Studia Phaenomenologica

The aim of the present paper is to advance some considerations on the question of animism from a phenomenological perspective. Firstly, we deal with the problems of the access to the phenomenon, and of its interpretation on the part of contemporary anthropology. Both problems are connected with the gap which seems to exist between so-called primitive, animistic societies, and so-called civilized, scientific cultures. Secondly, since Husserl does not devote specific analyses to this issue, we address Dorion Cairns’ methodology and concrete investigations. Our major claim is that his reflections, largely inspired by Husserl’s notion of sense-transfer (Sinnesübertragung), may provide a better understanding of the gap mentioned above and perhaps a way to overcome it by disclosing a genetic common root not only of animistic and modern mentalities, but also of pantheism and theism. A final section is devoted to Husserl’s scattered considerations on the subject which might throw additional light on Cairns’ claims.

What does the ostensibly innocuous phrase “das Selbst” (the self ) exactly mean in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology? Does Heidegger really have a “theory of the self ” in the same way as, say, Descartes, Locke or Husserl? This is what has been often concluded by many interpreters of Being and Time, and it is that view that the current paper attempts to challenge. Heidegger not only rejects the supposition of a substantial ego, along the lines of Descartes’ conception, but he also repudiates any “self ” understood as a present-at-hand being, an inner core of Dasein, and he insists on the intrinsic connection between the “egologies,” from Descartes to Husserl, and “traditional ontology”. What seems to be at stake in the fundamental-ontological approach of Sebstheit and Selbstsein, Being-oneself, is rather a complete paradigm-shift, since both concepts refer to “ways of being” or “ways of existing” of Dasein, and no longer at all to a self-identical being of a condition of its self-identity. In trying to investigate the economy of the related existential concepts of Jemeinigkeit, Selbstheit and Man-selbst, this article makes the claim that Heidegger’s break with egology is much deeper that it has been often thought, and that the phenomenologist raises a completely new question, rather than trying to give a new response to older ones.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the main features of Derrida’s interpretation of Heidegger in his 1964–65 lecture series Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’histoire. Taking the issue of historicity as the main interpretive thread, the paper argues that, in Derrida’s view, Heidegger’s position constitutes a significant progress with regard to mainstream philosophical tradition. For Heidegger, historicity is originary and non-ontic; conceiving of it in this way enables us to overcome the primacy of the present and the subjectivist metaphysical approach which authors such as Hegel and Husserl still display. The paper then reconstructs Derrida’s critique of the chapter on the historicity of Dasein in Being and Time, as well as his approach to the history of Being through the topic of the metaphor. The critical force of this reading will be supported by an analysis of some of Derrida’s later writings, which also enable us to sketch some possible avenues for future research, in particular on the relationships between writing and history and on Heidegger’s concept of Versammlung.

In this article, we evaluate Meillassoux’s criticism of correlationism in general and of Heidegger’s correlationism in particular. Contrary to earlier contributions, we argue that Meillassoux’s reflections on uncorrelated being not only serve an epistemological but also an ontological interest; both Meillassoux and Heidegger are interested in the way we have access to uncorrelated being as well as in the nature of uncorrelated being itself. After introducing Meillassoux’s criticism of the correlationism of Heidegger, we reflect on three arguments of his account of planet earth as un-correlated being; the emergence of planet earth, the presupposed accessibility of un-correlated being and his criticism of Heidegger’s fideism. Although it becomes clear that Meillassoux’s criticism of correlationism is not applicable in the case of Heidegger, it also helps us to articulate the relevance of Heidegger’s “realist” approach of uncorrelated being in contemporary philosophy.

If the idea of a phenomenological aesthetic evidence is far from being obvious, it may yet become necessary in the description of the aesthetic experience. For the way a work of art can imperiously impose on the viewer reveals a kind of power that may suggests that this evidence is more than just a subjective feeling. Although Husserl’s phenomenology doesn’t consider such an evidence, and although this concept may even be regarded as a contradiction—since evidence particularly characterizes the givenness of perceptive objects—we may yet find the conditions of possibility of such an aesthetic evidence in Husserl’s work.

The foundational basis of the cinematic moving image is camera movement, which occurs not only in the image but also, and from the first, as the image. This essay approaches off-screen camera movement through phenomenological description of the gestalt structure of its four interrelated onscreen forms: the moving image as an intentional and composite “viewing view/viewed view”; the moving image as “qualified” by optical camera movement through subjective modes of spatiotemporal transcendence; the movement of subjects and objects in the moving image as seen by a world-directed camera; and the spatial movement of the camera, whose perspectival vision affirms its status as an embodied, if anonymous, “quasi-subject,” whose visually perceptive motility responds to its world in visibly expressive mobility. Throughout, the essay develops Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s claim that the cinema is, perhaps, the phenomenological art par excellence, given that its “technical methods” correspond to an “existential” and phenomenological “mode of thought.”

The central thesis of this article is that film is directing and directed kinaesthesis understood as an opening of world beyond the relation of “subjective” and “objective”. Thus the analysis does not focus on the recipients of a movie but on the origins filming finds in specific ways of experiencing, that is, in the living bodies of the persons who decide on the perspective of a take by using the camera’s body. Moved by its filmmakers, the body of the camera is directed as the product of its authors, and is directing insofar as it establishes a world by its own means. The article explains basic forms of opening world by kinaesthetic processes in general (1), and applies this investigation to the corpus of film (2). Finally, the results of these analyses will be put in concrete terms by relating them to basic film features and a few samples of movies (3).

The present paper investigates the late ontology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which considers being as expressive movement. The paper takes as its point of departure Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on painting, sculpture and especially cinema. Two reasons justify this choice. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on film as a work of art are now starting to be better known, after they have been overshadowed by his writings on painting, sculpture or literature for a long time. This entails a considerable enrichment of our interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetics and his ontology. On the other hand, if Merleau-Ponty’s general theory of aesthetics leads to questions concerning the sense and the ontological status of movement, it is certain that, within this theory, the analysis of the particular mode of expression of cinematic images gains an extraordinary relevance.

When I am watching a movie, I perceive on the screen a space, which is united and lived, even if it appears as fragmented and separated from the world in which I live. But is the space of the cinematic frame equivalent or commensurable with the one I see through my own eyes? Are they opposed to each other or do they merge together? The most amazing example of the possible convergence of gaze and frame the film realizes is the phenomenon of vision showing itself in the point-of-view shot. How can I perceive what I see on the screen as the vision of another, and the film itself as someone else’s vision? How does this relationship between the visual field of the film and my own, between my body and the screen, challenge the limits between objective and subjective? Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s reflections about cinema and visibility, I try to outline the traits of what I would call a reversible point-of-view shot.

Previously unpublished fragments of Merleau-Ponty’s insights about cinema have added an important layer to our understanding of the medium. In this paper I examine these fragments along with some of Merleau-Ponty’s other observations about cinema, in the context of his work on perception and temporality. My aim is to show how his thought is relevant for understanding an important topic in film theory: cinematic point of view. With Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological articulation of what it is to see, the possibility opens up of conceptualizing the structure of cinematic point of view as a “whole” that is concomitantly dynamic and always plural.

In the vast field of Roman Ingarden’s ontology, film seems to occupy very little space. Indeed, Ingarden dedicated only two short texts to it. This paper aims at reconstructing Ingarden’s theory of film by expanding on the intuitions and sketches presented in those texts, using Ingarden’s general inquiries on aesthetics and specific inquiries on various forms of art (literary works, music, painting, etc.) The paper first focuses on the mode of being of film, trying to elaborate the distinctions made by Ingarden between physical foundation, work of art, and aesthetic object and elucidating the relations between film and reality. The paper then moves on to the investigation of silent pictures as an art of pure visibility, then to talking pictures, taking into consideration all the modifications induced by sound and music. Ontological and aesthetical considerations jointly underpin this attempt to show the richness and significance of Ingarden’s theories.

Max Scheler never published a theory of art, but his aesthetics, like the rest of his thought, occupies an intriguing position that links early phenomenology, Catholic personalist thought, and philosophical anthropology. His metaphysics of the person and theory of value, when combined with his account of the lived-body and of our access to other minds through love, translates into a powerful, humanistic theory of art. This article elaborates what Scheler’s aesthetics would look like had he developed it and applied it to film. Film offers an intimate access to the lives, bodies, and minds of others that is particularly well-suited to Scheler’s idea that art reveals the moral personality—the ordo amoris or “order of love”—that makes up the value-essence of the person. The person’s unique and highest possibilities for acting, feeling, and valuing are the contents of their spiritual essence and these, often thought obscure and inaccessible, are made present in film.