Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology

11-14

Authors: RAIVIS BIČEVSKIS, INETA KIVLE

No abstract

45-60

Authors: ANNA MAŁECKA, PIOTR MRÓZ

The paper presents a non-standard interpretation of the celebrated Heideggerian existential das Man in terms of its oft-underrated unity with Dasein—an entity of a special ontic-ontological prerogative. The present authors intend to highlight this essential theme in terms of the specific unity of Dasein being-in-the world, covering many subsequent and adjacent existentials in the analytics of the Heideggerian existential hermeneutics, especially Mitsein/Mitdasein. Dasein’s existence-essence is based on the structure of possibilities, and hence free, spontaneous choices, while Das Man is a concrete choice of a certain modus of existence rendering—as it were—all other modi invalid and non-operational. Although Heidegger is far from taking up an ethical or moral stance in its traditional understanding, he is quite adamant that the phenomenon of das Man invalidates a truly human project of existing one’s own possibilities—to wit—be oneself (Jemeines).

77-95

Authors: ANNA KHAKHALOVA

The paper intends to supplement the studies of emotional affordances of BAA by elaborating on the conception of participatory sense-making as well as developmental studies on joint attention and interattentionality. I address different spheres of expertise from the experience-based phenomenological perspective, which allows exploring the problem both from the first-person and second-person perspectives. This research presents the conception of inter-selfness that carries on M. Merleau-Ponty’s idea of intercorporeality, T. Fuchs’ et al. analysis of intersubjectivity and phenomenologically oriented psychoanalysis by E. Z. Tronick et al., R. Stolorow et al. The mechanism of BAA is presented through the conception of participatory sense-making and the idea of minimal inter-attentionality in developmental studies. The paper presents an emotional affordances scheme that illustrates the emotional regulation of BAA. By examining this process of regulation one could see in what way the self becomes an inter-self in communication. The article also postulates correlation between cultural mediation of emotional affordances and their direct accessibility from the second-person perspective. In the last part of the paper, I examine social interaction from the viewpoint of developmental studies (C. Trevarthen, V. Reddy, M. Carpenter). The developmental perspective supplements the idea of emotional regulation in interaction, by focusing on primary such forms of BAA between a caregiver and a baby, as joint attention and mutual gaze. Herein, I demonstrate how the initial forms of the positive bodily-affective attunement develop into the interattentionality and self-representation practices of the subject. This point could contribute to the theory of personal identity by exploring the process of maturing of the sense of self in its different aspects. The results of the research could be useful for further study of BAA and its pathologies. The results could also be of use for the discussion on non-human or human-like affordance-based technological interaction theory.

108-122

Authors: RIHARDS KŪLIS

The secularized and rational-oriented mindset of the Western civilization does not preclude important elements of a religious worldview. The objective of the present study is to come to understand the role the categories of Being and God play in the present day spiritual situation. Heidegger’s and Rahner’s views are considered here within the prospective of the paradigmatic process. The latter marks the fading away of the classical understanding of God and search for new and divine meanings. Therefore I suggest considering some of the most significant motifs in the two philosophers’ reflection as regards the history of western civilization and our epoch in the context of the categories of God and Being. Among these motifs there are such attitudes as subjectivism, self-suggestion, disposal of beings, planetarism, oblivion of Being, loss of origins, groundlessness, alienation, situation of meaninglessness. It is due to these attitudes, especially owing to meaninglessness, that many people tend to raise again the issue of the concealed, the encompassing, God or Being. Or perhaps speaking about “Being” and “God” can be interpreted as something that leads to the oblivion of Being and to atheism. “Being” in Heidegger and “God” in Rahner single out the existential centre to which forms of life are related. Nowadays it is forgotten or even vanishes. “God” or “Being” hold everything together and confer meaning thereto. Could it be exactly what modern man is in search of? One has to find answers to these questions.

140-162

Authors: MĀRA KIOPE

Phenomenology contains potential that can be expanded to include the development of cognitive phenomenology concepts. One of the most notable works in this area is related to the name of Stanislavs Ladusāns (Staņislavs Ladusāns, 1912–1993), the famous Latvian and Brasilian philosopher. The article will outline the key elements of S. Ladusāns’s phenomenology of cognition, showing how his many-sided gnoseology was developed as the basis for multidimensional humanism to transform culture into a more humane one. At first phenomenology of cognition is discussed as the ground of many-sided humanism. The notion of many-sided or multidimensional humanism clearly affirms that human understanding about the human itself is based on a plurality of principles. At the end of the seventies Stanislavs Ladusāns decided to realise the philosophy-as-rigorous-science approach—a clear citation of Husserlian idea—and to concentrate attention on the human person within the manifold relations—providing his/her existential experience. All the system of rigorous science of many-sided humanism should be grounded on the theory of cognition. On the basis of epistemology, Ladusāns wants to build a unified picture of human existence, including the discoveries of many sciences and integrating them into multidimensional humanism through philosophy. Meanwhile the phenomenology of cognition in its final form as it is appears in the monograph Gnosiologia Pluridimensional (1992) was build up by Stanislavs Ladusāns during many decades. One of the first most important episodes in this process was the reinterpretation of the Thomistic concept of induction. Stanislavs Ladusāns deals with the conception of the general critical reflection by demonstrating the judgment-formation of the mind. Ladusāns holds that the sensual experience providing material contents of our knowledge displays certain nexuses between forms of experience, these may be transferred onto general inductive judgements. The second significant episode in the construction of system of the phenomenology of cognition is linked with the concept of “doubling-of-cognition-structure” by which the religious, spiritual experience becomes philosophically legitimate. Even in the case of religion the objective evidence comes first; it gives an opportunity to reason to ascertain about the existence of God. Stanislavs Ladusāns places phenomenology of cognition or many-sided gnoseology at the corner-stone of his programme of cultural regeneration. The capacity of reason is incapable for revigoration of culture—these are overestimated or underestimated—this has to be established in a truly gnoseological investigation. In the context of critics of culture and ideologies is presented Ladusāns’ correspondence with Welte and Heidegger, which reveals the intensive quest for thinking about being that where characteristic of the seventies of the last century aspiring towards the grasping of the Highest Being.

186-211

Authors: ULDIS VĒGNERS

Temporality is one of the key components of our experience, but the experience of time is hardly one and the same for all of us throughout our lives. The experience of time in its entirety is not solid and simple. It is a fluid and complex phenomenon consisting of a multitude of dimensions. In medical phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology there are ample cases of different temporal experiences analysed in the context of the illness experience. However, only a few attempts have been made to propose a conceptual framework that could not only be used to conduct a concrete analysis in a more systematic manner, but also provide a solid and comprehensive theoretical basis. The aim of this article is to draw on the rich distinctions found in Husserl’s phenomenology to outline a framework of different temporal dimensions for the analysis of temporal experience. The framework could provide conceptual tools to analyse temporal experiences in any field of study that deals with the human experience, including medical phenomenology and phenomenological psychopathology. The resulting analysis would be not only clearer, more comprehensive and precise, but also more systematic and conceptually consistent. The framework consists of fourteen dimensions of temporal experience ordered in seven binary distinctions: (1) change and structure, (2) immanence and transcendence, (3) ownness and intersubjectivity, (4) passivity and activity, (5) receptivity and spontaneity, (6) presentation and representation, (7) unthematized temporality and thematized temporality.

232-257

Authors: VIRGIL W. BROWER

The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveiled in 2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes worn on the surface of the face, throat, and neck. These emerge from an alleged “intending to speak” by the wearer silently-saying-something-to-oneself. This inner voice is believed to occur while one reads in silence or mentally talks to oneself. The artifice does not require spoken sounds, opening the mouth, or any explicit or external movement of the lips. The essay then considers such subvocal “speech” as a mode of writing or saying and the interior of the mouth or oral cavity as its writing surface. It briefly revisits discussions of telepathy to recontextualize Heidegger’s warning against enframing language exclusively within calculative technics and physiology, which he suggests is detrimental to Mundarten (mouth-modes of regional dialects). It closes in reconsideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of language and meaning in Ideas as it might apply to subvocal speech-recognition interfaces. It suggests ways by which the electrophysiology that the device detects and deciphers (as an alleged intention of a presumed natural language unspoken vocally or aloud) might supplement Husserl’s insinuation of the Leiblichkeit of language through a self-stamping extraction of an extension of meaning.

268-285

Authors: ONUR KARAMERCAN

Although Heidegger’s explicit account of “poetic dwelling” belongs to his later philosophy, there are important indications that he was already engaging with the core matter of the notion in his early thought. Contrary to the idea that in Being and Time, “dwelling” amounts to mere practical coping with the environment, we would like to demonstrate that the notion is already a poetic issue in his early thought, as it requires the appropriation of our relation to the world via an authentic experience of finitude. Following a topological mode of thinking, the paper thematizes the connections between Heidegger’s early and later thought, and elucidates the following three points: First, “freeing” and “letting” appears as the appropriate ethos of a poetic experience of finitude, one that maintains the “clearing” of meaningfulness. Second, a topological reading of Being and Time can explicate the notions of authenticity and inauthenticity as different disclosures of the clearing where human being-world correlation occurs. Third, the notion of “keeping-still” (Schweigen) can be interpreted as an authentic disposition that frees space for the disclosure of existence. The paper concludes that an authentic experience of finitude through “stillness” appears to reorient human ethos by releasing “discourse” from absorption in “idle-talk” and that such an act of existential re-orientation of one’s disposition towards the world is the essence of “authenticity,” and Heidegger’s early “poetic dwelling”.

305-311

Authors: RAIVIS BIČEVSKIS, VALTERS ZARIŅŠ

Book review focuses on two books by Gunther Neumann, dedicated to the thought of Heidegger and Leibniz. If one of the books deals specifically with the understanding of freedom in both of the two philosophers, then the other one deals more with Heidegger’s three approaches to Leibniz’s thought: (1) Interpretation of Leibniz in the context of the making of fundamental ontology and in Being and Time, as well as the reading of Leibniz after Being and Time; (2) Interpretation of Leibniz during the transition to Ereignis thought; (3) Interpetation of Leibniz in the framework of Ereignis thought. Author’s scrupulous close reading approach allows to show the changes in Heidegger’s approach to Leibniz’s philosophy, as well as sketch out the placement of Leibniz’s great themes on the horizon of Heidegger’s history of the truth of being. Author also shows that from metaphysics there stems a certain view in the modern philosophical discussions oriented on neurosciences—a certain view on the human being and on the freedom of will. On this background Heidegger appears as a thinker who has looked beyond the alloy of metaphysics and sciences, in which the concept of freedom has been greatly restricted. Heidegger manages (thanks to the radical questioning of Being) to turn the view on the problem of freedom, which appears in G. Neumann’s books as the main problem of philosophy—through the contact of Leibniz’s thought and Heidegger’s.

320-327

Authors: JAROSLAVA VYDROVÁ

The collective volume Early Phenomenology in Central and Eastern Europe: Main Figures, Ideas, and Problems, edited by Witold Płotka and Patrick Eldridge, enriches the ongoing and highly topical research of the history of phenomenology with the thematization of a specific period and localization of phenomenology. The authors of eleven chapters explore the emergence of phenomenology in local traditions outside the Germanophone area, its appropriation and development, describing the unique forms it acquired in individual environments. The book clarifies the characteristics of the early wave of phenomenology and provides a list of Central and Eastern European phenomenologists who participated in it. On the one hand, the volume is a contribution to historiography, enriching the study of the history of phenomenology thematically and thus contributing to the development of phenomenology itself; on the other hand, it introduces its own set of philosophical problems. These concern methodology and the issue of the Central and Eastern European identity, which is examined through the prism of the development of local traditions of phenomenology. When exploring the latter it is useful to introduce the concept of the marginocentric. This concept, which originated in comparative literature, facilitates an understanding of the unique cultural configuration of a concrete tradition in its communication with internal and external environments.