This paper aims to show that there is a fundamental similarity between Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology developed in his Phenomenology of Perception and some types of Husserl’s phenomenology. I will do this by defining the basic character of the phenomenology of perception and comparing it with Husserl’s phenomenology. I will try to define the basic character of the phenomenology of perception by taking into account the chapter 4 of the Introduction of Phenomenology of Perception that has the title: “the phenomenal field”. In section 1-2, I will show that the phenomenology of perception could be defined as a phenomenological psychology that aims to clarify the structure of the phenomenal field and, at the same time, as a transcendental phenomenology that aims to clarify the structure of the transcendental field. Thereafter, in section 3, I will draw the conclusion that the phenomenology of perception is a phenomenology that has two pillars of a phenomenological psychology and a transcendental phenomenology. In section 4, comparing the phenomenology of perception with some types of Husserl’s phenomenology developed in Crisis3, I will show that there is a fundamental similarity between them. In section 5, I will show that there are also differences between the phenomenology of perception and Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole and that there remains a necessity to promote a phenomenological dialogue between them.

In an article, “The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance”, Hannah Arendt showed us her conception of an authentic culture, which is signified with two elements: art and politics. How can art and politics relate to each other? What do they mean in view of the concept of authentic culture? How can we reach the concept of authentic culture? Regarding these questions, I will connect Arendt’s answer, which owes much to the Kantian way of “reflective judgment” or “judgment of taste”, with the phenomenological method which Edmund Husserl contributed to us.Husserl’s phenomenological method is nothing but epoche. There are many and different interpretations of epoche. There are also many steps leading up to the general term of epoche. I will on the one hand, expose the epoche generally in an artistic sense which is similar to Aristotle’s and Kant’s discussion of art.On the other hand, I will point out the significance of “lifeworld epoche”, a step toward the epoche, as a way of conveying what Arendt conceived as being culture.Since I have tried to disclose Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological method behind Arendt’s authentic culture if asked how we could reach what Hannah Arendt’s meant about the authentic culture. In this regard, Arendt seemed still to be a phenomenologist. But Husserl’s phenomenological method contributes to Arendt’s conception of the authentic culture only as a necessary condition. As we said above that a phenomenologist is an artist, it was about the attitude of life. As we also said above the authentic culture is to be shown in the life of action and art, it was about the content of life. In this regard, we hear still from Arendt that on the one hand the public sphere provides space for art, on the other hand, the political experience and action itself is left without any trace, but the beauty doesn’t disappear. So they must co-exist, in order to contribute to human authentic culture. So it is worthy to further investigate what Husserl in his works directly talked about the authentic culture. And it would enlarge our viewpoint, if we, with regard to “publicity”, interpret some issues and conceptions in Husserl’s texts, e.g.: culture, leisure time, politics, humanities, even sciences, and philosophy as a rigorous science, etc.

Temporality, death and history: a reflection after Heidegger. This paper aims to evaluate how Heidegger deals with the problem of time in Being and Time. The fundamental issue in that magnum opus is to explain the question of the meaning of Being under the horizon of time. But what kind of philosophical resource could make Heidegger be capable to resolve the problem in the most effective way? The phenomenological interpretation of time takes the first priority in consideration. Although in Being and Time Heidegger has literally made a very little reference to Husserl, the influence of Husserl is too obvious to be denied. Heidegger, however, finds Husserl’s elucidation of time has ever dissolved the dimension of time into the immanence sphere of subjectivity. By making the position of the subject in an all too mighty status, the phenomenon of time has not been rendered faithfully in a phenomenological sense, the motto “zu die Sache selbst”. And, Heidegger would regard Husserl’s working on time has not fully observed this highest norm. Bearing the problem in mind when starting to compose Being and Time, Heidegger has to find a new way to avoid the same “mistake” as his master, and the overall contribution of his great work could in turn be assessed under the same evaluative principle. Has Heidegger successfully saved up “time” from the over dominance of the subject? Has he re-disclosed time as objectively as time itself (die Sache selbst)? This paper focus especially on how Heidegger’s thinking of the past and the future moments in Being and Time. Then, we can see that, when comparing with two other phenomenologists’ treatments on the same issue, Gadamer and Levinas, Heidegger resolutions on “past” and “future’ obviously show their weakness. And, the promise of removing the dominance of the subject is doomed to failure. Moreover, the underlining structure of organizing Being and Time has not fully escaped the way of metaphysical thinking. In his later period, which is so called the “turning”, Heidegger attempts to break down the metaphysical thinking about “foundationalism”, behind this thinking is the presupposition of dichotomy between founding and founded. Judging from this perspective, Being and Time has found no way out of the labyrinth.

The active subject in the historical situation: An interobservation between the philosophy of Marx and phenomenology. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Phenomenology and Marxism have been two major paradigms in human science based on their contribution to ontology about human being instead of methodology. The phenomenological analysis of the ability of sense-giving of human-being made man as a being-active in the world, while the historical materialism of Marx defined man as a passive-being within the particular historical situation. However, these two discourses may easily open to misconception. Phenomenology was once seen as under the banner of solipsism and the philosophy of Marx as an economical or material determinism. In fact, in Husserl’s Ideas II, Husserl had noticed the role and the function of the body in constitutive act and then the human being had been thought as a passive-being, a corporeal-being-in-the-world, in phenomenology. On the other hand, for Marx, his historical materialism had never negated man as a being-active in the historical process. But both of these two philosophical systems cannot successfully describe human being as being-active meanwhile as being-passive. Therefore, I suggest that it is propitious moment to clarify the unclear dimensions of these two philosophical discourses through the dialogue between them. In addition, I will attempt to propose some new statements on the relationship between the body, will and history.

According to Aristotle, there are two models of vision. The one is a contact model, according to which the realization of vision is explained by the process of the contact between light and eye, and the other is a medium model, according to which the realization of vision is made possible only through some medium that constitutes a distance between a seer and something seen. Aristotle defends the latter model, criticizing the former one. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of vision and painting, which he explicated in his last work Eye and Mind, can be interpreted as a development of the medium model of vision. He especially focuses on the role of illumination, which plays a role of the medium and constitutes the distance and makes a vision possible. All painters are trying to paint this role of illumination, which constitutes “depth, space, and color,” that means, the “flesh” of the world. In this sense, Mereau-Ponty’s ontology of vision and his ontology of “flesh” in his later works can be interpreted as a development of his and David Katz’s phenomenology of illumination.