Genetic Phenomenology Steinbock, Anthony
The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology,
07/2019
Book Chapter
This article presents the dimension of genetic phenomenology within the thought of Edmund Husserl. It introduces the relation of phenomenological matters and methods, and outlines the possible ...spheres of phenomenology: static, genetic, and generative. It then explores the co-emergence of static and genetic phenomenological methods and describes the matters that are peculiar to each. By focusing specifically on genetic phenomenological method, the article describes key genetic phenomena, such as normality and abnormality as they concern the constitution of lived sense, embodied existence, and subjectivity. After explaining in what way the normal and the pathological express the concordance or harmony and disharmony in the development of meaning, it describes the original notion of the optimal as a new notion of normality in phenomenology, as well as the ways in which some norms can be transcended from within optimal experience. The article concludes by elaborating the relation between stasis and genesis.
The transcendental reduction introduced by Husserl in Ideas I allows him, in Ideas II, defining the "personalistic attitude" where the "intentional object" gives way to a new key notion, ..."motivation." Given the importance of motivation to understand any life and, there-fore, moral life, my paper seeks a rigorous classification of the different types of motivation that Husserl describes (in Ideas II and in Einleitung in die Ethik). Its aim is showing that although Husserl gives importance to "rational" (correct or incorrect) motivation, he does not identify motivation with rationality. In the motivation, that covers completely personalistic (no "causal”) level, Husserl includes, in effect, a "pre-rational" or associative motivation, which leads us to the field of genetic phenomenology.
La reducción trascendental introducida por Husserl en Ideas I le permite a nuestro autor, ya en Ideas II, definir la “actitud personalista”, donde el “objeto intencional” abre paso a una nueva noción clave que es la de “motivación”. Dada la importancia que tiene la motivación para entender cualquier vida y también, por tanto, la vida moral, mi ponencia busca obtener una clasificación rigurosa de los distintos tipos de motivación que Husserl describe (tanto en Ideas II como en Einleitung in die Ethik). Su objetivo es mostrar que aunque Husserl concede a la motivación “racional” (correcta o incorrecta) toda la importancia que merece, no por ello identifica motivación con racionalidad. En la motivación, que cubre por completo el ámbito personalista (no “causal”), Husserl incluye, en efecto, una motivación “prerracional” o asociativa, que nos lleva al terreno de la fenomenología genética.
The present essay shows the rediscovery
of Husserlian phenomenology in the field
of the cognitive sciences, in particular in the so
called "enactive approach" developed by Evan
Thompson. First I ...refute the mentalistic misunderstanding
of Husserl's phenomenology, widely
extended in cognitive literature. Second I offer
a brief characterization of neurophenomenology
and the enactive approach. Third I
point some of the basic contributions of
Husserl's genetic phenomenology to this new
research area. And fourth I dismantle the classical
cognitive interpretation of Husserl as a
representationalist and solipsist.
El presente texto ofrece las líneas
maestras de la reevaluación del pensamiento
husserliano que se está produciendo últimamente
en el campo de las ciencias cognitivas,
especialmente en el marco de la llamada
aproximación enactiva propuesta por Evan
Thompson. En primer lugar, se refuta la interpretación
mentalista de la fenomenología husserlina
ampliamente defendida en la literatura
cognitiva. En segundo lugar, se ofrece una
breve caracterización de la neurofenomenología
y de la aproximación enactiva . En tercer lugar,
se destacan algunas de las aportaciones
claves de la fenomenología genética de Husserl
a este nuevo terreno de investigación. Y, en
cuarto lugar, se desmonta la imagen de una
Husserl representacionalista y defensor del
solipsismo metodológico hasta hace poco imperante
en los estudios cognitivos.
Introduction Geniusas, Saulius
The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology,
06/2012
Book Chapter
This chapter aims to introduce the reader to the central themes explored in the next 12 chapters. With this in mind, the chapter draws a distinction between the horizon as an everyday word and the ...horizon as a philosophical concept. The chapter also provides a brief philosophical history of the horizon by tracing how this notion has been employed starting with the Liber de causis and ending with Nietzsche and Dilthey. I argue that despite the various ways in which the notion of the horizon has been employed in the history of philosophy, Husserl was the first to provide this notion with a specifically philosophical determination. The chapter shows how the notion of the horizon is to be conceived as a phenomenological notion as well as clarifies how the question of origins is to be understood in the subsequent analysis. Finally, the chapter clarifies the structure of the following investigation and explores the motivating factors that underlie an inquiry into the origins of the horizon.
I will discuss the development of Husserl’s concept of the ego by concentrating on two central traits. In the first part I will present the different concepts of the ego starting with the Logical ...Investigations via Ideas I and II up to the first traces of genetic phenomenology. In the second part I will concentrate on the concept of the Ur-Ich (Arch-ego) in late genetic phenomenology. The concept of the Ur-Ich is to be found in the Bernau Manuscripts (1917/18), in the C-Manuscripts (1929-1934) and in the Crisis (1936). The Ur-Ich is still a difficult theme for the interpreters of Husserlian phenomenology because Husserl was not very elaborate in his treatment of this topic. The whole presentation is a kind of “history of the ego in Husserl,” but it is nevertheless quite a complicated story.
This is the first book-length philosophical study of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The book investigates the possibility for Husserl’s transcendental ...phenomenology to clarify Freud’s concept of the unconscious with a focus on the theory of repression as its centre. Repression is the unconscious activity of pushing something away from consciousness, while making sure that it remains active as something foreign within us. How this is possible is the main problem addressed in the work. Unlike previous literature (including Ricœur, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida) this book makes full use of the resources of genetic phenomenology and passivity in the attempt to clarify the Freudian unconscious. The central argument developed is that the structure of the lebendige Gegenwart as the core of Husserl’s theory of passivity consists of preliminary forms of bodily kinaesthesia, feelings and drives in a constantly ongoing process where repression occurs as a necessary part of all constitution. The clarification of Freudian repression thus takes place by showing how it presupposes a broad conception of consciousness such as that presented by Husserl’s genetic phenomenology. By arguing that “repression” is central to any philosophical account of subjectivity, this book takes on the most distinct challenge to philosophy posed by Freud.
Is a phenomenology of sleep possible? If sleep is the complete absence of experience, including the self-experience of consciousness itself, how can phenomenology, as a description of lived ...experience, have access to a condition that is neither lived nor experienced? In this paper, I respond directly and indirectly to Jean-Luc Nancy’s challenge that a phenomenology of sleep is impossible. As an indirect response, my sketch of the contours of phenomenology of sleep investigates Husserl’s employment of the distinction between sleep and wakefulness as a metaphor. Specifically, the metaphorical characterization of retentional consciousness is assessed. On the basis of this metaphorical characterization of time-consciousness in terms of sleep and wakefulness, I turn to Husserl’s account of the constitution of sleep. I argue that Husserl’s phenomenology of time-consciousness remains incomplete without an account of “sleep-consciousness” (by which we mean, in a restricted manner, dreamless sleep). In pursuing Husserl’s phenomenological account of sleep, falling asleep and waking up within the context of his genetic phenomenology, I offer a suggestion for how to understand the sense in which consciousness (temporarily) constitutes itself as sleep – as the absence of itself. I conclude with an analogy with Husserl’s investigations into the imaginary: in both instances, consciousness induces within itself its own suspension or self-abstention. In the particular instance of sleep, consciousness disengages itself entirely from the complex of interests while also immunizing itself to the force of affectivity.
The chapter studies the reception that Gestalt psychological theories were given by phenomenologists in Germany and France in the first half of the twentieth century. The aim is to study, in ...particular, the reactions of two phenomenologists, Edmund Husserland Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The chapter focuses on these two thinkers in order to explicate the main idea of the phenomenological-transcendental critique of psychological theories. The interpretative claim is that Merleau-Ponty followed Husserl in defining phenomenological philosophy by its radical task in providing a transcendental basis for all experience and knowledge. He thus came to argue that psychological theories, Gestalt theories included, must be submitted to a phenomenological-transcendental critique. Despite their apparent differences, Merleau-Ponty and Husserl agreed that no empirical or wordly knowledge – psychological, anthropological or natural scientific~– can overrule radical philosophical reflections in the grounding of the positive sciences. Before entering into Gestalt-theoretical and phenomenological sources, the chapter briefly discusses the historical relations between the two fields of research. The connections are to be found in common conceptions of parts and wholes, both approaches being influenced by Brentano’s distinctions between different kinds of parts. The disparity concerns the role of consciousness in the institution and establishment of meaning.
In the first part, the author will discuss Husserl’s understanding of “time” and “genesis” in the Logical Investigations (around 1900), and the possible relation of “time” and “genesis”, though in ...that work Husserl himself did not put the two into any kind of relationship – not even one of opposition. Only through some fragmental statements can we realize Husserl’s focus on “analyses of time” and his exclusion of “analyses of genesis”. In the second part, the author will represent Husserl’s attitude toward the analysis of “time” and “genesis” in the Lectures (around 1917). Unlike the period of the Logical Investigations, Husserl discussed these themes together in the lectures, and he tried to grasp their immanent relationship. Part Three discusses Husserl’s thought of “time” and “genesis” in the period of the Cartesian Meditations (around 1928). This thought in his manuscripts in 1921 found its expression in a discussion of the relationship between static phenomenology, which takes “transverse intentionality” (Querintentionalität) as its theme, and genetic phenomenology, which takes “horizontal intentionality” (Längsintentionalität) as its theme. It is likely that this thought led Husserl to consider “time” as “the universal form of all geneses of egology” in the Cartesian Meditations. Starting from here, in the fourth part, the historical dimension came into Husserl’s horizon. First and foremost, the historical dimension concerns the way and the sphere in which history is studied, i.e., studies of the universal form of history and the constitution of history for the ego. The fifth part is a further investigation of Husserlian phenomenology of history, especially clarifying the immanent relationship between history, time and genesis in Husserl’s late thought. This part also includes a general review of the theory and practice of his phenomenology of history, and the possible connection and difference between the “form” and “content” of his phenomenology of history.
There are many forms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity and this constitutes a complex problem in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and in the philosophy inspired by it as well. This essay will ...look at this problem in the connection to the phenomenological reduction as methodological access to it, and to the interpretations of the thesis that subjectivity is intersubjectivity. This text will consider three ways of reading this thesis. The first and the most common possibility is to look at it from the side of subjectivity; the second possibility presents the argument from the side of intersubjectivity. The third way is paradoxical: to try to stay in the middle, to see that the ego and the other (alter) are connected inside and out, from the side of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Then this essay will consider practical issues that are very important (existential) for key tasks of life of man among others, such as the phenomena of plurality, limit, alterity, and solitude, the absence of other on the one side, and on the other side density, the crowd, and the reduction of people to a summary, by which they lose their own uniqueness.
