In my paper I examine the question of temporality in Merleau-Ponty’s later phenomenological ontology. The aim of this discussion is to show that Merleau-Ponty’s earlier model of temporality, displayed in his Phenomenology of Perception, is not totally rejected but significantly reworked. While in his earlier work Merleau-Ponty maintains the substantial coincidence of temporality and subjectivity, thus bringing together Husserl’s and Heidegger’s analyses into a creative synthesis, in his later development Merleau-Ponty is no longer satisfied with this result. Accordingly he deepens the aspect of passivity and the bonds that attach the subject to (Raw) Being.

This essay proposes a phenomenological interpretation of Konrad Fiedler’s philosophy of art. He’s a Nineteenth century German philosopher who’s theory of visibility (die Sichtbarkeit) and body (der Leib) comprises, in many aspects, a phenomenological view avant la lettre. We compare Fiedler’s account of visibility with Husserl’s phenomenology of the visual representation and we argue that the artistic visibility and the activity of the body proposed by Fiedler may be considered as a phenomenological solution for the problem of artistic creation. Finally, we underline the conceptual affinity between Fiedler’s theory of the body implicated in the making of artistic works and the Merleau-Ponty’s own view of it.

This article tries to distinguish several types of “social ontology,” i.e., several types of answers to the question of the essence of social reality. As phenomenology and the social sciences are both concerned with this problem, it seems interesting to follow the historical sequence that links Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, Schutz’s theory of the lifeworld, and Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology. These theories help to identify or to illustrate tree types of social ontology: philosophical ontology, common and ordinary knowledge ontology, and sociological ontology.

In this paper, I discuss about two major Romanian philosophers: Constantin Noica and Alexandru Dragomir. I narrate their spectacular biographies, in order to show how powerful can be the resistance through philosophy, even in the hard times of political totalitarianism, as they were, for the Eastern Europe, under the communist dictatorship. It is true that Noica and Dragomir are two of the most infl uential personalities for the history of phenomenology in Romania. However, their lives also seem to be exemplary for the philosophical life as such, which reveals its intrinsic value when facing the asperities of misfortune.

Painting paints the conditions of visibility in accordance with their historical modalities and not the conditions of the reproduction of the real. That is why the whole Phenomenology, speaking about Painting, speaks of “phenomenon,” i.e. of “appearing” of that which appears.

Th e aim of this contribution is to think about contemporary phenomenology in comparison to its vanguard between 1910 and 1935. This encounter would have been fruitful and possibly transgressive for Husserl’s Phenomenology and that of others. Husserl and Heidegger provided an immense “openness of phenomenality,” the consequences of which were not noticed by themselves with enough lucidity. For this reason, today it would be interesting to think that this encounter, which in fact never took place, between contemporary phenomenology and its vanguard, that is, between phenomena and manifestos, is an attempt to pay an historical debt.

The concept of intersubjectivity has undergone a strong critique for the fact that the other appears to be constituted by a singular ego through extrapolation from its own “sphere of originality.” Our hypothesis is that the difficulty does not regard the theory of constitution itself, but the fact that the other and the community are thought only in terms of representation. In order to transcend the supposed representational framework of Husserl’s phenomenology, we shall consider the concept of intersubjectivity as an interplay of representational and non-representational modes of encounter.

Th is paper proposes a phenomenological approach to the constitution of biological objects of inquiry. It argues that such an approach can be built upon an extended version of Heidegger’s existential conception of science. Five main thematizing projects of constituting biological objects of inquiry are under examination. Finally, the paper suggests the view that despite the disunity of biology on the level of the main thematizing projects, there is a dynamic and mosaic unity of interrelated practices of scientific research.

Husserl’s genetic phenomenology is relied on to make sense of the emergence of attention such as it arises, on the one hand, from bodily gestures and, on the other hand, according to the hypothesis of attentionality as a modulation such as it has begun to be developed through the historical and contemporary contributions of psychology and neurobiology. We attempt to show how the static framework initially advanced is in continuity with the genetic logic that allows us to deepen the hypothesis in questions by confronting the empirical analyses of Stumpf, James, Kulpe, and Tichner.

In this communication we have tried to underline the main ideas in the constitution of the system of relevances, using as a support Alfred Schutz’s approach. Their importance in the consolidation of experience at the subjective and especially intersubjective level is to be understood as well in terms of a continuous constitution that they engender. They entertain a relation of interdependence with types and the typification processes. This aspect is also important because it confirms the mobility of the significative “organization” of the consciousness, and more than that, the interaction between this one and the surrounding world, where the other subjects are as well to be included.

In this essay the author will try to show that the transition from Otherwise than Being to The Essence of Manifestation has necessarily been done under the influence of Henry’s philosophy of immanence, which is highly appreciated by Levinas.

The essay explores the thought of Alfred Schutz with regard to his position on Husserlian transcendentalism. Comparing the “paradox of communication” formulated by Schutz in 1945 with Husserl’s treatment of the life-world in §34 of the Crisis, it arrives at the question of practicing the phenomenological method (the reduction) in the field of the social sciences. As this problem pushes the phenomenological paradigm to its limits, Schutz is seen as a borderline figure between the paradigm of perception and the paradigm of action. Th e transition is illustrated in the example of his idea of “stock of knowledge.”

In this paper we intend to lay the grounds for a Phenomenology of money. We start from the pre-theoretical comprehension of money as an “entity for”, that is to say, as a tool. Within this pre-theoretical comprehension, money is always understood according to its teleology (money is always “something to buy with”). Also, in this pre-theoretical framework money is hardly ever defined as “something to sell with”, or as “something being the result of my work”. Thus, in our daily experience the being of money becomes undistinguishable with the act of purchasing, which in turn underlines the deeply projective nature of money’s essence. In order to grasp this projective quality, we will have to develop a phenomenlogy of the purchasing act. “To purchase” is “to get something by means of money”. But, what is this thing that we get anyway? Whatever it is, it has a distinctive character: it is a merchandise. Through the appropiate phenomenologial descriptions, we will try to show how the description of the spatiality of the merchandise is essential to understand the effects of money upon the spatiality of the surrounding world.

On the route towards a philosophy of translation inspired by Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenological hermeneutics, my working hypothesis is that thinking about translation is fertile for a deeper understanding of the meaning of interpretation and of phenomenology. Language, languages, and translation enter into the very heart of the constitution of sense. The free gift of language and of languages permits us to have access to the world and to meet the other. In this way a phenomenological hermeneutics of translation can help us to realize that humanity, just like language, exists only in the plural mode.

This essay suggests that it is possible to develop a phenomenology of moral action modeled upon Aristotelian ethics. Focusing on the debt owed by phenomenology to Heidegger and his hermeneutics of Aristotelian ethics, we will argue for the two following theses: a) One of the main contributions of Aristotelian ethics is that it provides an account of moral action in terms of perception; b) Heidegger pointed out this contribution, but to the extent that he concealed its perceptual character, he did not prove faithful to the project of a phenomenology of moral action.

It is sometimes claimed that Husserl’s writings provide an inspiration for considering art today. More specifically we ask here whether Husserl’s description of the aesthetic attitude is rich and original. The comparisons he draws between the aesthetic attitude and the phenomenological attitude always aim to clarify the phenomenological attitude and thus take it for granted that the typical features of the aesthetic attitude are well known. In this way Husserl presupposes and retrieves the teaching of Kant, although in certain working notes he clarifies and intensifies the formal characteristics of Kant’s description of the aesthetic judgment.

Th e aim of this contribution is to think about contemporary phenomenology in comparison to its vanguard between 1910 and 1935. This encounter would have been fruitful and possibly transgressive for Husserl’s Phenomenology and that of others. Husserl and Heidegger provided an immense “openness of phenomenality,” the consequences of which were not noticed by themselves with enough lucidity. For this reason, today it would be interesting to think that this encounter, which in fact never took place, between contemporary phenomenology and its vanguard, that is, between phenomena and manifestos, is an attempt to pay an historical debt.