Studia Phaenomenologica

Henri Maldiney’s aesthetics can be seen as an attempt to push traditional phenomenological descriptions of the image, such as can be found in the works of Husserl and Sartre, to their theoretical limits. In this paper, I examine how Maldiney’s phenomenological approach to visual works of art leads him to disclose a non-intentional dimension of the image which is that of “form.” At this level, the image is not primarily a structure or modification of consciousness, but a mode of presence to the world. Next, in turning towards what Maldiney considers to be non-objective forms of pictorial representation, exemplified by Byzantine mosaics and the works of Paul Cézanne, I show how this presence is articulated rhythmically in a tension which embraces both image and viewer. Finally, I explore the meaning of Maldiney’s claim that the image is not an imitation of reality, but synonymous with reality itself.

While inheriting from Husserl’s phenomenology, Ricoeur aims at determining a philosophical anthropology. Imagination can then be thought as what makes possible a mediation dealing with the disproportion between sensibility and understanding; it can be seen as one of the guiding threads of Ricoeur’s anthropology before becoming a theme or a field of analysis. But if this philosophy of imagination encompasses the issue of image, to the point of making these two terms mostly interchangeable, it too includes a specific philosophy of image, which must be recovered. In this perspective, one could follow a path going from the most general standpoint (the elaboration of a philosophy of image in the wake of a phenomenology of imagination) to the most particular one (the recognition of the image as a symbol, sign or trace) while determining the role of symbolic mediation related to image.

The Orthodox icon is often claimed as unique among images. Yet many proponents of this view, such as Leonid Ouspensky and Pavel Florensky, defend this singularity through a polemic against Western realism using a logic that culminates in a polemic against the world of experience. In this paper, I will use phenomenology to dismantle these two false dualities, against realist images and real experience, by uncovering the deeper concerns that motivate them. First, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of painting to collapse the dichotomy of carnal and spiritual images. Then, I use Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenality of Revelation to reframe the dichotomy of worldly and spiritual experience. This broadened understanding of experience will serve as a starting point to refine our understanding of what is claimed by the icon, both in its function as an image and in the world it opens for those who approach it on its own terms.

The purpose of the article is to offer a phenomenological description of VR images and their experience. In the first section, I briefly present the peculiar features of these kinds of images; in the second section, I compare VR images with phantasms, especially in the light of the idea of “presentification” (Vergegenwärtigung), and then I discuss the reality or unreality of VR image-objects; the third section elaborates an analysis of VR images according to the notions of image object (Bildobjekt), and discusses the issue of “presence” both of the representing image and the user; finally, in the last section, I focus on the correlated experience of the subject, which I describe as a switching between image consciousness and perceptual apprehension.

What does the imperceptible mean? Is not such a question unavoidable for Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who is an illustrious thinker of perception? In this paper, I demonstrate that the French philosopher, in his published texts and unpublished manuscripts, provides an insightful reflection regarding the phenomenon of imperceptibility, which permeates some main domains of his thought. I underscore that his approach is articulated on two intimately related concepts, namely the imperceptible and the imperception. I start by unveiling Merleau-Ponty’s archetypal refusal of two extreme philosophical positions that conceive of the imperceptible, on the one hand, as a purely factitious or factual entity, and, on the other hand, as a radical and absolute reality. This approach leads me to discuss Merleau-Ponty’s keynote conception, namely an imperceptibility that appears paradoxically at work for perception. I show that such an interdependence between imperception and perception typically takes for him the form of a specific chiasm, of which I scrutinize several notable expressions. Lastly, I address Merleau-Ponty’s insightful sketch of an even further sophisticated theory, wherein imperception would be eventually reintegrated within perception itself.

While correctly emphasizing that the idea of theological inspiration in phenomenology and vice versa might be very fecund, the current discussion on the theological turn does not always affirm that Janicaud was simply wrong as regards the characterization of new French phenomenology. This is why it is necessary to create a more balanced image of the discussions on the theological turn and contemporary phenomenology. The paper achieves this aim 1) by demonstrating that there was no theological turn in French phenomenology; 2) by analysing the true nature of the turn taking place in phenomenology. It concludes by affirming that contemporary French phenomenology—freed from the label “theological turn”—is a living branch of philosophy capable of contributing to the solution of some of the burning issues of today’s world, such as ecological crisis.

Two recent works in phenomenology of space address unusual themes. Ballanfat’s L’espace vide is concerned with a primal spatialization yielding an Open that is irreducible to a three-dimensional container for objects, while DuFour’s Husserl and Spatiality describes a layered space of ritual whose sensuous immediacy is infused with intercorporeal, interaffective, inter­generational, and geo-historical moments. Both books demonstrate that the phenomenological tradition can deal with complex topics and unfamiliar styles of experience, and both indicate the ethical import of their findings.

By examining the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy from 1901 to 1914, this essay reveals that he possessed a more robust philosophy of gestures than has been accounted for. This study is executed in two stages. First, I explore how Husserl analyzed gestures through the lens of his semiotics in the 1901 Logical Investigations. Although he there presents a simple account of gestures as kinds of indicative signs, he does uncover rich insights about the role that gestures play in communication. Second, I examine how Husserl augmented his theory of gestures in his 1914 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation. Husserl describes some gestures as signals, which are experienced as intersubjective communication, as having a temporally diachronic structure, and as possessing an obliging tendency. Husserl also contrasts gestures to language by showing how language habitually leaves traces on us.

This paper analyses Merleau‑Ponty’s gestural theory focusing on the ontological and epistemological role attributed to the expressive movements of the lived body. The first section argues that Merleau‑Ponty’s phenomenology recognises movement as a primordial phenomenon from which language and thought emerge. This theorisation allows us to identify a type of logos that grants a specific content, sense and value to bodily movements, here conceptualised as a “kin(aesth)etic logos”. The second section of the paper offers a categorisation of different gestures—perceptive, reflexive, habitual and verbal gestures—which show how the kin(aesth)etic logos is actualised in a myriad of daily activities.

This paper seeks to develop the connection in Merleau‑Ponty’s later ontology between the gesture and language. There is a concerted effort in Merleau‑Ponty’s “middle period” to illustrate that a linguistic system of signs is internally constellated by the body and its movement. This effort seems to give way to an ontology of flesh in the later period. On closer consideration, however, this ontology and the linguistic system of signs—both “diacritical”—are mutually imbricated. This highlights the crucial importance of separation, deviation, and difference in Merleau‑Ponty’s ontology. A question remains, however: how can the body, and in particular the gesture, be the very site of separation rather than of an initiation or identification? I argue that, for Merleau‑Ponty, every gesture contains something internally antagonistic to it, something that cannot be grasped or moved. In this sense, the gesture is an “implex,” both internally resistant to and productive of signification. It is, in short, the site of a symbolization. In light of this, in the conclusion I reconsider the final passages from “Cézanne’s Doubt” where Merleau‑Ponty discusses Freud’s “hermeneutical musings” on Leonardo, and the passages from “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence” and the nature lectures where he discusses the painter’s brushwork.

What is the role of gestures within the wider problem of corporeity in Maurice Merleau‑Ponty? How do gestures exemplify and complicate the bodily experience? The aim of this article is to investigate the thematic of gesture in Merleau‑Ponty’s production, with particular attention to the Phenomenology of Perception (1945) and the lessons held at the Collège de France about institution, passivity and nature (1954–60), down to the final indirect ontology inThe Visible and the Invisible. Gestures could be understood as forms (Gestalten), i.e. dynamic structures which express individual and collective behaviours, as well as institutions (Stiftungen), underlying the process of sedimentation and reactivation of meanings. In both cases, gestures have a heuristic or generative function: they shape the individual style in the encounter with the world through “typics” or recurring “motifs”. As a conclusion, the paper argues for the key‑role of gesture, in order to re‑think eidetic intuition as the grasping of operative and emotional essences.

In this paper, relying on both phenomenology and psychoanalysis, I introduce the concept of transbodily intentionality with the aim of exploring the significance of bodily expression for subjective constitution. The role of the body for the constitution of subjective experience becomes increasingly important in phenomenological analysis. This faces us with the challenge of understanding the intersubjective relevance of bodily processes together with the genetic turn of phenomenology. On this background, the revaluation of the concept of gesture comes into light. The meaning of the gesture cannot be framed in an exclusively subjective context, but rather requires a communicative and intersubjective horizon.

In this article, we propose to reconceptualize phenomenology in a relational way. Instead of taking subjective consciousness as the starting point for the constitution of meaning, we consider meaning (as well as subjects and subjectivities) as something that is produced in social relations, or more precisely, in communicative actions. In order to explore how this works we empirically study mutual gaze as a critical case. At first sight, the reciprocity that arises when two subjects look into each other’s eyes and perceive how they look and are being looked at reciprocally seems to be “pure,” i.e. free of any mediation by language, gestures or other objectivations. It turns out, however, that mutual gaze unfolds, albeit highly ambivalently and fluidly, as an “object in time”. In contrast to non‑subjectivist approaches, we argue that we need some sort of subjectivity to understand phenomena such as mutual gaze. However, we also need to understand its embeddedness in cultures as well as in social relations. This is what Relational Phenomenology means.

Section I details Husserl’s insight into style and how a person’s individual style is played out in affect and action and in the two‑fold articulation of perception and “the kinestheses,” both of which are integral to gestural communication. Section II details how the evolutionary perspectives of Darwin and linguistic scholars complement Husserl’s insights into the animate realities of gesture and bring to light further dimensions of human and nonhuman gestural practices and possibilities through extensive experiential accounts that document the essential role of movement and thinking in movement in animate lives. Section III focuses on critical oversights by prominent phenomenologists who, rather than basing their studies in the rigors of phenomenological methodology, write of “what it is like” with respect to experience or give preferred opinions as in “consciousness of my gesture [...] can tell us nothing about movement.”

In this article, I consider the gesture confronted with its own impossibility, in situations that open the gesture to a dimension of transcendence. Focusing first on the event of beauty, as it is discussed by Jean‑Louis Chrétien, and on the encountering of the face, as it is considered by Emmanuel Lévinas, this paper envisions a “below” and a “beyond” of the gesture, in exceptional situations where the gesture is faced with an excess, acquiring a dimension of a theopathy. Subsequently, I emphasize that the transcendence that takes gesture beyond itself can inhabit and nourish the daily gestures, and this can be an occasion of pain and difficulties. In this perspective, Simone Weil shows how the repeated gestures of manual labour can become the mirror of supernatural beauty.

This article aims to discuss the gestural character of Chopin’s pianistic writing. We will focus on the set of Etudes pour piano. We expect to show how the notion of musical expression in Romanticism is dependent of a notion of expressive body always in the limit of decomposition. This could show us how musical expression is a privileged space for a better understanding of the dialectical relationship between form and formless.

Theodor Lipps’ doctrine of empathy (Einfühlung) is enjoying renewed relevance today for two reasons. On the one hand, it offers heuristic potential in researching the functionality of mirror neurons. On the other hand, as many of the early phenomenologists gained their conceptions of empathy by examining Lipps’ related works, the presently widespread interest in empathy necessitates a re‑reading of Lipps in phenomenological circles. The critiques that phenomenology launches against Lipps, however, often remain bound to the established cliché interpretations of Lipps. This article counters such shortsighted readings by differentiating four kinds of imitation in Lipps. The supposed persuasiveness of such critiques, as will be shown, is lost in light of this differentiation.

In his interpretation of Nietzsche, Heidegger on the one hand acknowledges the anti‑metaphysical orientation of Nietzsche’s nihilism, but on the other hand considers Nietzsche to be the ultimate metaphysician. This location is based firstly on Heidegger’s reflections on the relationship between metaphysics and nihilism. By revealing the origin and end of metaphysics, it is to be shown that nihilism and metaphysics are two aspects of the same thing. Moreover, Heidegger expands the meaning of metaphysics by ascribing to it the distinction between the sensuous and supersensuous worlds, between beings and beingness. Based on the critique of Nietzsche, he is able to develop a post‑metaphysical philosophical conception. Nietzsche himself, however, is not addicted to metaphysics, and in his overcoming of metaphysics and his vision of post‑metaphysical thinking he is rather a precursor of Heidegger.