Phänomenologische Forschungen 2001

Edmund Husserl: Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1893-1912); Martin Heidegger: Geschichte der Philosophie von Thomas von Aquin bis Kant; Thomas Bedorf, Kurt Röttgers (Hg.): Die französische Philosophie im 20. Jahrhundert. Ein Autorenhandbuch; Günter Figal: Verstehensfragen. Studien zur phänomenologisch-hermeneutischen Philosophie; Guy van Kerckhoven: Epiphanie. Reine Erscheinung und Ethos ohne Kategorie; Christian Lotz: From Affectivity to Subjectivity. Husserl’s phenomenology revisited; Claus Stieve: Von den Dingen lernen. Die Gegenstände unserer Kindheit

Fabio Ciaramelli, La distruzione del desiderio. Il narrcisismo nell'epoca del consumodi massa, Bari: Dedalo 2000, 219 S.; Regula Giuliani (Hg.): Merleau-Ponty und die Kulturwissenschaften. München: Fink 2000 (Übergänge; Bd. 37), 361 S.; Thomas Franz, Der Mensch; und seine Grundphänomene. Eugen Finks Existentialanthropologie aus der Perspektive der Strukturanthropologie Heinrich Rombachs, Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach 1999, 193 S.; Thomas Fuchs: Leib, Raum, Person. Enwurf einer phänomenologischen Anthropologie. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2000, 419 S. Ders.: Psychopathologie von Leib und Raum. Phänomenologisch-empirische Untersuchungen zu depressiven und paranoiden Erkrankungen. Darmstadt: Steinkopff 2000, 323 S.

Academia widely agrees in that Sartre in his early philosophy of freedom in Being and Nothingness (1943) ignores the restrictions people are subjected to by society. Here, Sartre proposes a concept of absolute freedom that is not affected by reality, even regarding extreme situations like incarceration. This paper starts with a review of critique raised by three renowned thinkers, philosophers as well as sociologists: Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno and Pierre Bourdieu. With respect to this I will show in a second step that the criticism of Sartre’s position as expressed in his second main philosophical work, Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), misses the mark. Whereas in the context of existentialism the individual project is liberated from social constraints, Sartre states in his later works that the project realises the individuals’s social fate in different ways. Today his early position – man defines his self and is nothing else than what he makes of himself – sounds like a strategy of motivation designed by Neoliberalism aimed at maximising the so-called human capital. However, the author of Critique of Dialectical Reason presents us with stimulating ideas how both the uniqueness of human beings as well as the social conditioning of

If the inner consciousness of a mental state is a part of the mental state itself, then one is forced to admit an ‚inner consciousness of the inner consciousness‘. This counterintuitive consequence can however be avoided, if we conceive of the inner consciousness of the mental state as a ‚mode of giveness‘ of the state itself. This paper discusses Brentano‘ s theory of inner consciousness from the point of view of Husserl’s philosophy.

This article examines the limits of Heidegger’s ontological description of emotionality from the period of Sein und Zeit and Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik along the lines outlined by Lévinas in his early work De l’existence à l’existant. On the basis of the Lévinassian concept of “il y a”, we attempt to map the sphere of the impersonal existence situated out of the structured context of the world. However the worldless facticity without individuality marks the limits of the phenomenological approach to human existence and its emotionality, it also opens a new view on the beginning and ending of the individual existence. The whole structure of the individual existence in its contingency and finitude appears here in a new light, which applies also to the temporal conditions of existence. Yet, this is not to say that Heidegger should be simply replaced by Lévinas. As shows an examination of the work of art, to which brings us our reading of Moravia’s literary exposition of boredom (the phenomenon closely examined in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik), the view on the work of art that is entirely based on the anonymous and worldless facticity of il y a must be extended and complemented by the moment in which a new world and a new individual structure of experience are being born. To comprehend the dynamism of the work of art in its fullness, it is necessary to see it not only as an ending of the world and the correlative intentional structure of the individual existence, but also as their new beginning.

Against a stream of culturally oriented scholars some scholars in aesthetics, such as Arthur Danto and Noel Carroll, have maintained that there is a sense of “seeing” and visual recognition that does not depend upon historical and cultural practices. This essay shows that Danto’s assumption of a difference between a “core” and an “extended” form of perception and visual recognition should be rejected. The underlying argument of my considerations in this essay is the following: the distinction between a “pure” and an “extended” perception or visual perception is untenable, since, as a phenomenological reflection can reveal, our normal mode of perception is always extended. In this vein, it is argued here that there is, after all, only one mode of perception and that Danto’s position is based on abstractions from the real phenomenon. Consequently, whereas Danto maintains that it makes sense to talk about a “natural” form of seeing, this essay argues that “seeing” is itself a culturally defined way of comportment, and that assumptions about naturalistically defined perceptual core processes turn out to be idealized constructions.

This essay examines Heidegger’s phenomenology of conscience in Being and Time. From a phenomenological perspective, the call of conscience needs to be analysed with respect to who is calling, who is being called, what message is conveyed, and how the message is conveyed. Heidegger’s results are rather surprising to our common understanding and impose various challenges on his interpreters. In my article, I return to Heidegger’s text in order to question some persuasions and assumptions of the common readings. The call comes from me, yet in such a way that it overcomes me. The call does not come from a different being in the world, and the call of conscience should thus not be conflated with the ‘voice of the friend’ mentioned in an earlier section of Being and Time. Rather, we need to take the call seriously as alien and yet my own, giving me to understand that I am guilty before and outside of any economy of deeds. Because the call of conscience belongs to such a fundamental level, Heidegger’s response concerning the ‘how’ of the call also becomes understandable. The call is unambiguous, even though we always give ambiguous interpretations of it.

The essay undertakes a defence of Husserl’s theory of intentionality against the argument of , idealism‘ raised in the secondary literature, which has recently been supported by analytical philosophers with the help of externalist arguments. In contrast, it shall be shown that the phenomenological method is compatible with the externalist concept of meaning. The naiverealistic world relationship that constitutes the starting point of phenomenological description is also preserved in the phenomenological attitude. The fundamental relevance which naïve realism has for phenomenology safeguards the phenomenological consciousness and meaning theory against internalistic-solipsistic misunderpretations.

This essay tries to elaborate an accurate description of shame and guilt from the agent’s point of view by focusing on typical cases of such experiences. In a first step, we approach the peculiarity of a phenomenological investigation by introducing three methodical directions. All of them are formulated in a negative mode, i.e., in terms of prohibition, namely: the instruction not to adhere to a naïve notion of phenomenon, not to project reflective attitudes into the prereflectively given, and not to go beyond the relevant situation of experience. Following these methodological considerations, we discuss the familiar characteristics of shame and guilt. According to a wide-spread view, we are faced with self-related feelings that are, more or less overwhelmingly, encountered as troublesome. These feelings either, in case of guilt, trigger special types of social interaction (avowal and reparation) or, in case of shame, entail isolation, an intensified self-perception and introspective embarrassment. Whether and to what extent this current picture can be sustained, will be discussed on phenomenological grounds. We take it that the social features of shame and guilt result from their inherent self-relatedness. Thereto, we try to answer, among others, the following questions: Do feelings of shame and guilt, apart from their social functions, represent characteristic modes of self-awareness? How are they correlated with specific modes of time-consciousness? Can a phenomenological description contribute to our understanding of the moral impact of shame and guilt?

This essay examines the early reception of Scheler’s anthropological thought in Spain. The article traces the two main ways of reception of Scheler’s work in the School of Madrid and the School of Barcelona. I argue that, on the one hand, the Spanish translations of the works of the early phenomenologists – Scheler was a central figure among them – contributed to the diffusion of Scheler’s thought; and that, on the other hand, the Spanish authors subjected Scheler’s thought to a critical assimilation and further developments. Scheler influenced the Spanish philosophy of the human affectivity, in which the capacity to feel, the values and love as a kernel of the human being occupy an exceptional position. This reception shows the originality of Spanish authors that incorporate Scheler’s ideas to their anthropological interest and develop these ideas in the direction of their own phenomenological anthropology.