Phenomenological Philosophy Research Articles

HUSSERL’S CONTEXTUALIST THEORY OF TRUTH

In the following article I wanted to draw attention to some features of Edmund Husserl’s theory of evidence and truth. I tried to show that if we have a closer look on what he said about the nature of experience and cognition, we see, how current and actual author he is, even in the beginning of the 21st Century. Many authors in Husserl’s own time, and long after Husserl, considered him to be a late representative of traditional, modernist metaphysics: as idealist, Foundationalist, intellectualist, etc. The publication of Husserl vast unpublished manuscripts discarded such charges evidently, but even the detailed, more attentive and caution reading of his published works (or works, which were prepared for publication), shows such charges as highly problematic. What I would like to highlight in this article: is the contextualist character of Husserl’s understanding of evidence and truth, of knowledge and Being. That means: every insight and every entity fits into a wider context of further experiences, insights and entities. This conception characterized in him every level of experience and knowledge: 1) everyday experiences, 2) scientific and 3) philosophical cognition. Evidence is on every level is fundamentally open and contextual – whose correlation is an essentially organic reality. Husserl with such formulations says something very similar what we could find under the title of “epistemic contextualism” in contemporary analytic philosophy. The second main thesis of my essay (next to the contextual character of evidence), is that Husserl’s stance in this question might serve as a fruitful field of dialogue between phenomenology and analytic philosophy.

Визуальная коммуникация любви в Афинах и Венеции: Платон и Томас Манн

The article is devoted to the study of ontological, aesthetical and anthropological features of visual communication in Plato and Thomas Mann. I compare T. Mann’s Death in Venice artistic conception with the philosophical understanding of the image, contemplation, beauty and Eros of Plato, primarily in the dialogues Phaedrus and Symposium (with some reference to F. Nietzsche and the film by L. Visconti). The author explores the specifics of the visual-plastic worldview and the contemplative cognition of being, determined by the erotic foundation of the aesthetic contemplation of the human image as phenomenal manifestation of truth, fundamentally different from the one revealed in speech communication, and even capable of being autonomous from it, and represents the philosophical and artistic phenomenology of the development, transformation and implementation of such consciousness. The role of Athens and Venice as particularly significant historical-cultural topoi of visual communication is specially emphasized.

The question of proving God’s existence

The article deals with the approach to the question of proving the existence of God from the point of view of the concept of personality. Human existence is not limited to the concept of nature: individuality is not equal to personality. Attempts to reduce consciousness to brain function remain a hypothesis. The anthropological problem of man cannot be solved only within the framework of natural science. The phenomenological philosophy of the 20th century found a new way within the framework of philosophical anthropology, the key concept of which is the concept of personality. Man is constantly striving to transcend his nature in his life. The historical existence of the individual is realized through the transformation of the world in accordance with value attitudes. The very existence of religions is an answer to an individual’s query about the meaning of the fundamental facts of life: birth, death, and the existence of evil. Personality, personal being, is both a fact and a task for man: everything that exists must be personified. The dialogical aspect of being a person is considered. The personal existence of man also requires a personal God. The revelation of the personal God is a response to the human thirst for supernatural communication. The church acts as a unity of personalities in the super personality of God, transcending the boundary of earthly life. The very existence of the Christian Church is a personalistic analog of the proof of the existence of God.

Феноменология: ретроспективный и проспективный подходы (предварительный план исследования)

The article outlines ways to determine the theoretical preconditions for the formation of phenomenological philosophy and provides some examples of the practical application of the phenomenological method in current social and human studies. The specificity of the approach implemented in the article is that the authors deliberately refuse to consider the primary sources of phenomenology (Kant, Brentano, etc.) and turn to the primary sources of this doctrine in ancient philosophy. The authors assume that addressing ancient philosophy allows to reveal all capabilities of the phenomenological method. The application of the phenomenological method in psychology faces a number of difficulties. Firstly, there is a problem of distinguishing between philosophy and psychology. Secondly, there is a difficulty in combining scientific (dogmatic) and phenomenological (anti-dogmatic, critical) knowledge. The task of a phenomenological psychologist is to develop an understanding of the diversity of human experience, guided by unpackaged knowledge. Therefore, an appeal to the philosophical heritage of the past, and above all to ancient and medieval texts, is a justified decision, because the first prescientific attempts of thinkers to find ways to describe experience are found there.

Technologies of Race and Reproduction

This article discusses Camisha Russell's book, The Reproduction of Race (2018; Indiana UP). In it, I make three points, summarised as: why we should stop talking about assisted reproductive technologies; why we should talk more about genetic relatedness; and why feminist theorists and critical philosophers should stop rejecting bioethics. The paper was initially developed as an invited presentation at the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Philosophy Conference (SPEP; Pittsburgh, 2019).

Is Experience Diacritical? Transl. from English Аnna Ushenina

The article describes the implementation of the diacritical principle in the philosophy of László Tengelyi. It is emphasized that not only the method is diacritical, but also the experience in itself, in the description of which Tengelyi sees the main task of phenomenological philosophy. In doing so, the author presents the main ideas of Tengelyi's last book, paying special attention to such structures of experience as I, the Other and the world. The analysis of the categories of experience and their relation is carried out, for which the Kantian term «consonance» used. However, unlike Kant, Tengelyi shows that consonance permeates all experience. Further, the author, developing Tengelyi's approach, examines in detail the diacritical relation between the I and the Other and such types of diacritically structured experience as love, despair and the consciousness of one's own death.

Quantum Complementarity: Both Duality and Opposition

Quantum complementarity is interpreted in terms of duality and opposition. Any two conjugates are considered both as dual and opposite. Thus quantum mechanics introduces a mathematical model of them in an exact and experimental science. It is based on the complex Hilbert space, which coincides with the dual one. The two dual Hilbert spaces model both duality and opposition to resolve unifying the quantum and smooth motions. The model involves necessarily infinity even in any finitely dimensional subspace of the complex Hilbert space being due to the complex basis. Furthermore, infinity is what unifies duality and opposition, universality and openness, completeness and incompleteness in it. The deduced core of quantum complementarity in terms of infinity, duality and opposition allows of resolving a series of various problems in different branches of philosophy: the common structure of incompleteness in Godel’s (1931) theorems and Enstein, Podolsky, and Rosen’s argument (1935); infinity as both complete and incomplete; grounding and self-grounding, metaphor and representation between language and reality, choice and information, the totality and an observer, the basic idea of philosophical phenomenology. The main conclusion is: Quantum complementarity unifies duality and opposition in a consistent way underlying the physical world.

Progresso técnico-cientí­fico e crí­tica humanista: posií§íµes face a um debate reiterado no campo educacional luso-brasileiro (1950-1974)

O presente artigo pretende analisar os principais tópicos relacionados a uma crítica de fundo humanista contra o que muitos professores-autores e intelectuais que escreveram em revistas portuguesas e brasileiras especializadas em Educação, entre os anos de 1950 e 1974, consideravam caracterizar o domínio exacerbado de um racionalismo técnico-científico na cultura e nas escolas daquele contexto histórico. Constatou-se que para a construção dessa crítica humanista foram mobilizadas, com certa frequência, teorias da filosofia fenomenológica, da psicanálise e do fazer artístico na afã de se pensar a possibilidade de processos de formação a partir de novos prismas.

A TEORIA DO ENUNCIADO CONCRETO E A INTERPRETAÇÃO METALINGUÍSTICA: BASES FILOSÓFICAS, REFLEXÕES METODOLÓGICAS E APLICAÇÕES PARA OS ESTUDOS DAS CIÊNCIAS E PARA A PESQUISA EM EDUCAÇÃO EM CIÊNCIAS

A linguagem e o discurso desempenham um papel importante nos Estudos das Ciências (Science Studies) e na Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências. Nesse artigo, buscamos contribuir para essa tendência de pesquisa apresentando uma discussão sobre a Teoria do Enunciado Concreto de Bakhtin. Em especial, discutimos como a visão de mundo de Bakhtin se opõe à metafísica kantiana e se apoia em uma filosofia fenomenológica, influenciada pela Física Moderna, pelo Marxismo e pela monadologia de Leibiniz. À luz dessa discussão filosófica, apresentamos, então, sua Teoria do Enunciado Concreto e traduzimos sua visão de mundo em possíveis reflexões metodológicas para os Estudos das Ciências e para a Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências. A partir disso, fazemos uma proposta de “trajetória analítica”, a qual serve como uma sugestão de possível organização da Interpretação Metalinguística de Bakhtin. Por fim, exemplificamos a utilização de tal trajetória analítica.

Сучасна українська феноменологічна термінологія і підходи до перекладу «Картезіанських медитацій» Едмунда Гусерля

The article is a translator’s commentary to the Ukrainian translation of E. Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations. The task of this article is twofold: On the one hand, to reveal the historical context of the writing and publishing of Cartesian Meditations, on the other hand, to outline the strategic and terminological aspects of the Ukrainian translation of this work. The first part of the article is devoted to the history of creation of the text of Cartesian Meditations. In particular, the author answers the question of why the German text of Cartesian Meditations was not published until 1950, almost twenty years after the French translation of the book was released. The historico-philosophical investigation conducted in the article shows that Husserl considered the publication of Cartesian Meditations as an opportunity to systematically present his phenomenological philosophy and, eventually, recognized the impossibility of embracing the complexity of his doctrine within this work. The difficulty of this systematic presentation led to the enhancement of the role of Husserl’s assistant, Eigen Fink, in the editing of Cartesian Meditations and, ultimately, to the creation of Fink’s Sixth Meditation. The latter, as the author of the article demonstrates, puts previous developments in the phenomenology of static and genetic types into a new theoretical perspective, mainly by introducing the method of constructive phenomenology. In the second part of the article, the author offers one of the possible strategies for translating Husserlian texts that consists in structural simplification and stylistic improvement of the text. This strategy is proposed to be implemented by using simpler grammatical structures, by supplementing the text with translator’s comments, as well as by consistent usage of the Ukrainian phenomenological terminology. During the analysis of the terminological discourse of contemporary Ukrainian phenomenology, the author revises some of the established Ukrainian translations, such as the translation of the phenomenological terms Ausschaltung and Zeitbewusstsein and introduces the translation of new terms, such as Vergemeinschaftung, Person, reell and ideell.

The interactive context of discovering the category of corporeality in a phenomenological approach

The article presents different ways of dealing with the subject of the body and corporeality in the humanities, which can form the epistemiological and axiological basis in a reflection on the psycho- and physiotherapeutic relationship with patients, and confronts them with the results of two qualitative studies based on the grounded theory concerning exploration by women of their own body and experiencing their own corporeality, intimacy and touch in medical relations. The author shows that phenomenological philosophy, taking into account the concepts of “carnal self” and “presence of the embodied” that human knowledge always has a carnal character, is the most adequate for use in analyses regarding therapeutic interactions related to the body. Analysis of qualitative research on the process of realising your own corporeality in the cognitive-emotional dimension in the relationship with oneself and in the therapeutic relationship fully confirms the legitimacy of applying the grounded theory method in the study of phenomena regarding carnality and such values as gratitude, mindfulness, care, efficiency and autonomy emerge.

Getting into it in the wrong way: Interpretative phenomenological analysis and the hermeneutic circle

This article critically analyses the hermeneutic commitment of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). In the theoretical framework of IPA, the role of preconceptions and prejudices is consistently downplayed; priority is given to the participant's own words. Paley has argued that IPA's interpretative phase is always and necessarily determined by the researcher's fore-conceptions, as opposed to the participant's narrative. I demonstrate that IPA's failure to recognize the importance of an external frame of reference in interpretation may arise from the misunderstanding of the method's hermeneutic underpinnings. I essentially argue that bracketing the researcher's fore-conceptions during the initial phases of IPA is merely an illusion. While it is beyond the scope of this article to dispute whether IPA is genuinely phenomenological, my claim ultimately poses a challenge to IPA's phenomenological commitment on its own terms. The article concludes with a proposal to substantially improve IPA's consistency with hermeneutic tradition and its grounding in phenomenological philosophy.

Place, Ecological Dynamics and Football

ABSTRACT In this review article, I will use the phenomenology of place and read it alongside ecological dynamics theories (EDT) in sport. I will show the many congruences between these two areas of research and use place to support, supplement and show the phenomenological and ontological foundations of ecological dynamics analysis in sports. I show that the findings and principles used in ecological dynamics can be better understood through the work of Australian place phenomenologist Jeff Malpas. Through this relationship between phenomenological philosophy and ecological dynamics theory, I hope to establish a stronger connection between these two diverging fields of research (phenomenological ontology and sport science). Throughout this article, I demonstrate that an understanding of place can provide a widened and phenomenological basis for the understanding of EDT of sport including affordances, constraints, expertise and learning. Specifically, I use the first-person perspective of the phenomenology of place to illustrate a perspective that ecological dynamics theories do not have access due to the nature of their method. As a result, this article augments both the philosophy of place and ecological dynamics theories of sport by orientating them to different views on the same phenomena. Place benefits by being practically applied to sport sciences whereas ecological dynamics benefits by unveiling a new phenomenological perspective, description and ontological grounding to their object of study.

Чистое сознание в контексте формальной логики

The subject of the research is the dynamics of noesis of pure consciousness and the rules of formal logic. The goal was to establish the foundations for the synthesis of pure consciousness and ordinary reason. The methodological basis was the theory of pure consciousness postulated by E. Husserl in his "Ideas for pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. Book one. A general introduction to pure phenomenology". The research also featured I. Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", in particular his reflections on the "foundations of pure reason" and the formal logic of Aristotle. Results. If we split the emerging experience of pure consciousness into interoceptive and exteroceptive, it means that the pure contemplation of things is not as pure as E. Husserl believed it to be, since the reason with its invariable logical operations is always added to the noesis procedure. This leads us to a less idealized understanding of phenomenology as a philosophical trend, even though Husserl’s work used classical laws of "contemplative intuition". The results can be applied in the field of epistemology and the theory of phenomenological knowledge. Findings. The subject of knowledge, even after the phenomenological reduction is completed, is still connected with rational activity. Such a vision of the phenomenological layer could eliminate the very possibility of the appearance of "pure entities" since we do not completely abandon our everyday "natural setting". However, we believe that in order to encounter anything at all in the "epoch" state, it is necessary to continue to keep in touch with reason, since otherwise there is a risk of falling into somnambulism. Reason, although it enters the layer of pure knowledge, does not lose its formal logical abilities. Logical laws are connected with the operation of noesis, thereby creating a general experience of things of an interoceptive or exteroceptive nature.

Introduction

Introduction

Sexual consent as transcendence: A phenomenological understanding

Consent to sex is a topic of much research, particularly with the goal of optimizing sex education for youth, college students, and military service personnel. Sex educators have tended to err on the side of clear and concise definitions of consent for ease of instruction. However, the sexual science literature has steadily shown that the navigation of consent to sexuality activity is much more nuanced, situated and contextual. When consent is conceptualized as a yes or no answer to particular sexual acts or sexual activity altogether, it overlooks the dynamic nature of how people experience consenting. This article examines consent in the sexual science research literature and then considers these findings through the lens of some of the contributions of phenomenological philosophy. We then discuss the experience of consent as a dialogic process that can lead to moments of transcendence of the self and deep reverence for the other, despite some moments of lack of clarity or ambiguity within the same sexual act.

A Troubled World and the Practice of Psychotherapy

Human science psychologies have recognized that a significant dimension of the distress that clients bring to psychotherapy arises from living in a disordered world. Drawing on insights from philosophical hermeneutics (Cushman), phenomenology (van den Berg), and archetypal psychology (Hillman), this essay considers the virtuous (Illich and Schwartz) practice of psychotherapy in a world increasingly inhospitable to human dwelling.

The practice of phenomenology: The case of Max van Manen.

Since its inception, phenomenological philosophy has exerted an influence on empirical science. But what is the best way to practice, use and apply phenomenology in a non-philosophical context? How deeply rooted in phenomenological philosophy must qualitative research be in order to qualify as phenomenological? How many of the core commitments of phenomenology must it accept? In the following contribution, I will take a closer look at Max van Manen's work. I will argue that van Manen's understanding of and presentation of phenomenology is quite problematic and that his book Phenomenology of Practice rather than amounting to a clear and accessible presentation of the phenomenological method that would make it do-able to researchers who are not themselves professional philosophers is in fact both abstruse and excessively complicated. I will then turn to nursing, and by taking that as my example, outline a better way to apply and practice phenomenology.

Fenomenología: filosofía comprensiva e interpretativa para el cuidado de enfermería

Introducción: El pensar para enfermería, es descubrir o redescubrir el sentido de aquello que llamamos, concepto, procedimiento, es fundar lo que se manifiesta fenomenológicamente buscando la esencia de la forma. Reflexionar respecto a la perspectiva fenomenológica en el proceso del cuidado incide en una práctica enfermera significativa y enriquecedora.Objetivo: Mostrar la filosofía fenomenológica a través de una mirada asistencial comprensiva e interpretativa, que describa la importancia de incluirla en el cuidado de enfermería encaminado a la comprensión del ser. Desarrollo: Comprender a la persona en situación de enfermedad en su dimensión humana utilizando el análisis reflexivo establece una forma de conocer la realidad, adentrándose en la esfera interna de las cosas para captar su verdadero sentido olvidando lo externo, lo evidente, lo que parte de una causa efecto, teniendo una estructura científica para interpretar y comprender, lo subjetivo del pensamiento, descubriendo estructuras esenciales de la conciencia y estableciendo la responsabilidad social de tiene enfermería, para el desarrollo de potencialidades, capacidades y posibilidades de bienestar en los individuos y la comunidad. Conclusiones: Los caminos para la atención de enfermería no terminan, mostrar la filosofía fenomenológica proporciona elementos para comprender que establece el ser humano con el entorno en la búsqueda de su salud, a partir de una mayor comprensión sobre la existencia humana y del ser enfermero.

Educable or not? Teacher’s alternatives when connecting curriculum to pupils

ABSTRACTWhen working to connect homogeneous curricula with heterogeneous groups of pupils, teachers have to sort pupils according to the categories allowed for in the national school system. In this article, we compare German organizational differentiation, where pupils are divided into stable groups, to Norwegian pedagogical differentiation, where instruction is adapted to the pupils within the common classroom. This study is qualitative and explorative; the method employed is a modification of philosophical phenomenology, and the theoretical discussion is pedagogical-philosophical and educational-sociological. When teachers from these two systems reflect upon the equality of opportunity of their system, categories of educable versus uneducable pupils materialize. The individual teacher’s academic background, combined with a heavily theoretical curriculum, creates a culturally delimited learning environment. This can be critical for pupils with non-academic dispositions or cultural perspectives. The question is whether the systems that employ ostensibly democratic differentiation principles legitimize an educational dictatorship, perpetuating an undemocratic understanding of knowledge and learning.