The article considers the problem of the redefinition of the concept of phenomenol-ogy after Heidegger’s critique of the idea of presuppositionlessness, Ricoeur’s criticism of the beginning of the transcendental ego, and Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of Husserl’s perceptual apprehension.

Should contemporary phenomenology be considered as a series of heresies or is it still possible to follow the direction of classical phenomenology to renew it? Does a classical phenomenology exist at all? We can already observe in Husserl’s work a kind of stratification of phenomenology which makes it possible to affirm that from its beginning phenomenology has been already deconstructed and revised, never closed in a specific ontological field. Rather it is an indication of a method, of a cognitive praxis with a transcendental status. That opens phenomenology up to continuous revisions according to the object to which consciousness is addressed. This methodological essence of phenomenology explains its wide thematic modulation and its claim to be applied as a method to everything that has a phenomenal nature. As a way towards phenomena, the aim of phenomenology still today goes on deciphering the conditions of phenomenality and its reception by subjectivity.

I consider two criticisms of Husserlian phenomenology that claim to find support in Husserl’s own Crisis. The first holds that the crisis-problematic entails a concession to the power of historical tradition that Husserl evades. The second holds that the crisis of science is a permanent feature of reason, though Husserl naively promotes its resolution. Against the first, I argue that the systematic question addressed by the historical method of Crisis is not “What can we know?” but “What are we entitled to hope?” The debate about historicism thus obscures that Husserl’s historical reconstructions represent a practical extension of phenomenological reason. Against the second, I argue for a dis-tinction between two concepts: “Krisis der Wissenschaften” and “Unwissenschaftlich-keit der Wissenschaften.” While the latter includes elements of Sinnentleerung inherent to science, the former refers to a wavering faith in science’s Lebensbedeutsamkeit that phenomenology can reasonably claim to stabilize.

The paper offers a phenomenological interpretation of the temporality of chronic pain. First, I maintain that the field of presence constitutes the exhaustive horizon within which chronic pain is lived. Secondly, I argue that chronic pain is a form of depersonal-ization in that it cuts the field of presence from the past and the future. Thirdly, drawing on some recent phenomenological and neurological findings, I argue that the past and the future, despite their apparent irreality, continue to affect the present “behinds its back”: either through implicit bodily memory, or through implicit bodily anticipation. Thus despite its depersonalizing effects, chronic pain is a deeply personal experience. In my conclusion, I turn to the therapeutic significance of such a phenomenology of tem-porality. I maintain that if chronic pain is nested in implicit temporality, then to confront it, one must become conscious of its effects and, if possible, neutralize their meaning.

The paper analyses Martin Heidegger and Edith Stein’s conceptions of phenomenol-ogy. These analyses provide a basis to explain Stein’s critique of Heidegger’s thought. The author presents Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology which assumes that the understanding of being is a fundamental category, and, next, elucidates Stein’s personal phenomenology. Heidegger and Stein, both Husserl’s students, change his conception: Heidegger introduces a new method and goal of investigation, Stein adds to it the Chris-tian faith. In the last part, the author shows how Stein proves the incompleteness of Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein, death and temporality, in her view, the main shortcom-ings of his thought. Stein accuses him of saying nothing about the possibility of eternity and of taking into account only finite existence. The author of paper claims that Stein’s appraisal stems from her understanding of phenomenology which differs from Heidegger’s one.

Hans Blumenberg’s reflection is grounded on the phenomenology of history that can be considered as one of the most heretical Husserl’s developments. Blumenberg sees these developments as a way of thinking, a “source” of inspiration, a “legacy” and a sort of “legitimacy.” The purpose of this paper is to stress two different but connected ques-tions on this heresy: on the one hand, the path of Blumenberg’s phenomenology not as continuum of historical substances, but as “reoccupation” of problems that a thinker bequeaths to another; on the other hand, the metaphor, as Blumenberg’s “semantic anomaly” and Husserl’s Lebenswelt images (e.g. “ground,” “horizon,” “leap”) as “infi-nite” heresy of their premises.

In order to better understand the notion of history proper to phenomenology, I un-dertake a brief case study. Namely, I investigate Martin Heidegger’s relation to Edmund Husserl in the years preceding Husserl’s appointment to Freiburg, with a special focus on an occasional writing by Heidegger from 1912. The application of historical method not only dismantles the teleological constructions which mark Heidegger’s own account of his early discovery of Husserl’s phenomenology, but also present a young thinker eager to absorb cutting edge, though not necessarily consistent, developments from contemporaneous philosophy. Heidegger’s early approach could also be conceived as a window onto an elusive brief period of phenomenology before its transformation into a Movement, thereby illustrating the positive contributions of the historical approach to the history phenomenology.

Hannah Arendt brings the traditionally ontological practice of phenomenology into social and political philosophy. She does this in two ways: by employing phenomeno-logical methods in her approach to examining the world around her and by showing how phenomenology is related to ethical life through her description of thinking. In this article, I explore the first of these ways by locating Arendt’s methods in relation to Martin Heidegger’s definition of phenomenology, as given in the Being and Time. Arendt’s usage of phenomenological methods is clear in her examinations of banal evil and modern judicial systems. These topics lead to a discussion of how thinking, for Arendt, is a phenomenological activity that has bearing on ethical life. I will turn to Arendt’s essay, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship” to clarify how phenome-nology, as characteristic of the thinking Arendt prescribes, is ethically important.

This article presents an ambiguous approach of two main representatives of dialogi-cal philosophy, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber, towards Husserl’s phenomenolo-gy. It is demonstrated that Levinas is not an anti-phenomenological postmodernist. Although he does not implement all the Husserlian methodology, he imitates Husserl’s philosophical rigor in exploring forgotten horizons. Buber’s theory of knowledge is analyzed from Levinas’ perspective. The closing part is devoted to a still unexplored area of Buber’s ecophenomenology. It is demonstrated that by indicating on complete relationship with nature, and showing gaps in classical phenomenology Buber makes a unique contribution to the phenomenological heritage.

This paper argues that the unicity of the signification of words makes intercompre-hension possible, and explores the possibility of a pure or rational ontology as providing a space for communication between cultures. Therefore no culture has any proprietary right over that ontology.

The paper presents the process of auto-constitution of consciousness, its main parts and levels. It also explains the principles of working, temporal extension, source of dynamics, unity, aim etc., as well as a relative independence from other systems among which consciousness is placed.

Contrary to Western philosophy, oriented to grasp and solidify the principles of es-sential being (ontos on), Buddhism seeks to understand the existence of human beings and the significance of suffering in human life. In East Asian languages human beings are described as inter-beings in that they are enveloped by the topos of life and death. Our life is bound to the moments of emerging and vanishing, being and non-being in an essential unity. Dōgen’s philosophical thinking integrated this conception with the em-bodied cognition of both the thinking and the acting self. In the phenomenological per-spective, early Martin Heidegger emphasizes that being is bound to a fundamental sub-stantiality which borders on the Abgrund falling into nothingness. According to Dōgen, the unity-within-contrast of life and death is exemplified in our breathing because it achieves a unity of body and cognition which can be called “corpus.” In a perfect con-trast, the essential Heidegger’s reflection grasps the fundament of being in the world, which represents the actualization of a thinking-being-unity. The goal of this compari-son is to grasp what is the essentiality of being, life, and recognition (jikaku 自覚), bounded to embodied cognition.

The paper analyzes elements of Andrzej Półtawski’s (Roman Ingarden’s student) realistic position within phenomenology. His views are centred on embodied, dynami-cally understood consciousness.

In his book, The Fragile Absolute, in the chapter “Why Is the Truth Monstrous?”, Slavoj Žižek discusses Buddhism. Specifically, he claims that Buddhists have always found it difficult to explain, “how is it that the primordial was disturbed, and that desire emerged; that living beings got caught up in the wheel of karma, of attachment to false reality?” (2000. The Fragile Absolute, London: Verso, 73). Ultimately, Žižek suggests that in Buddhism “this fall into perversion is original, the original monstrous cut/excess, and the opposition between nirvana and desire for false appearances is there to conceal this monstrosity” (ibid. 74). Notwithstanding, in his singular views on Buddhism, Žižek does raise the question concerning the source of samsara, the source of cyclic existence, which he explains by using the concept of primordial disturbance that falls into perver-sion. This article discusses this Žižek’s concept and confronts it with the Buddhist un-derstanding of the source, causes, and the mode of emergence of cyclic existence.

Stating that experience is the testing ground for scientific theories is undoubtedly a sort of truism. In the case of the investigation of human perception, however, it is worth pinpointing and understanding exactly what kind of experience science must avail itself of. Cherishing and taking into account the lessons learned from Goethe’s Farbenlehre, Ewald Hering inaugurates a type of phenomenology which believed in the fertility of the connection between the phenomenological description and the empirical investigation. The direction indicated by Hering will be embraced by important authors of non-Husserlian phenomenology in the first three decades of the twentieth century: Carl Stumpf, Karl Bühler, the Gestaltpsychologie of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, to name a few. This paper intends to show the interest and topicality of this approach.

The first part of this article traces the most important phases of the semantic enrichment and “terminologisation” (in the sense of the transformation of a lexical item from a generic word into a scientific term) of the German expression “Gestalt.” The word “Gestalt” (English translations are: “form,” “shape,” “configuration,” “aspect”) was already documented in the Middle Ages (Old High German: gistalt) in the meaning of “appearance, way of appearing.” From the end of the 18th century, the word was beginning to enlarge its meaning; it started to be used in specific domains (literature, philosophy, psychology) to designate an organic whole. In the first decades of the 20th century, it became a specialized term—a terminus technicus in the philosophical and psychological thought—as Gestalt psychology and Gestalt theory emerged as a new scientific and philosophical orientation. Its exact conceptual definition was heatedly discussed in the philosophical and psychological debates that raged in the first two decades of the 20th century after publishing the famous paper by Christian von Ehrenfels “On Gestalt Qualities” (1890) and it was developed in various psychological schools (the Berlin School, the Graz School) and philosophical orientations (phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism). In the concluding part of the paper, the author traces new developments in the Gestalt approach after the Second World War.

The reflection on form (eidos, morphe) is situated at the core of Aristotle’s philosophy. Not only it was the bone of contention with Plato and other academic philosophers, who maintained the separateness and immutability of forms, but mature Aristotle’s theory of form provided him with an adequate theoretical equipment for all fields of scientific inquiry, so the concept of form proved to be all-pervasive (transcendental). This issue is examined in the paper. The article also deals with some issues characteris-tic of the contemporary (postmodern) debate, such as the question of sense and intellec-tual cognition, the problem of identity, the mind-body problem. Finally, the parallel topic of matter is addressed by showing that Aristotle’s conception still proves incisive in contrasting several theories, lending itself—more or less implicitly—to the Neoplatonic conception.

This essay is about Wolfgang Köhler’s philosophical ideas expressed in his The Place of Value in a World of Facts of 1938. Köhler, who strongly supports a scientific worldview, considers the question if science is able to cope with human values, besides natural facts. Relying upon phenomenological analyses, and on his previous researches in the field of natural philosophy, Köhler introduces his doctrine of epistemological dualism. From a historical point of view, this theory shows some similarities with the philosophical ideas expressed by Köhler’s Berlin mentor, Carl Stumpf. It is argued that Köhler’s epistemological dualism actually supports ontological monism and aims at offering a unified view of natural facts and human values.