Propositions as Intentions Bentzen, Bruno
Husserl studies,
08/2023, Letnik:
39, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
I argue against the interpretation of propositions as intentions and proof-objects as fulfillments proposed by Heyting and defended by Tieszen and van Atten. The idea is already a frequent target of ...criticisms regarding the incompatibility of Brouwer’s and Husserl’s positions, mainly by Rosado Haddock and Hill. I raise a stronger objection in this paper. My claim is that even if we grant that the incompatibility can be properly dealt with, as van Atten believes it can, two fundamental issues indicate that the interpretation is unsustainable regardless: (1) it is hard to determine, without appealing to propositional intentions on pain of circularity, what intention a proof-object should be understood as a fulfillment of; (2) due to a difficult fulfillment dilemma, it is unclear, at best, what the object of an intention corresponding to a proposition is.
Husserl’s conception of theology and God is a lesser noticed aspect in his phenomenological system. This paper is devoted to a return to Husserl’s text, reconstructing the implicit threads and ...essential features of his phenomenological theology. First, I will outline the general features of a phenomenology of religion and theology, arguing that it is not without historicity, which is not in conflict with the essentialism that phenomenology has always pursued. Then, Sec.
2
focuses on the analysis of teleology, considering which is the true teleology leading to God, pointing out that it ultimately resorts to an ethical approach. Sec.
3
and
4
provide an in-depth textual analysis mainly based on the
Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie
, concluding that they are all fundamentally ethical-relevant and capable of being in harmony with each other. Last, I will respond to some criticisms of Husserl’s conception of God, the most major of which are Mall’s and Held’s. Of course, I do not mean to suggest that Husserl has perfectly integrated his project of theology and God into the phenomenology program—it is precisely these criticisms that motivate us to reconstruct Husserl’s fragmented narrative into a self-consistent system.
This paper explores the nature of our
experiences of values
– our
valueceptions
. In the recent literature, two main standpoints have emerged. On the one hand, the ‘Meinongian’ side claims that ...axiological properties are experienced exclusively in emotions. On the other hand, the ‘Hildebrandian’ side contends that since valueceptions can be ‘cold’, they are not accomplished in emotions but rather reside in ‘value-feelings’ – emotions, in this framework, being conceived of as
reactions
to the values thus revealed. The aim of the paper is to argue that the
Husserlian
phenomenology of affectivity, especially as it is developed during his Göttingen period, can help to overcome these two accounts. I start by pointing out that, contrary to what most scholars have assumed so far, Husserl’s theory of valueception is not tantamount to Meinong’s, as it is very sensitive to ‘Hildebrandian’ arguments (Part 2). The core of the paper is then devoted to a systematic reconstruction of Husserl’s solution to this controversy. Drawing on the analogy between thing-perceptions and value-perceptions (Part 3), I show, first, that ‘cold’ valueceptions are to be identified with empty apprehensions (
Auffassungen
) of value, in which an emotion is not
actually experienced
but is
anticipated
in such-and-such kinaesthetic circumstances (Part 4); second, that the realization of this anticipation amounts to the
fulfillment
of the valueception (Part 5). As a result, Husserl acknowledges the relevance of ‘value-feelings’, yet his account appears more satisfactory than traditional ‘Hildebrandian’ theories in that it demystifies these ‘value-feelings’ by reducing them to
potential emotions
.
This article seeks to reconstruct and critically extend Jacques Derrida’s critique of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Derrida’s critique of Husserl is explored in three main areas: the ...phenomenology of language, the phenomenology of time, and the phenomenological constitution of ideal objects. In each case, Husserl’s analysis is shown to rest upon a one-sided determination of truth in terms of presence—whether it be the presence of expressive meaning to consciousness, the self-presence of the temporal instant, or the complete presence of an ideal object through intuition. At every juncture, Derrida’s reasoning is deployed in order to demonstrate how presence is irreducibly bound up with absence and otherness and thus how the ideal of a phenomenological self-presence of consciousness is itself an abstraction from the contingency of history and our concrete embeddedness within a particular lifeworld. The article concludes with an appraisal of reason’s limits in a time of technological domination and the threat of global annihilation. Rather than a flight into irrationalism or skepticism, the author advocates a deepening of philosophical responsibility and an ethics of undecidability as essential for meeting the challenges of modernity.
Heidegger calls his early philosophy a “science of being.” Being and Time combines phenomenological, ontological, hermeneutical, and existential themes in a way that is not obviously coherent. ...Commentators have worried in particular that Heidegger’s hermeneutical transformation of phenomenology is incompatible with his “scientific” aspirations. I outline three interpretations on which Heidegger cannot adopt Husserl’s “scientific” conception of phenomenology as eidetic, intuitive, propositionally articulated, and non‐relativistic due to his hermeneutical commitments. I argue that each of these readings rests on a misinterpretation of one or more of three hermeneutical concepts that are central to Heidegger’s early thought: the understanding of being, the hermeneutical situation, and phenomenological destruction. By giving fresh analyses of these concepts, I show that Heidegger retains the scientific conception while refining it to avoid distortions that are introduced when inquiry is “infiltrated with traditional theories and opinions about being.” I also respond to the charge that Being and Time is a “disguised theology.”
Las Lecciones de fenomenología de la conciencia interna del tiempohan sido caracterizadas tanto por su enigmática belleza textual como por su dificultades e inconsistencias. El objetivo de esta ...comunicación es intentar establecer algunos puntos centrales de la teoría del tiempo husserliana en sus textos tempranos, conducido por el texto de las Leccionesyacompañado por la totalidad de escritos del período y las discusiones más relevantes que se han hecho al respecto.
Het biologische lichaam Wobbes, Theo
Algemeen Nederlands tijdschrift voor wijsbegeerte,
01/2021, Letnik:
113, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In phenomenology the lived body (le corps vécu) is considered as the subject of reflection while the biological body (le corps objective) is destined for medical sciences. As an alternative I give a ...view on the basis of the philosophical anthropology of Helmuth Plessner who thinks a person as a subject to have a lived body (Leib) and a biological body (Körper) from an eccentric or third perspective (excentric positionality). A person experiences herself from that eccentric point of view as a lived body and at the same time as a biological and instrumental body. These two perceptions can only be characterized as a dual aspect (Doppelaspekt), and cannot be separated from each other. Plessner moreover considers the biological body as a thing among other things. I place this bodily thing in a postphenomenological perspective as worked out by Don Ihde and discuss the idea to consider it as a mediating thing between the person who has it and at the same time is it as a lived body in the world she lives in. I work out the effects on the person in case of organ transplantation or implantation of artefacts in the postphenomenological perspective of the embodiment and the hermeneutic relation. I conclude that from that perspective both relations appear to be too simple to elucidate what really takes place in a patient and suggest that in case of incorporation of organs or artefacts the postphenomenological mediating relations should be expanded to a triadic (semiotic) variant of mediating technologies that considers the biological body itself as mediating thing in order to encompass the whole of the human experiences including meaning.
In the following paper, I’ll try to summarize Husserl’s view on normality. I will claim that there is a contradiction between his early, transcendental conception, which claims the absolute normality ...of the transcendental consciousness, and his late genetic-generative analyzes that lead back the normality of experience to the normality of the psychophysical body. I will argue that his contradiction can be resolved from the perspective of the embodied consciousness which, according to Anthony Steinbock is also present in the late writings of Husserl.
Husserl’s early picture of explanation in the sciences has never been completely provided. This lack represents an oversight, which we here redress. In contrast to currently accepted interpretations, ...we demonstrate that Husserl does not adhere to the much maligned deductive-nomological (DN) model of scientific explanation. Instead, via a close reading of early Husserlian texts, we reveal that he presents a unificationist account of scientific explanation. By doing so, we disclose that Husserl’s philosophy of scientific explanation is no mere anachronism. It is, instead, tenable and relevant. We discuss how Husserl and other contemporary thinkers draw theoretical inspiration from the same source—namely, Bernard Bolzano. Husserl’s theory of scientific explanation shares a common language and discusses the same themes as, for example, Phillip Kitcher and Kit Fine. To advance our novel reading, we discuss Husserl’s investigations of grounding, inter-lawful explanation, intra-mathematical explanation, and scientific unification.
Current research on second-person relations has often overlooked that this is not a new topic. Addressed mostly under the heading of the “I–thou relation,” second-person relations were discussed by ...central figures of the phenomenological tradition, including Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, but also quite extensively by much lesser-known authors, such as Karl Löwith, Ludwig Binswanger, and Semyon L. Frank, whose work has been undeservedly neglected in current research. This paper starts off by arguing that, in spite of the rightly acknowledged differences between the Husserlian and the Heideggerian approaches to the investigation of the social world, both approaches converge in the claim that the I–thou relation is founded on more basic forms of sociality. In a second step, against the background of Frank’s and Binswanger’s challenges to that claim, I argue that Löwith’s proposal that the I–thou relation is a primordial form of sociality can be vindicated by conceptualizing I–thou relations as close personal relationships (paradigmatically exemplified by companion friendships and romantic partnerships). After assessing how Löwith’s approach to the I–thou relation stands vis-à-vis Heidegger’s and Husserl’s views, I conclude by suggesting how Löwith’s approach can contribute to current research on second-person relations.
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