This article deals with the pivotal and complex theme of Merleau-Ponty’s late work. This means the relationship between the visible and the invisible. First, six systematic steps will clarify this relation. Second, it will be asked in which way one could say that the invisible really is or can be an absolute one.

Archilochos recommends that we have to know the rhythm that maintains human being. In this lecture, the element of Erlebnis, sensation vitale, lived experience, is traced as the rhythm fundamental to modern civil society. Erlebnis transforms the old rhythm of a teleological rationality in two diverging directions, one of a rationality that treats lived experience as a product of life-management and one, opened up by philosophy and art, in which at the end Erlebnis gives way to Gelassenheit, release.

The paper discusses the critique of Gunther Anders (1902–1992) against his Doktorvater Heidegger, on the basis of the studies written in Paris and during his American exile in the thirties and forties and published in Uber Heidegger (2001). Long before Sloterdijk, Anders rejected Heidegger’s defence against modern civilisation and technique; on the contrary, it is mankind which technology made “antiquated.” Anders was also the first one who drew the attention to Heidegger’s “pseudo-concreteness” as oblivion of the origins and of the bodily and economic needs: Dasein is “the self-made man as a mystic.” Heidegger kept silence on power mechanisms, and its anti-democratic philosophy is intricately related to the national-socialism. Anders explained the success of Heidegger’s individualistic nihilism in the French existentialism through the basic mistrust caused by the war. In a somewhat similar light may be understood Heidegger’s revival in the post-socialist East European countries.

The article explores a formal similarity between two investigations of human body presented by M. Merleau-Ponty and M. Foucault. Considering human body in its relation to space, time and bodily scheme they come to oppositely different conclusions. While Foucault stresses that human body is always in process of production and alienation, Merleau-Ponty argues that it opens the way to self-understanding. In the article I am performing a shift from the Foucauldian analysis to that of Merleau-Ponty and back in order to present a variety of subjects – counter-subject, co-subject, transitive subject – which allows understanding human being beyond metaphysical and social reductionism.

This essay is devoted to the analysis of the conceptual grounds of Heidegger’s and Fink’s interpretations of the relation between generations as a factical (anthropological) concretization of being-with-one-another. It is shown, that the cosmological teaching of Fink overcomes a systematic negativity of the existential analysis of Heidegger concerning the following questions: 1) what kind of infinity is accessible for human being in its fundamental finitude? 2) how is constituted the authentic being-with-one-another? 3) what kind of attunement is decisive for human being? These three moments are considered in their interconditionality which is clarified in the frame of the phenomenological description of the interrelation between parent and child.

In the framework of a comparative analysis the article tries to show structural similarities and parallels between Husserl’s phenomenology and Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. The first step is to present their common conviction that the traditional concept of consciousness in the Modernity – based on the concept of “interiority” and that of re-presentation (Abbildung) – is not able to solve the real problems of meaning and experience. The second step is to show that their response to this metaphysical difficulty are not completely different, but have some strange complementarity, based on the concept of rule. Time and rule on one hand, and rule and language-game on the other determine the two different aspects of sense.

In this biographically orientated paper, I investigate the relation between Edith Stein and the family of Edmund Husserl, with specific emphasis on the relation between Stein and Husserl’s wife Malvine. Stein followed Husserl from the University of Gottingen to the University of Freiburg, where in 1916 she received her doctorate of philosophy with a dissertation written under Husserl’s supervision: “On The Problem of Empathy.” Between 1916-1917 Edith Stein was Husserl’s assistant. Despite the fact that Husserl did not support her in obtaining a professorship, she maintained, after a break of some years, contact with the Husserl family. After Husserl’s death in 1938 Stein reestablished her relationship with Malvine Husserl through a correspondence. Stein gave her some advice concerning her conversion to Catholicism. A step which Stein had taken some years before.

Th is analysis of Heinrich von Kleist’s comedy „Amphitryon“ develops the thesis that its comical can be seen in the correlation but insoluble difference between the phenomenality of love and the “symbolical institution” (Marc Richir) which goes along with the diff erence and connection between the symbolical institution of language-system (langue) and its phenomenological life (langage).

In the Phenomenology of Husserl it is certain that the concept of “I” frames an important sphere of problems. But it is still difficult to say that his concept of “I” is clearly defined. Therefore, in my paper I will illuminate the definition of Husserls concept of “I”. According to Husserl the following thesis is fundamental: The transcendental “I” is always presence (dabei) in all experiences of consciousness. Nevertheless this does not mean that “I” constitutes all experiences of consciousness. Consciousness is nothing else than the consciousness of “I”, but even “I” generates in some kind from consciousness. In the analysis of the stream of consciousness the “generation” of “I” is implicated. During the progress of the genetic analysis it becomes clear, that the stream of consciousness can not be analysed detailed by the egological approach. In the stream of consciousness a phenomenon occurs, alongside the passive synthesis of consciousness, which Husserl described as “Life of drive”.

At the very beginning of my article I explain the concept of intentionality in the realm of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. In this explanation I analyse the phenomenological concepts of noesis, noema, sense, appresentation, object and try to show the relationship between intentionality, temporality, and intersubjectivity as transcendental structures of experience. Than I review a tendency in phenomenological literature (namely in the works of Heidegger, Sartre, Hildebrand, and Schmitz) which lead to a radical transformation of the concept of intentionality. In the last part I examine a possibility of usage of this transformed concept in the conception of Alfred Schutz’ finite areas of meaning.

“The temple of consumption as a postmodern myth and the materialized utopia of post-history” deals with imaginary motifs connected with the shopping mall, which is currently called in German “temple of consumption.” A mall makes real somewhat the mythical Schlaraffenland (pays de Caucagne) of the late Middle Age. The architecture of the mall is postmodern, while that of the classical department store, is modern. Time manifests itself fourfold: as the subjective duration of shopping, the qualitative calendar of celebrations, the prohibition of history and the folding up of the past, present and future into the present. Finally, the customers’ behaviour expresses an escapist desire to desire and a perverted katharsis.

Martin Heidegger was the famous reviver of philosophical anthropology based on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. In his critique of the European anthropological tradition he conceptualizes human being as “Existenz” and “Dasein.” Following Heidegger, Eugen Fink (1905-1975) and Heinrich Rombach (1923-2004) developped a pluralistic anthropology within the concept of basic phenomena. For Eugen Fink there are five existential and co-existential phenomena: death, love, work, power and play, which are dialectically connected. These five phenomena are the transhistorical and transcultural constant factors of human persons as individual and social beings. Despite Fink’s criticism of Heidegger’s anthropological formalism, his anthropological conception can be defined as existential-ontological anthropology. Heinrich Rombach deepens this conception. There is no fixed existence of the basic phenomena for each person. Rombach argues, that each person has to find his own basic phenomenon. These phenomena are different in each historical epoch and culture. For example, love in the Roman Empire is totally distinct from love in postmodernism. There is no fixation on five basic phenomena, though each phenomenon can have the function of a basic phenomenon for a human being. Finally, Rombach makes the distinction between basic individual and social phenomena. While Rombach’s philosophy is focussed on a functional and processual ontology, which he himself calls structure ontology, his anthropological conception can be characterised as a structure anthropology at all.

Adolf and Anne Reinach influenced Edith Stein (1891-1942) as mentors in her studies in Gottingen and in her religious experience. From 1909-1917 Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) held an important position as assistant professor to Edmund Husserl. After his early death in the First World War, his magnificent way of passing on the phenomenological method of Husserl’s Logical Investigations was confirmed by Roman Ingarden, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, and other scholars. In this essay the biographies and works of the couple Adolf and Anne will be described in the perspective of Edith Stein, who helped to edit Reinach’s works (Gesammelte Schriften, Halle 1921).

The article deals with three questions: What is to be understood by the undefinability of man? In which sense do worldviews have limits? What is meant by the “and” between undefinability and the limits of worldviews? A distinction is to be drawn between comparative and absolute undefinability. The former means that sciences have not yet come to an acceptable definition of man, the latter means that undefinability is the ground of existence of man, as it is experienced in border experiences (“Grenzerfahrungen”). A worldview can be understood as the apprehension of a meaningful coherence of man and world. A worldview is anthropocentric and is distinct from others in respect to the existential standpoint from where the connection of world and man is apprehended. From an unreflected lived worldview can be distinguished a reflected worldview. It is possible that it discovers a radical break between man and world. In quite different ways this is done by Dilthey’s interpretation of the border experiences of birth and death, by Nietzsche’s concept of the soul of nations (“Volksseelen”), and by Kant’s concept of “unsociable sociability.” The assumption of an absolute undefinability of man can be understood as the ground of a universal solidarity by which the antagonistic contradictions of different worldviews seem to be reconcilable, because it limits the claim on absoluteness of worldviews.

The focal aspects of Eugen Fink’s philosophy are the world and the question of human life’s place within it. In the interplay of different topics such as basic phenomena of human being, the cosmic game and phenomenological problems of education, there is a development of various traits of dialectical thought hidden in his philosophy. This article tries to follow and to describe these crossing lines (e.g. meontic aspects, asubjectivity or the crossroads of the Greek hen kai pan within philosophy) in order to explore some guidelines for further research in philosophical anthropology.

This paper disputes the claim that the so-called soul-body dualism finds its solution in the analysis of the intersubjectivity from the viewpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology and in the concept of selflessness in the philosophy of Mahayana-Buddhism. The intentionality of instinctual drive as the passive synthesis provides the reason for Husserl’s intersubjectivity and the possibility of Buber’s I-Thou relation. The selflessness in this relation is the concept of Buber’s thou and in Husserl’s intersubjectivity lies in the interesting connection with the non-egological dimension of Buddhism.

The concept of the habituality is to consider in reference of the temporality, as far as it is acquired in the course of the time. On the one hand the habit is not the unique being in the time like event or fact, but it lasts for a while. On the other hand, the habit is not valid supertemporally or omnitemporally like the ideal objectivity, but it has the beginning and the end in the time. In this article it is tried to relate the habituality to the temporality. At first, the difficulty to determinate the habituality is clarified in reference of the temporality. To avoid this difficulty Husserl pays attention to the intentional relation to the past. Secondly, in the analysis of the horizontal network of intentions the habituality will be investigated in reference of the past as sedimentation and future as anticipation. At last it is shown that in Husserl’s late years the habituality bases on the instinct. There we try to interpret the instinct not as inherent ability but as pure activity.

In the decline of Heidegger’s life, he said that his early interest in the problem of category already suggested “the question of being (Seinsfrage)”. This paper deals with Heidegger’s interpretation about the category. I want to demonstrate two sources which permit him to accept that category in his own particular interpretation: that is to say Aristotle and Dilthey. Heidegger learned Dilthey’s “category of life (Lebenskategorie)” from which he read that category is life itself, has as its nature an articulation of its own self and a tendency toward the world. In addition, he reads about the “logos”-character of the category in Aristotle: namely, category means to speak about the world. The world is spoken, but it is our respective lives that express the world as such. In other words, the world at the same time speaks and is spoken by its self. This structure is analogical to the structure of “the question of being” because Being (Being of Dasein) is questioned and the same Being questions itself. Herein we can find a starting point of Heidegger’s thought.

The essay confronts Heidegger’s notion of running ahead toward death in resoluteness with Ricoeur’s notion of indebtedness toward the past. A first section gives an interpretation of Heidegger’s concepts of an existential being guilty or responsible, the call of conscience and the running ahead toward death. The second section discusses Ricoeur’s critique of the Heideggerian conception of running ahead toward death and sketches Ricoeur’s own notion of death. A third section shows how Ricoeur modifies the Heideggerian notions of guilt and conscience. The essay closes with the integrative thesis that Heidegger’s understanding of death highlights the irreplacability of the individual and might, in spite of Ricoeur’s critique, very well find a place in Ricoeur’s temporal ethics.

In the history of modern art impressionism and cubism are usually opposed to each other. The work of the impressionist is held to be based on sensation, that of the cubist on form. Essentially, however, in both the same revolution takes place. The motif of the enveloppe in the work of Monet in his later life and that of an espace tactile in the cubist experiments of the young Braque provide evidence of the search for a more authentic and original image space than the perspectival. In this respect the discovery of the papiers collés in 1912 can be conceived as the turning point in a mystical night, where the traditional outlook dies, to give way to a new image space, the direction whereof is entrusted to an emptiness that has been released from the confines of perspectival space.