Phenomenology 2005

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 aim of this essay is mainly critical: it intends to demonstrate that despite all the promises to give account of a “deconstructive subjectivity,” Derrida failed to do so. This charge relies on the thesis that Derrida proved unable to rethink critically the concept of narcissism which he himself saw as crucial for the future philosophical understanding of subjectivity. Yet, what Derrida calls the aporia of narcissism is, in fact, not so much the Freudian version of this concept but a deconstructive version of the old Hegelian dilemma of the beautiful soul—and, theoretically speaking, a rather “defunct” one, for it explicitly prohibits any dialectical procedure that could lead us out of this aporetic predicament.

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.

In this article I will examine Stein’s discussions on alterity. In her early writings Stein develops the theme of alterity mainly in relation to the concept of empathy (Einfuhlung) and thus in relation to the other person. In her later writings the theme of alterity mainly relates to God. I will discuss the continuity and discontinuity between these two areas. I will claim that alterity in her early writings can be understood as invisibility within visibility whereas alterity in her later writings can be understood as visibility within invisibility.

In this paper I attempt to connect Heidegger’s analysis of human existence in Sein und Zeit with important themes of Russian concerning the concept of personality and inherited from Byzantium Theology and Greek Patristic

Th e paper gives a short biography of Jan Patočka, remembers his personal contacts with Husserl and reviews his position within the phenomenological movement by explaining what sort of criticism on Husserl he develops in his concept of an “a-subjective” phenomenology. It also gives a list of his papers concerning this topic.

“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.

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.

Th is paper examines Franz Kafka’s perception of Being as it is portrayed in his novel Der Prozess against the background of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, particularly as outlined in Sein und Zeit. More specifically, it examines the notion of guilt as it focuses on the similarities and differences between Heidegger and Kafka’s project. Whereas Heidegger holds out the possibility of a non-alienated being-in-the-world, Kafka seems to suggest that this is not obtainable; that the ontological difference between beings and Being, the gap that exits between our everyday empirical knowledge of the world and a primordial truth, is beyond our reach.

Human being considered as enigmatic relation to itself and the world centers in carnality. The carnal body as constituent of life is a challenge for our categories of human life, since its own self-awareness backs away from conceptualization. Along with carnality as a theme speaking in Merleau-Ponty’s and Levinas’ implicit dialogue, this article considers a “shared” carnal humanity given in sensual proximity, language and the diachronic style of alterity. Thus, carnality might be a threshold between ontology and ethics, where traces of Levinas’ and Merleau-Ponty’s thoughts might intertwine in structures of being together in a world.

The problem of truth in existential phenomenology is analyzed. The author maintains that the concept of truth is inseparable from the concept of reality. In the phenomenology of Lebenswelt (Husserl) and Dasein (Heidegger) reality is the human whole, which changes while an existential project is created. The phenomena are real as much as they take part in our being towards death. The author calls this creation of the existential whole noesis, which embraces both the harmony of human view and disharmony in the light of new project.