Phänomenologische Forschungen 2005

Martina Plümacher: Wahrnehmung, Repräsentation und Wissen. Edmund Husserls und Ernst Cassirers Analysen zur Struktur des Bewußtseins; Walter Hoeres: Der Weg der Anschauung. Landschaft zwischen Ästhetik und Metaphysik; Anselm Böhmer: Kosmologische Didaktik. Lernen und Lehren bei Eugen Fink; Silvia Stoller, Veronica Vasterling, Linda Fisher (Hg.): Feministische Phänomenologie und Hermeneutik; Paul Ricoeur: Gedächtnis, Geschichte, Vergessen

Dieser Text wurde verfasst für einen Workshop, der im September 2015 an der TU Darmstadt unter Leitung von Petra Gehring stattfand und der Theorie von Bernhard Waldenfels gewidmet war. Im Zentrum stand das komplexe Werk Antwortregister von 1994. Dem Verfasser oblag es, ausgehend von seinem Buch Verzeihung denken. Die verkannte Grundlage humaner Verhältnisse, das Netzwerk der Verbindungen zu Bernhard Waldenfels’ Theorie der Responsivität herauszuarbeiten.

In classical philosophy of time, present time mainly has been considered in its fleetingness: it is transition, in the Platonic meaning of the sudden or in the Aristotelian sense of discreet moment and isolated intensity that escapes possible perception. Through the idea of subjective constitution of time, Husserl’s phenomenology tries to spread the moment. He transcends the idea of linear and empty time in modern philosophy. Phenomenological description of time experience analyses the filled character of the moment that can be detained in the performance of consciousness. As a consequence of the temporality of consciousness, he nevertheless remains in the temporal conception of presence. The phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, however, is able to grasp the spacial meaning of presence. In his perspective of a phenomenology of perception, presence can be understood as a space surrounding the body, as a field of present things given in perception. Merleau-Ponty recovers the ancient sense of ‘praesentia’ as a fundamental concept of being in the world.

In this paper I shall present two elements of Husserl’s theory of the life-world, facticity and historicity, which are of exemplary importance for his late phenomenology as a whole. I compare these two notions to two axes upon which Husserl’s phenomenology of the life-world becomes inscribed. Reconsidering and reconstructing Husserl’s late thought under this viewpoint sheds new light on a notoriously enigmatic problem, i.e., the concept of the transcendental and its relation to the „mundane“ – to the world as constituted by transcendental consciousness. Drawing on unpublished manuscript material I claim, specifically, that the transcendental subject, in its „self-enworlding“ activity, as it were, „covers its tracks“ so as to obscure the transcendental origin of the worldly ego. This self-obscuring is itself an eidetic law of transcendental consciousness. The ambiguity in the transcendental/mundane ego is thrown into relief through Husserl’s analyses concerning the corporeal functioning of the lived-body. These considerations help further clarify Husserl’s claim that the transcendental and the factical are „moments of one structure“, while also incorporating the problem of historicity.

We have never been so indebted. However, we have never felt less in debt. This paradox of our time deserves some clarifications. While watching critically at the debt, which, through philosophy and not economy, tends to enlighten the reality of today’s crisis by the structural crisis touching its concept, that is what we try to do. We base our explorations on philosophy as well as literature. Indeed the great thinkers tend to get indebted towards each other without reflecting on their debt. Presenting the essence of the debt first leads us to assert that the debt is not the consequence of a gift anymore than the duty would be a consequence of the debt. Stating the meaning of it more precisely makes us report the mundane debts on the humane debt, that which we have to pay and that which we may honor.

According to Husserl, the process of idealization plays a key role in the distinction between human sciences and nature sciences. Yet if we consider Max Weber’s ideal typical concepts in history and sociology, it appears that they are logically very close to the husserlian ideal essences produced by the process of idealization. This leads us to consider this problem of the distinction between these two methodologies anew in Husserl’s work. Finally, it allows a fruitful discussion of a ‚crisis‘ of human sciences which is in many ways similar to the one Husserl diagnosed in nature sciences.

This article seeks to disclose the sense(s) of translation by attending to it in the phenomenological key with Edmund Husserl’s The Origin of Geometry. I suggest that the text could be approached through the prism of generative phenomenology, and I investigate it from two different perspectives: xenological and Derridean. Both perspectives are employed toward the same objective: to demonstrate the theoretical relevance of Husserl’s text to the understanding of a complex social phenomenon such as translation. The emphasis on sociality, historicity, and tradition, as these themes transpire in The Origin, brings about a new understanding of translation as a phenomenon of the liminal in-between, with its basic structure defined as the encounter with the alien. Derrida gives this emphasis much attention in his commentary on The Origin. In this commentary, he focuses on the constitution of a communal history, which is not possible without the iteration of the origin, the basic means of which is communication on the general level, while on the level of different socio-cultural worlds translation comes up as the most optimal mode for the encounter with the alien. The encounter takes place in the liminal in-between which points to repeatability as the original sense of translation inscribed in the acts of binding and approximation.

In this contribution I will discuss Husserl’s eidetic method, which is dedicated to discover the apriori structures of consciousness. The method of seeing essences of the Logical Investigations (1900) should mark the opposition of phenomenology as an apriori science of consciousness and empirical psychology. The eidetic method starts as an everyday human ability to recognize equalities in different things, but it can and must be refined to become the basic phenomenological method. In the lecture Phenomenological Psychology (1925) the eidetic method is specified as eidetic variation, which is characterized by the demand for unlimited variation of the starting example in phantasy. – The second part of my article is dedicated to critical considerations. One topic is the problematic interaction of an ideally infinite variation together with the necessary limitation of this variation (to avoid crossing the conceptual demarcations of the starting example). From this point of view questions concerning the true sense and unavoidable limitations of the eidetic method are discussed anew.

Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations was the breakthrough of phenomenology. What made it a breakthrough was the new way of explicating truth or evidence as self-givenness or adequacy. Husserl did however also have another interpretation of truth: evidence as indubitability or certainty of apodicticity. Originally Husserl thought that apodicticity increases the evidence of something already adequately given. Yet, in the first Cartesian Meditation Husserl differentiates the two modes of evidence. In this article the way to this split up of evidence is elaborated with the help of some recent publications in Husserliana. It is also suggested that the fact that Husserl has two separate views on truth is one reason for the dispersed state of Husserl- research. This article argues that Husserl’s early view on evidence adequacy is more original and interesting. The real philosophical challenge, however, is to be able to join the two modes of evidence under one strenge Wissenschaft.

The pivotal insight that paved Conrad-Martius’ (1880–1966) (CM) way in elucidating the ontological exclusivity of the I, denoted as “I-adhering being” (Ichhaftes Sein), is that despite its peculiarity and incomparability to any other mode of being, only the ontological foundations of the real being in general might enable a faithful comprehension of the I. The phenomenological interpretation suggested in this article presents CM’s ontological understanding of the I vis-a-vis her philosophy of Being, in particular in regard to three of its general characteristics – existence, intelligibility, and self-adherence (Sichheit/Selbsthaftigkeit) – which provide the critical approach to the ontological study of the I. Finally, the understanding of the ontological exclusivity of the I-adhering being is achieved by means of an explication of the joining together of its typical affinities and discrepancies in regard to Being in general.

In this paper I shall attempt to point out the dynamic and composite nature of the meaning fulfilment in Husserl’s Sixth Logical Investigation with particular regard to the reflective attitude that seems to be involved in expressive acts. The bearing of meaning implicitly points to a recognition of the acts of expression in their specific character and disposition, in order to find their proper expressive form. Although in the Sixth Investigation it remains uncertain whether this reflexive achievement represents a character of the expressive acts themselves, Husserl’s attempts to provide a revision of the text indicate a more complicated, not solely dualistic, relationship. I suggest here that the specific intentionality of feeling plays an important role in mediating between meaning-intention and meaning fulfilment.

The phenomenological reflection of „deception“ and „self-deception“ occupies a central place in Max Scheler’s whole phenomenological period. In contrast with „self-givenness“, „deception“ essentially means an inappropriate way of givenness, and „self-deception“ indicates an inappropriate way of givenness of the „self“. Based on the further criticisms and reflections on F. Brentano’s and E. Husserl’s related thoughts, Scheler distinguished „self-perception“ from „inner perception“, and attributed the primordial position to the „inner perception of the other“ via criticizing the „deception of self-perception“. He then obtained an account of a truly primary way of grasping the other, namely, the primary „self-givenness“ of „the other’s person“. This contributes to the possibility of Scheler’s „phenomenology of intersubjectivity“. In this paper, I will argue that Scheler’s phenomenological criticism of „self-deception“ and his phenomenological analysis of „inner perception of the other“ function as an „introduction“ to his „phenomenology of intersubjectivity“.

In Being and Time, Heidegger nowhere treats the phenomenological reduction. In his Groundproblems of Phenomenology though, he designates reduction, construction and destruction as the three groundparts of phenomenological method. The whole of this method has thus to be seen as Heideggers alternative for Husserls reduction. But for a subject to be able to undertake this three-part methodological project, it has first to be converted from Husserlian ego to properly ‚Dasein‘. I show that the analytic of existentials of Being and Time can be seen as containing a rather precise description of the course of this conversion. It starts from originarity to end up with the subjects momentary participation in the project of being. It is structured by three turns that I call transcendental, not only because they are not initiated by the subject itself.

Communication is formed and passed on simultaneously historically and lively in its a2sthetical corpus, sensory content and in its objective-generally valid meaning: Everybody in the same communit can enunciate and understand a statement in the same way not only through one’s own experience, but also through secondary takeover. Language forming belongs in its entirety, in the perceived and non-perceived meanings, to the human community life. The non-perceived given meanings are conveyed in a communicative community through the symbolic language. The formation of symbols presupposes a trustworthiness between the communicators and it also sets further a continuation of the trustful receiving from the past to the future. Communication can strive for its historical permanence by virtue of the universality of symbols, and symbols can render an idea identifiable and transmittable on the basis of its reference to word of life.

Wilhelm Dilthey: Briefwechsel Band II 1882–1895. Hg. von Gudrun Kühne-Bertram und Hans-Ulrich Lessing; Giovanni Tidona: Ding und Begegnung. Sprach- und Dingauffassung im dialogischen und existenzialen Denken. (Reihe dia-logik, Band 7); Emmanuel Alloa und Miriam Fischer (Hg.): Leib und Sprache. Zur Reflexivität verkörperter Ausdrucksformen

Kant’s concept of chiliasm is part of his research about history. More specifically, it is an aspect of the empiriological strategy which Kant pursues through this research. The aim of this strategy is to combine in methodological necessity experience and reason by way of cultivation, civilisation and moralisation, in order to obtain the general and fundamental dignity of human beings instituted as the „Weltbürgerrecht“, the only complete state of enlightment and as that by apriority the telos of history.

What is the concept of life that, according to Hans Jonas, can and must constitute an object of political responsibility? It is neither mechanist nor purely phenomenological, but rather has a speculative aspect. It is presented through the questions of being, self and teleology: life is a singular’s act of constant creation of itself as a world-relation. Why does Jonas desire the protection of the „image of man“? This makes sense if „image“ is understood not as a given figure, but rather as man’s capacity of freedom and responsibility. If democracy happens in a world as a dialogue with others, than jonassian politics, which concern the very possibility of world and life that does not speak (as in the case of the unborn), are not democratic: yet their democratic element has to be invented.

This paper critically examines the notion of the other as it emerges in ethics and in the so called politics of difference. The author confronts this notion with social-ontological and dialogistic thematizations of otherness. On that basis a radical revision of what ‚difference‘ means is claimed to be neccessary in ethical and political respect.

This paper deals with the idea of the search for self, mainly in the thinking of Karl Jaspers. The discussion will focus on the very nature of this search and the power that motivates it. For this purpose, it will employ a phenomenological viewpoint that will follow Jaspers’ course from its first point of departure, in which the self appeared. As an object of observation, up to the point where the self acquired the status of the subject, i.e., appeared as a personal and existential issue. The positively achieved insights about the self and the frustrations involved in this search will be clarified systematically. The author argues that Jaspers’ search was inspired by a constant experience of dissatisfaction, which directed the self to transcend every present understanding of the self and to look for an improved one. Lastly, the search for the self will appear as leading to another search, i.e. that for Being and transcendence.

Maine de Biran (1766-1824) has rarely been thought of as a forerunner of phenomenology in German speaking countries, although mere self-apperception, which follows the primacy of practical transcendentality, surfaces in his analysis. Examining the differential lecture of the sense of touch, as well as the ‚Metaphysics of the Hand‘ by J. Derrida, the author questions his monistic premises to perceive the immediacy of any initial endeavour as a motion, which originates in the possibility of life itself. This result in combination with the sensitivity of the skin leads to a radical phenomenological description of immanent self-manifestation in the flesh, bodily subjectivity and the visibility of flesh as body.

The borderlines of the current psychiatric and psychological discourses concerning suicidality are ascertained when asked: What is it like to be suicidal? A phenomenological understanding concerning this question presents to us the paradox of suicidality. The suicidal person lives in a contradiction with himself. On the one hand there is the basal feeling of despair and inevitable helpless insufferability, showing life itself as a destructive force. On the other hand the extinguishing of ones own life appears as a salvation, showing death itself as a release not found in life. Indeed the paradox of suicidality – the contradictory meanings of annihilation and salvation – appears incontrovertible and cannot be solved in suicidality, for this requires either the experience of overcoming suicidality or the act of suicide itself.

This paper pursues two aims. First, it outlines the main intentions of a recently established research project dealing with problems of subjectivity in the field of medicine. Secondly, it discusses Viktor von Weizsäcker’s Gestaltkreis with a view to what this famous physician considers a phenomenological method appropriate to the special requirements of his field of work. Considering whether his ideas make sense from the point of view of a phenomenological philosophy, we try to explain some basic correspondences of phenomenology and Weizsäcker’s anthropological medicine. Doing this, we focus on two issues, namely objectivity and subjectivity, and theory and practice. Referring to the latter there are two meanings of ‚practice‘ which have to be carefully distinguished: natural experience embedded in our daily life-world activities on the one hand, and applications of (natural-)scientific knowledge on the other hand.