Toward a New Enlightenment: Metaphysics as Philosophy of Life

Abstract

In Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s various studies, one finds a specific focus to her work: she brings to light a new concept of the transcendental, understood no longer as an abstract concept of traditional phenomenology, but as a characteristic of living in which the human being actively participates through its “intellectual spirit” that we call the Transcendental of humanity. In our opinion, based on the creative activity of this spirit, it becomes possible to restore to philosophy a new vitality; it need no longer be seen as abstract or ideological, but as human, social. Philosophy becomes the human ground for a metaphysics of life, for a way of thinking that deals with the “great and ultimate” questions, to borrow from Husserl’s turn of phrase (Edmund Husserl, Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrage in Husserliana I, ed. B. Strasser [Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950], p. 299). One can examine these questions in a straightforward human fashion, from the vantage point of the human being in her concrete and particular reality, who lives in the world. In its critical capacity, the “intellectual spirit” becomes the precondition for the constitution of a metaphysics that no longer has the abstract character of a science of being, understood as the intangible; rather, it configures itself as a personal, concrete human understanding of the universe with a particular focus on meaning for everyday life.