The article examines the ontological problems posed in the work of G. Anders and H. Arendt “The Duin Elegies of Rilke”, which is considered in the context of the evolution of M. Heidegger’s philosophical ideas. In the 30s of the twentieth century, Heidegger’s philosophy underwent a significant shift associated with the transition from the construction of a phenomenologically and anthropologically oriented ontology to the thinking of being, which proceeds from its original openness and follows the guiding thread of language. The interest that the text of Anders and Arendt presents in this regard is that it can also be seen as a statement of the unproductiveness of the phenomenological method of posing and solving ontological problems, the rejection of attempts to reveal the meaning of being based on explication of the structure of human existence, and the shift of emphasis to comprehension of the essence of language and interpretation of poetic speech. In the work under study by Anders and Arendt, two plans of philosophical analysis of Rilke’s poetic text are revealed: first, arguments about poetic thinking as a way of revealing artistic and philosophical truth, and, secondly, a meaningful interpretation of the ideas that are articulated in this poetry. It is noted that Anders and Arendt’s appeal to the poetry of R. M. Rilke and the turn in Heidegger’s thinking could be dictated by similar motives: the search for promising ways to overcome the emerging crisis of the fundamental ontological program. Moreover, as a result of the research, it is suggested that the work of Anders and Arendt, published in 1930, to a certain extent outstrips and anticipates the future direction of Heidegger’s reflections, and in shifting the focus of his research interest in language and poetic creativity are realized the interpretative possibilities that were outlined by Anders and Arendt.

This paper addresses the relationship between logic and phenomenology at a historical moment that precedes the big divide between analytic philosophy and phenomenology. In analysing alternative derivations of phenomenological logic, the discussion focuses on the case of two notorious neo-Kantian Mexican philosophers from the first half of the XXth century: Adalberto García de Mendoza and Francisco Larroyo. It is argued that both García de Mendoza and Larroyo made an original contribution to the discussion on the relationship between phenomenology and logic. Further, this paper attempts to present a charitable portrait of both García de Mendoza and Larroyo in contrast to underrating approaches to both Mexican philosophers. In so doing, this paper adopts a historical—thought not strictly biographical— perspective. While it is true that neither García de Mendoza nor Larroyo could be considered “phenomenologists” or “Husserl scholars” according to contemporary standards it is worth noticing that they engage in the discussion of phenomenological logic. Both authors had the project of developing a grounding logic for science and, as the article argues, both attempts could be even linked. Their project, however, was unfinished. The plan of this paper is as follows. The first section addresses the problem of the relationship between logic and phenomenology. The second one focuses on García de Mendoza’s contributions. The third one elaborates on Larroyo’s Logic of Sciences. And, finally, the fourth section elaborates on these Mexican philosophers’ contributions to education, making as well further observations concerning the similarities and differences between both authors.

Nativism as a theory that interprets certain abilities and ideas as innate [The contexts we will consider prefer to speak precisely of innateness in the sense of New European philosophical discussions and avoid the notion of “a priori”/“a posteriori”, respectively, and we will stick to this terminological pair.], is considered by some contemporary philosophers as an echo of outdated philosophical approaches. Critics for the most part reproach it for being unscientific and metaphysical. In one of its most extreme forms, nativism is accused of mysticism and lack of evidence. At the same time, a number of very authoritative thinkers openly call themselves nativists and defend this trend in philosophy, cognitive sciences, linguistics and other fields of knowledge (Chomsky, McGinn, Lawrence and Margolis). The main aim of this paper is to analyse the contemporary polemic between empiricists and nativists. It will be shown that the main polemical knot around which the debate unfolds can be easily untied through a transcendentalist interpretation of nativism. In particular, an appeal to phenomenology can help to notice the importance of the idea of the non-essentiality of the source of experience to experience. Phenomenology, which preserves the idea of this non-essentiality, has in mind a radical break with the ontology of natural objects, and will not, in particular, deduce innate knowledge from evolutionary mechanisms, nor will it place it within the biological structure of organisms (e.g., the brain or the neural processes in it). It remains to be shown that most of the positions and refutations of modern nativism are based on a misunderstanding of the classical “overcoming” of the dispute between empiricism and rationalism by transcendentalism and transcendental phenomenology, as well as the requirement of transcendentalism and transcendental phenomenology not to place the source of experience in the same world in which we locate experience itself. The study is to consider what the modern nativist view must look like in its transcendentalist interpretation in order to be a worthy opponent to modern empiricism.

The explanatory gap—the apparently ineliminable chasm between physical, bodily processes and states on the one hand, and subjective, lived experience on the other—belongs among the greatest problems of contemporary philosophy of mind and empirical research concerning consciousness. According to some scholars—such as eliminativist philosophers like Paul and Patricia Churchland—it is a pseudo-question. However, in our interpretation, an accurate phenomenological reflection on one’s own consciousness convinces the attentive and careful philosopher that it is very much a real question—and in fact a crucial one. The present paper endeavours to show how Husserl’s theory of the bodily self-constitution of the ego could help us, not to close the explanatory gap in a reductionist manner, but rather to bridge this gap by rendering apparent the necessary connection between the subjective, phenomenal side of experience and its bodily basis. In this interpretation, Husserl’s conception of embodiment could even provide a more rigorous and firmer theoretical foundation than any which currently undergirds empirically related research regarding the origins of consciousness in the natural world. In the first half of the study, I outline Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt’s attempt to bridge and, in a further step, to eliminate the explanatory gap, in which they proceed from the external world to the interiority of mind. The second part of the paper presents a phenomenological analysis that aims to demonstrate that a Husserlian attempt would follow the opposite direction: from the inside proceeding outwards towards the external, physical reality.

The article examines the issue of aesthetic judgment. Why do people find some things beautiful and others not, and how are differences in taste formed? The main problem with making a judgment about taste is the ambiguity of the axiological conditions under which it is made. A number of aesthetic theories fail to build a strict and comprehensive aesthetic axiology, either because of an insufficient description of the taste formation process itself, or because of the arbitrariness of putting forward criteria that are unable to explain the variety of forms that are evaluated as beautiful. The common shortcoming of the approaches used in building aesthetic axiology is the idea of a predetermined judgmental relationship as an expression of some sensory relationship to an aesthetic object. The article shows that the activity of feeling with the passivity of the expression of feeling, the idea of their strictly fixed and unidirectional form of influence, is untenable, as it does not correspond to many everyday aesthetic situations. It is demonstrated that the sign and expression are in a situation of mirror exchange and the subject-object relationship cannot act as a principle of aesthetic theory. Instead, the concept of intensity of experience is introduced as the force of the image for representation, which constitutes the basis of the subject's aesthetic practice. As an alternative to this approach, it is proposed to replace the evaluative category of aesthetic judgment with the non-evaluative category of aesthetic experience, which affirms the fundamental axiological neutrality of the aesthetic sphere. The article also provides recommendations for building new theories of aesthetic axiology based on the primacy of aesthetic experience.

This article reconstructs the normative strategy of interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time in modern analytical philosophy, and also proposes a theoretical framework for understanding this strategy as a historical phenomenon. The article describes the development of the normative direction in the interpretation of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology. Its first branch—the socio-normative, or the neopragmatist one—is associated with such philosophers as John Haugeland and Robert Brandom. The second one—the ethico-normative, or postneopragmatist one—branch is represented by Steven Crowell and Sacha Golob. It is shown that the first group of normativists focused mainly on implicit social norms and structures of conformity, while the second—focuses primarily on Kantian ethics and Christina Korsgaard’s interpretation of Kant, as well as on the inferentialist philosophy of language of Robert Brandom. The conceptual schemes used by each of the representatives of these approaches are reconstructed. The connections of different approaches within the framework of the normative direction with each other are shown. The concept of a relay race is proposed, which can describe normative Heideggerianism as a historical phenomenon. It is shown that the development of normative Heideggerianism can be characterized as theoretical progress in relation to the accuracy of the interpretation of Heidegger’s texts. The grounds for the comparative “progressiveness” of different normative approaches in the updates of the basic normative conceptual scheme that they involve are clarified. It is also shown that the progress of the normative conceptual scheme in the direction of flexibility and adaptation to Heidegger’s text is fraught with a loss of meaningfulness of the very concept of norm. It is argued that the concept of norm, despite the loss of its empirical content, can be used to translate Heidegger’s concepts for pragmatic reasons.

The paper is a translation of an article by D. Prole which examines the difference and the resemblance of the phenomenological project and the early avant-garde movements. Responding to the crisis of the classical in the realms of aesthetics and strict philosophy both phenomena strive for authenticity, approaching it each in their own way: the Dadaists and the Expressionists fundamentally reject all the rationality and oppose academicism, while phenomenologists do not dispute the academic tone of philosophizing, even when they go beyond the Husserlian methodology. Phenomenology absorbs the classical spirit and places it at the heart of modern philosophizing. Exploring the kindship of phenomenology with the early avant-garde, the author focuses on the concept of neutralization, which replaced the concept of negation in the 20th century. Turning to the understanding of neutralization by Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Adorno, the author shows that both in the field of the free artistic experiment and within the framework of the strict philosophical discourse, neutralization enables contemporary subjectivity to present itself as a distant individuality. The preface to the translation discusses the possibility of placing phenomenology in a situation of dialogue with the theories and practices of the Russian avant-garde. The similarity of two approaches is evidenced by the examples of the Russian avant-gardists’ appeal to the tradition and their sensory approach to the experience of reality.

The article examines Husserl’s conception of Buddhism, which was largely determined by the reading of the “Majjhima-nikaya” in Karl Eugen Neumann’s translation. It is a general and dotted image in which no distinctions were made regarding the eras, traditions and schools of Buddhist philosophy: an image that an interested European reader might form after reading the 152 sutras of the “Collection of Middle Instructions” of the Pali Canon. Nevertheless, it seems a productive task to interpret this image in order to better explain Husserl’s conception of phenomenology about itself, regardless of the naivety of the image under discussion from the point of view of Buddhology. This article puts forward the following theses for discussion: Husserl understood Buddhist thought as a “conjugate detail (Gegenstück)” that complements the phenomenological science of transcendental subjectivity by contrast. Specifically, he interpreted Buddhism as a path to the transcendental position not from the critique of science, but from practice—as a suspension of the mythical picture of the world and the “practical general thesis” of the natural attitude. Although Buddhist thought according to Husserl, like phenomenology, is aimed at “revealing the transcendental position,” it nevertheless does not establish a science (in the radicalized Husserlian sense). In fact, Husserl uses this rough outline (characterizing Buddhism as “transcendentalism without science”) to emphasize the dynamics of his own phenomenological “working project of philosophy (Arbeitsphilosophie).” The “Collection of Middle Instructions” of the Pali Canon serves as an occasion for Husserl to thematize the specific combination of seriousness and playfulness that characterizes his phenomenology as “carefree care”; this helps Husserl to express the driving force of phenomenological labor (“work fervor” (Arbeitsfieber)).

This article is a response to A. Patkul’s review of my translation of D. Jacquette’s book “Alexius Meinong, the Shepherd of Non-Being.” I disagree with reviewer’s opinion on a number of issues. One of the objections is that A. Patkul proceeds from the implicit (and sometimes explicit) opposition of analytical and continental philosophy when considering the contents of a book written by an analytical philosopher, and moreover translated by an analytical philosopher. This attitude is manifested by him in two trends. Firstly, it is an emphasis on the already well-known sides of the Meinong’s theory of objects, which is rather of historical and philosophical interest, tending more to repeat the “Brentanian” roots and phenomenological aspects of Mining. Actually, the application of Meinong’s ideas to modern philosophical problems, which is the subject of Jacquette’s book, is practically ignored. Secondly, reviewer’s claims to the terminological decisions of the translator turn out, in addition to trivial typos, to be the result of all his desire to keep Meinong in the bosom of often scholastic terminology, with the recommendation to make do with Latin tracing paper. From my point of view, despite the well-known quirkiness of the terminology of Meinong himself, when translating, one should strive to convey the meaning in terms understandable to the reader.