind can be considered only from internal point of view; 5. There is collective intentionality of mankind. There are several distinctions between Husserl and Searle: 1. Searle is an realist on intentionality, Husserl puts on an idealistic concept of it; 2. Searle considers intentionality from empirical point of view, not from the rationalist one; 3. Searle is an adept of skepticism about self, he rejects transcendental concept of cogito. But irrespective of distinctions there is convergence of analytical and phenomenological views in contemporary philosophy of consciousness.

58-78

Authors: Corijn Van Mazijk

Over the past years McDowell’s conceptualist theory has received mixed phenomenological reviews. Some phenomenologists have claimed that conceptualism involves an over-intellectualization of human experience. Others have drawn on Husserl’s work, arguing that Husserl’s theory of fulfillment challenges conceptualism and that his notion of “real content” is non-conceptual. Still others, by contrast, hold that Husserl’s later phenomenology is in fundamental agreement with McDowell’s theory of conceptually informed experience. So who is right? This paper purports to show that phenomenology does not have to choose between any of these positions. Central to the outline I offer is that there are multiple approaches to non-conceptual content in play today. By separating them we can begin to oversee the diversity of phenomenological contributions to the debate about non-conceptual content. I conclude that current literature presents us with at least three sound phenomenological accounts of non-conceptual content, but also that these are generally not incompatible with conceptualism.

97-115

Authors: Sergei Kulikov

The subject of our research is the features of naturalism and of historicism in the whole system of the scientific worldview. The author identifies and describes the types of naturalism, achieving the purpose of clarification of circumstances in which its separate options become complementary ways of scientific understanding of reality. The resulting picture is enriched with the features of historicism, introducing the element of relativity to the scientific views of the world. Special attention is paid to the possibility to reconstruct the eidos of science as a generalized ideal of research activities. The research methodology includes the implementation of the phenomenological research program, the foundations of which were laid in the works of Husserl. This program allows us to understand the idea of science in the framework of the ideal of cognitive activity, the roots of which date back to the writings of Aristotle. The phenomenological perspective of our research allows us to see the essential characteristics of both naturalism and historicism, to identify options for their constructive engagement. The result reveals a possibility to make a nontrivial conclusion about the relation between naturalism and historicism, for the debate of naturalism and of historicism, taken by itself, i.e. as relatively independent phenomenon, opens horizons of the internally unified consciousness understood in science in two ways. The first one is a set of research intentions of the validity; the second one coincides with the implicit dependence of the scientific worldview from the orientation to the historical changes of the foundations of self-reflection of science that, in fact, form the semantic structure of scientific knowledge as a unique ideal for research activities.

140-160

Authors: Vitaly Lekhtsier

This article focuses on the phenomenological aspects of Cheryl Mattingly’s empirical research. Cheryl Mattingly is one of the brightest representatives of modern American medical anthropology. Medical anthropology – actively developing social science – often, especially since the end of the 80-ies of the last century, refers to the conceptual resources of phenomenological philosophy to justify their methodological and value priorities. Such reference is connected with the attention of medical anthropologists to the subjective experience of illness and health, to the meaning of suffering, to patients’ storytelling, to situational effects of clinical interactions, to the changes in the life-world of man caused by serious chronic diseases. The first part of the article explicates the theoretical framework of the version of the applied phenomenology, which is offered by Mattingly in her long-term research conducted in 1990s and 2000 years. The subject of these research works was clinical interactions between occupational therapists and their patients. The analysis of these interactions is based on Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenologically grounded thesis that between the narrative and the experience of time there is an isomorphism thanks to the binding force of the plot. Mattingly brings the concept of narrative and a series of accompanying characteristics from the sphere of philosophical narratology to the sphere of phenomenology of (inter)action. The main idea of Mattingly is that the action itself has a narrative structure, – in the sense that actors themselves perform emplotment of interaction, configure the current events in a way that they are built into a whole, namely therapeutic history in which each successive episode of therapy follows from the previous one. The second part of the article illustrates on example of real therapy session how these ideas work in practice, in the process of the interpretation of particular therapeutic interactions. In general, we are planning to show that, although Mattingly’s appeal to phenomenological context is not systematic, and it is more correct to speak of the phenomenological “motives” in her work, it can be treated as one of the most interesting applications of phenomenological philosophy in the field of social sciences.

181-191

Authors: Alexander Frolov

We present here a Russian translation of the 8th paragraph of Husserl’s book “Experience and Judgment” (1939). The paragraph includes a systematic outline of the phenomenological conception of horizonedness, while in no other Husserl’s book – from “Ideas I” to “Crisis” –we can find a fragment dealing with the idea of horizon elaborated so deep. The idea however is a substantial element of Husserl’s conceptualization of experience as an open, indefinite process. In the 7th paragraph of “Experience and Judgment” the world is conceived as a universal “ground of certainty”, upon which all our experience is based, and in the 8th paragraph the intentional structure of experience (mostly as perception) is explicated. That structure is characterized as horizontal. The crucial difference here is between the “inner horizon” and the “outer horizon” of an object. The outer horizon stretches finally into the “world-horizon” – the ultimate, universal horizon comprising all partial horizons and perspectives. In its turn, typization functions here as a way of representation of objects laying beyond the field of what is given. Typization also covers latent aspects of present objects and concerns even their patent aspects. The most general type, according to Husserl, is “object as such” – a basic category of formal ontology. The idea of horizon has been a fundamental principle of classical phenomenology. Nowadays it provokes hot discussions among such authors as Jean-Luc Marion, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. The discussions relate to the very essence of phenomenology. That’s why we find publication of the fragment to be important.

201-210

Authors: Dalius Jonkus

This publication presents three manuscripts of the famous Russian-Lithuanian philosopher Vasily Sesemann. We offer publications of essays on Scheler, Bergson and Lossky – these are the texts of Sesemann’s manuscript collection, which is located in Vilnius University (F122-104, F122-105, F122-106). This group of essays is integral. All these essays, in one way or another address the issue of the philosophical understanding of intuition, which Sesemann discussed in all his major works. Essays are dedicated to the philosophers who somehow influenced the author’s position. The texts were written during his stay in the camp of the GULAG (1950-1955) in Taishet (Irkutsk region). It is known that Sesemann taught Western philosophy and aesthetics for other prisoners. We can assume that these essays refer to the materials or recordings of his lectures. Among the prisoners in the same camp was Dandaron, who later became a famous scientist and created the original version of neo-Buddhism. While preparing manuscripts for publication it was discovered that in the posthumously published “Letters on Buddhism” Dandaron often recounts the thoughts of Sesemann, especially when it comes to understanding of intuition. In Dandaron’s handwritten archive in Ulan-Ude are the manuscripts, which, according to the titles and topics discussed, coincide with the manuscripts of Sesemann. From the available data we conclude that the manuscripts found in Dandaron’s archive – “The relationship between matter and spirit” and “Aesthetics” – are the recordings of Sesemann’s lectures.

235-240

Authors: Jakub Bużniak

The report presents an overview of the International Conference on “Phenomenology and Practice: The 2nd Conference on Traditions and Perspectives of the Phenomenological Movement In Central and Eastern Europe” that took place on September 8-10, 2016 at the Institute of Philosophy, Sociology and Journalism, University of Gdansk, Poland. The report characterizes the structure of the conference, presents the conference attendees and introduces the main ideas of key lectures given by the guests.

265-271

Authors: Man-To Tang

The review provides an outline of the book and critically examines the Heideggerean hermeneutic phenomenological approach developed by F. W von Herrmann to the refutation of Husserl’s phenomenology. Reviewer traces four essential differences in author’s critical analysis of the two phenomenological approaches by Heidegger and Husserl, and problematizes several difficulties in the author’s interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenology. On the one hand, the reviewer shows that Husserl’s phenomenology, at least, can be interpreted in two ways, namely the static approach and the genetic approach. Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, especially in Crisis, explicitly expresses his hermeneutic character. Therefore, von Herrmann’s interpretation may not be faithful to Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole. On the other hand, von Herrmann develops Heidegger’s idea of the primacy of a-reflective hermeneutics, which is a pre-theoretical primordial science. With reference to K. Popper’s and K. Jaspers’ criteria of science, the reviewer doubts that the development, which aims at going beyond reflective and theoretical science, can still be regarded as a science because it cannot meet any established criterion.