Nature and Cosmos in a Phenomenological Elucidation

Abstract

The paper departures from how Husserl views Nature in his Ideas II and the Crisis such as it is a genuine phenomenological critique of the modern conception of nature – thus opening for realizing how the conception of modernity (contrary to what it itself says) is grounded on the Life-world and generated within the Historicity of Human Existence. I will further develop this by including some parts from Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on Nature, especially, then, in regard to Kant and his distinction between the constitutive and the reflective power of judgment. All this will, of course, occur within the perspective provided by Husserl, – and the question about the essential “nature” of Nature: is it mechanistic or is it teleological? occurs. And may they ever intertwine? In the context of this we will finally make thematic some smaller works of both M-P and Husserl in which the field of problems as regards: “Phenomenology and The Human Positioning in the Cosmos – The Life-world, Nature, Earth –” becomes elucidated.