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19th & 20th May 2011
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Thursday, 19th May, Room: Arundel 1B
09:30- 11:00
Registration & Coffee
11:00-11:15
Plenary Session Welcome- Welcome by organizers and Dr.
Paul Davies (Reader in Philosophy, Deputy Head of School of History,
Art History and Philosophy, and Director of Student Support for School of
HAHP).
11:20-12:40
Session 1 – Issues in Early Heidegger
Chair: Christos Hadjioannou
Speaker 1: Aaron Wendland (Oxford University, UK)
Title of paper: Discourse and Disclosure: Language as the
House of Being in Sein und Zeit
Speaker 2: Juan Hernandez (Warwick University, UK)
Title of paper: The place of an independent reality in
Heidegger’s early transcendental philosophy
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12:40- 13:40
Lunch
13:40- 15:00
Session 2 – Modernist delimitations of Phenomenology
Chair: Gabriel Martin
Speaker 1: Ari Korhonen (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Title of paper: Humanism or Metaphysics: Derrida on the
Kantian End of Phenomenology
Speaker 2: Matthew Bennett (University of Essex, UK)
Title of paper: The Beginnings of Phenomenology: did
Nietzsche do phenomenology?
15:00- 15:20
Coffee Break
15:20- 16: 40
Session 3 – Issues in Late Heidegger
Chair: Alistair Duncan
Speaker 1: Tobias Keiling (Freiburg University, Germany)
Title of paper: The Death and the Place of Phenomenology-On
Heidegger’s “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking”
Speaker 2: Andreea Parapuf (Radboud University, The Netherlands)
Title of paper: From Phenomenon to the Phenomenal Character
of the Event
16:40-17:00
Coffee Break
17:00- 18:20
Session 4 - Embodiment and Realism
Chair: Aaron Wendland
Speaker 1: Jasper Van de Vijver (University of Antwerp, Belgium)
Title of paper: Embodiment and transcendence. Being in place
through the body
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Speaker 2: Lorcan Whitehead (Essex University, UK)
Title of paper: Trying not to Remain Objective
18:30- 18:40
Closing Remarks
Drinks at IDS Bar (on campus)
Friday, 20th May, Room: FRISTON 113
8.30- 9:00
Registration and Coffee
9:00- 10:20
Session 1 – Phenomenology and Art
Chair: Arthur Willemse
Speaker 1: Tim Huntley (Sussex University, UK)
Title of paper: “An indolence about existing”: In the sink and
deathly torpor of theatre
Speaker 2: Tavi Meraud (Potsdam University, Germany)
Title of paper: Phenomenology’s End: The Beginning of Art
10:20- 10:30
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Coffee Break
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10:30- 12:10
Keynote Speaker
Professor Charles Guignon (University of South Florida, USA)
Title of Paper: Becoming a Person: Hermeneutic
Phenomenology’s Contribution
Chair: Dr. Michael Lewis (University of Sussex)
12.10 – 13.20
13.20 – 14.40
Lunch Break
Session 2 – Heidegger and other philosophers
Chair: Zoe Sutherland
Speaker 1: Dimitri Kladiskakis (Sussex University, UK)
Title of paper: Heidegger and Marx: a dialectic on practicality
Speaker 2: Abraham J. Greenstine (Duquesne University, Pittsburg,
USA)
Title of paper: Aristotle’s Metaphysical Alternative to Heidegger’s
Fundamental Ontology
14:40- 14:50
14:50- 16:10
Coffee break
Session 3 - On historicity and temporality
Chair: Murat Celic
Speaker 1: Keith Whitmoyer (New School for Social Research,
New York, USA)
Title of Paper: Untimeliness and Transcendental Phenomenology
Speaker 2: Peter Varga (ELTE University, Hungary)
Title of paper: The Historicity and Endgültigkeit of Phenomenology:
The Case of Husserl
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16:10- 16:30
Coffee Break
16:30- 18:30
Keynote Speaker
Philosophy Society of the University of Sussex
Professor Robert Bernasconi (Pennsylvania State University)
Title of Paper: The Phenomenology of Racial Types in Nazi
Germany: Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss's Debt to Husserl
Chair: Dr. Paul Davies (University of Sussex)
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18:30-18:45
Best Paper Prize and Closing Remarks
18:45- 20:00
Drinks at IDS Bar (on campus)
20.30-
Dinner at tba
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Abstracts of Graduate Speakers
Name: Aaron Wendland, DPhil candidate at Oxford University, Somerville College
Email: [email protected]
Title: Discourse and Disclosure: Language as the House of Being in Sein und Zeit
Abstract: In an attempt to illustrate the extent to which language is the house of Being in Sein und Zeit,
this paper begins with an examination of the complex and confusing discussion Heidegger actually
produces on discourse and language in his magnum opus. This complexity and confusion stems from
the fact that Heidegger appears to be working with two competing conceptions of discourse in Sein und
Zeit: namely, a pragmatic-instrumentalist approach, which treats language as grounded in a prior,
practical understanding of the world that is articulated in discourse, and a linguistic-constitutivist point of
view, which sees language as a condition for any understanding of the world whatsoever. Whilst
analyzing Heidegger’s writings on discourse, this paper criticizes the pragmatic model for conflating
discourse with Heidegger’s technical use of understanding and failing to appreciate the extent to which
language constitutes our world, whereas the linguistic explication is scrutinized for trivializing the
distinction Heidegger makes between discourse and language and adopting a thin conception of
linguistic phenomena. Against the aforementioned interpretations, this essay defines discourse as a
distinct communal norm that governs Dasein’s expressive and communicative practices and opens up
her world. Briefly, the idea is that Dasein’s ability to communicate with others enables her to take a
stand on her existence and thereby understand something as something. On this reading, discourse
refers to the transcendental conditions of repetition and recognition that make communication and worlddisclosure possible, but in concrete terms Dasein’s capacity to communicate and disclose the world is a
function of her natural language. And insofar as discourse underwrites Dasein’s use of language but
language itself is the site of world-disclosure, language is already the house of Being in Sein und Zeit.
Name: Juan Pablo Hernández, PhD candidate at the University of Warwick
Email: [email protected]
Title: The place of an independent reality in Heidegger’s early transcendental philosophy
Abstract: The question whether Heidegger’s philosophy in Being and Time involves either some form of
idealism or realism, or on the contrary overcomes the Cartesian presuppositions that give rise to such
doctrines has been the source of heated and unrelenting debate for many years. This problem is deeply
related to the questions of how we are to understand the phenomenological-transcendental character of
Heidegger’s enterprise, and how exactly this approach is supposed to address traditional metaphysical
concerns. I identify two main types of interpretation on the basis of a distinction between world-directed
and self-directed approaches originating in the literature on transcendental arguments (Strawson,
Stroud, Cassam). The first type of reading claims that Heidegger’s theory has metaphysical ambitions
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and involves a form of idealism (Okrent, Blattner, Hans-Pile, Holfman), whereas the second reads
Heidegger’s enterprise as exclusively concerned with Dasein’s conditions of intelligibility (Dreyfus,
Spinosa, Philipse, Cerbone, Carman). I find both approaches wanting and argue that although the
second and more accepted reading is theoretically and exegetically more solid than the first, it ultimately
misconstrues Heidegger’s picture of the relation between intelligibility and entities. This reading typically
perceives a problem regarding the compatibility of Heidegger’s thinking with realism, and attempts to
provide a solution. I argue that such perception and the attempted solution are expressions of a failure to
overcome the Cartesian picture Heidegger criticizes. By drawing attention to certain passages and
emphasizing important similarities with John McDowell’s rejection of Cartesianism I propose an
interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy according to which the conditions of intelligibility are to be
understood as granting direct access to the way things are in themselves, thereby making idealism
untenable and a proof of realism pointless, while exorcising any threat of restoring a noumenonal reality.
I conclude with some remarks on how this interpretation, in its similarities with McDowell’s philosophy,
provides a novel way of understanding the relation between Heidegger’s concepts of phenomenon and
entity, and therefore also the role of phenomenology in his early thinking.
Name: Ari Korhonen, PhD Candidate at the University of Helsinki
Email: [email protected]
Title: Humanism or Metaphysics: Derrida on the Kantian End of Phenomenology
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, how the early thought of Jacques Derrida can be
conceived as an articulation of a certain Kantian end of phenomenology. As it is well known the thought
of Derrida is often understood as a critic of phenomenology and as a part of the post-phenomenological
thought. From this point of view, the thought of Derrida is something that simply comes after the end of
phenomenology. However, as this paper aims to demonstrate, this criticism presented by Derrida has to
be seen as an operation within a certain historical situation. As Derrida himself wrote, the project of his
early thought was to resist the metaphysics of presence in its different forms, and by presenting the
readings of Husserl to defend the position of philosophy. For example, in his introduction to the Husserl’s
Origin of Geometry, Derrida demonstrates how the ideality of an object consists in the intertwining
movement of signification which can not be taken as a present object. According to Derrida, the
Husserlian phenomenology deconstructs the presence of ideality and shows how the unity of meaningful
world is not present but only in the unity of movement. However, in this way Derrida demonstrates how
also Husserl chooses a metaphysical way. Husserl keeps the human ratio as the horizon of the
movement of signification. As Derrida writes in his The Ends of Man, “the necessity which links the
thinking of the phainesthai to the thinking of the telos” is evident in the Husserlian phenomenology. The
aim of this paper is to offer a reading of early texts of Derrida and show the argument concerning the end
of phenomenology: even though Husserl deconstructs the presence of meaning, he thinks this
movement always within the essence of man as its horizon and its telos. In this way the end of
phenomenology is always a Kantian one, an end to come.
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Name: Matthew Paul Bennett, PhD Candidate at the University of Essex
Email: [email protected]
Title: The Beginnings of Phenomenology: did Nietzsche do phenomenology?
Abstract: Characterising the distinctive features of phenomenology has proved notoriously difficult both
for retrospective histories of phenomenology and for those canonical phenomenologists about whom
histories are written. One approach we could take to delimiting phenomenology would be to definitively
identify those in the history of philosophy who did practice phenomenology. An extensional definition of
phenomenology, if achieved, would go a long way to help determine what is characteristic of the
phenomenological method. This paper will contribute to such a task by assessing the suggestion made
by some that Nietzsche is a candidate for our list of phenomenologists. A relatively small but by no
means insignificant collection of Nietzsche readers – including Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Keith
Ansell-Pearson and Peter Poellner – have claimed that Nietzsche should be read as a phenomenologist.
These readers have argued that Nietzsche is a phenomenologist insofar as he replaces first philosophy
with (non-naturalistic) psychological observations and he suspends the natural attitude.
In order to assess the validity of the claim that Nietzsche was a phenomenologist, I will suggest that this
reading is committed to two further claims about Nietzsche. First, the phenomenologist reading must
maintain that Nietzsche’s psychology is a study of how the world appears to consciousness. Second, it
must maintain that Nietzsche eschews accounts of the generation of phenomena in favour of accounts of
the content of those phenomena (what Husserl might have called noemata) and the structures
necessary to consciousness (what Husserl might have called noesis). I will suggest that were these
things not true of Nietzsche, then it would not make sense to label him a phenomenologist. I will also
give reasons to doubt (though not necessarily insurmountable objections to) both of these further claims
of the phenomenologist reading of Nietzsche.
Name: Tobias Keiling, PhD Candiate at Freiburg University, Germany
Email: [email protected]
Title: The Death and the Place of Phenomenology-On Heidegger’s “The End of Philosophy and the Task
of Thinking”
Abstract: “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking” (1964), one of Heidegger’s last lectures,
may be said to his philosophical bequest. Through his discussion of Hegel’s and Husserl’s determination
of the “matter of thinking,” Heidegger deliberates the fate of phenomenology at the proclaimed “end of
philosophy.” In opening up philosophy so as to attend to the matter of thinking (identified as subjectivity),
both phenomenologists exhibit an approach still relevant for what Heidegger calls “the task of thinking”:
to understand what it means to determine a matter of thinking responding to what calls to be thought.
Thus tasked, phenomenology remains “the possibility of thinking corresponding to the claims of the
matter of thinking.” Phenomenology persists as a possibility precisely because philosophy ends. In such
a way, classical phenomenology is redefined by its very end.
To determine this opening redetermination, I wish to elaborate on two ideas: the first is Heidegger’s
claim that the end is to be understood as a gathering place, like the tip of a spear concentrating its force
to a single point. The end of phenomenology would accordingly gather its different historical shapes and
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reveal their common thrust not as their “last,” but as their “first” and “utmost possibility.” Following John
Sallis, I wish to relate this mention of the “utmost possibility” of philosophy to his account of Beingtowards-Death in Being and Time, where death is determined as the “utmost possibility” of Dasein.
Heidegger is intent to show how death is constantly present in authentic being—if an analogy can be
drawn, can it be said that what Heidegger describes later is the persistent awareness of phenomenology
for its death, dying, as Heidegger feared, by becoming “cybernetics?” And if so, how does this relate to
the thinking of place announced in “The End of Philosophy... ?”
Name: Andreea Parapuf, PhD Candidate, Radboud University Nijmegen
Email: [email protected]
Title: From Phenomenon to the Phenomenal Character of the Event
Abstract: In this presentation I would like to address the main question of the conference – is there an
end of phenomenology and what would be the reasons and the criteria for setting such boundaries – by
focusing on one particular case: the transformations that take place in Heidegger’s philosophy in the
move from the phenomenological and hermeneutic ontology to the ‘post-phenomenological’ moment
known as Ereignis-Denken. I propose to look at Heidegger’s case as an exemplification of how the task
of phenomenology remains alive and guides a non-phenomenological or post-phenomenological
philosophy. It is broadly acknowledged that starting from the 1930’s onwards, Heidegger famously gave
up both phenomenology and hermeneutics, the two crucial methods of Being and Time. In this paper I
seek to challenge the view according to which the new approach of “the thinking of the history of being”
(seinsgeschichliches Denken) makes the end of the hermeneutic phenomenology unavoidable.
The goal of this presentation is to show and to investigate the presence of a number of
phenomenological and hermeneutic elements in the non-phenomenological or post-phenomenological
thinking of Ereignis. I will proceed by pointing out a number of similarities between the task of
phenomenology in Being and Time and a number of remarks that we can find in later texts or lectures of
Heidegger. The elements that I will compare are: a) the definition of logos in Being and Time with the
description of logos and legein in the 1951 lecture entitled Logos (Heraklit, Fragment 50). b) the second
element that I will investigate is the idea of “das Sichzeigende,” a term which, surprisingly enough,
describes both the phenomenon in Being and Time and the thing itself (die Sache) or being as Ereignis
in Heidegger’s later works. What do these similarities tell us about the specific nature of the relation
between the method and the object of phenomenology?
Name: Jasper Van de Vijver, PhD Candidate at University of Antwerp
Email: [email protected]
Title: Embodiment and transcendence. Being in place through the body
Abstract: In my talk, I would like to explore the seemingly commonsensical question ‘Where is here?’
from a phenomenological perspective. I will sketch the problem by introducing the views of Husserl and
Heidegger on this issue.
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According to Husserl, the embodied subject constitutes the absolute ‘center’ of its field of experience,
which is orientated around the I. Being ‘here’ thus comes down to being where the body is: being always
in the middle of things as the ‘zero-point of orientation’. This being-here is absolute, in the sense that I
can never not be here; it is impossible for me not to experience the world from this absolute here-point.
Heidegger’s phenomenology of spatiality implicitly but all too clearly constitutes a criticism of Husserl’s.
Whereas Husserl stresses the embodied character of the here- point as the place from which we relate
to the things around us, Heidegger holds that we always already transcend it towards the world, and that
we never really experience our body as the ‘place where we are’. Heidegger polemically states that
when we say ‘here’, we do not refer to ourselves or our body as a ‘zero-point’, but to the ‘there’ of the
particular situation we are engaged in. According to him, our body is not the nearest, but the most distant
from us.
I argue that both approaches have something to offer and do not exclude one another. Being here is
indeed being-in-place, as Heidegger highlights. However, it is clear that this place can only be given
through an embodied point of view, as Husserl holds. I will argue that what is important here is that this
point of view is itself perceptually absent. The body is not identical with the ‘here’, but gives way for the
places which are opened up by it.
Name: Lorcan Whitehead, PhD Candidate at the University of Essex
Email: [email protected]
Title: Trying not to Remain Objective
Abstract: In the opening section of Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty offers a critique of the
‘constancy hypothesis’ which represents his idiosyncratic enactment of the famous phenomenological
reduction. The constancy hypothesis offers tacit support for the notion of an objective world prior to
experience, by claiming to bridge the gap between that world and our experience of it. However, it
encounters problems when faced with ambiguous phenomena which do not neatly match up with the
stimuli that supposedly give rise to them. Because the constancy hypothesis cannot adequately account
for such phenomena, Merleau-Ponty insists that it must be rejected, along with the notion of an objective
world prior to experience that it is designed to support. Instead, Merleau-Ponty insists that the
perceptual world must be seen as primary, and the objective models offered by scientific and analytic
reflection as being derived from it. This critique, and the claim for the primacy of the perceptual world,
will be familiar to most students of Merleau-Ponty. However, the consequences of his claim for the
essential ambiguity of perceptual experience have not been fully appreciated by most commentators.
For Merleau-Ponty’s claim for the primacy of the perceptual world makes his notion of ambiguity far more
radical than the idea that we can simply approach things in different ways. This is because he claims
that the perceptual thing is itself “constituted in the hold which my body takes upon it” (PP 373). Thus
ambiguity is not a mere feature of perspectives, but a fundamental aspect of things themselves. In this
paper, I will suggest that taking seriously this radical notion of ambiguity is the real lesson arising from
Phenomenology of Perception; and that doing so ought to have profound consequences for our
understanding of notions such as objectivity, rationality and truth.
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Name: Tim Huntley, PhD Candidate at the University of Sussex
Email: [email protected]
Title: “An indolence about existing”: In the sink and deathly torpor of theatre
Abstract: When Levinas writes that “the fatality of the tragedy of antiquity becomes the fatality of
irremissible being” we might assume him to mark a movement from a theatre of essences to a theatre of
existence. Although Levinas certainly troubles over the inescapability of our being, his comments on
theatre in Existence and Existents (1947) suggest a form that differs from the representational approach
one might find under a phenomenological analysis of theatre's adumbrations.
Levinas' contention is that theatrical performance should be distinguished from the 'self-possession of a
beginning'. Existence is a particular continuity that, once begun, can be broken, whereas the life of
theatre cannot be interrupted. As such, theatre, for Levinas, is little more than a game. Discussion of
theatrical performance cannot prolong the theatrical event and so phenomenology might almost exhaust
theatre's aspectival potential. The conclusion, risk, and therefore the unpardonable thing about theatre,
is that it can sink into nothingness.
I will suggest that although theatre is granted no access to the metaphysical concerns of his project,
Levinas nonetheless leaves a slender opening which remains in the theatrical space after the
performance's end. I will argue that the notion of the end in theatre might have a more troubling
continuity than Existence and Existents allows. It is this very sense of continuity, I will argue, that Levinas
imports as metaphor into his account of the inescapable “perpetuity of the drama of existence” and which
might arguably be returned to and considered on the stage.
I will consider whether the finite span of theatrical performance might not be dissimilar to the account of
indolence that Existence and Existents offers. This would be an intemperate form of indolence that
embraces its own finality, not as a fatality but as an urgent drive towards its inescapable ending.
Name: Tavi Meraud, Masters student Universität Potsdam
Email: [email protected]
Title: Phenomenology’s End: The Beginning of Art
Abstract: In the generation of phenomenologists immediately following Husserl, there were several
aestheticians, philosophers who produced significant texts that tried to bring phenomenology together
with aesthetic concerns.
More recently, however, there has been sporadic but ever growing interest in understanding what
Husserl himself had to say about aesthetics, in particular the claims of his 1907 letter to the poet
Hofmannsthal. The sensational claims of the letter have either been examined in light of its famous
recipient or in the service of philosophy—but, as Husserl himself implies—what of art as philosophy?
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My paper, too, begins with this letter, but the intention is not to construct yet another phenomenological
aesthetics, but rather to argue that aesthetics, and concerns about art, is the important descendent of
Husserl’s phenomenology.
First, I follow Husserl’s fascination with the artist, who he believes to be uniquely privy to the eidetic
insight, via her experience of Phantasie, that is otherwise only available through abandoning the natural
attitude and bracketing the world, i.e. the reduction. Phantasie can be understood as the propaedeutic to
the reduction at heart of Husserl’s phenomenology and its transcendental consequences. In brief, I
establish an account of how art, both the practice and experience of, can itself be understood as a
primordially critical examination of perception and consequently world constitution in the same sense
that Husserl envisioned his phenomenology to be.
Hence my suggestion that art picks up right where Husserl’s phenomenology ends, i.e. Husserl’s own
struggle to constantly defend his phenomenology against accusations of it being idealism.
Thus, to close, I briefly discuss some ways in which art carries on the torch, which Husserl’s
phenomenology lit, by examining a selection of art practices that might have transcendental implications.
Art is, I want to argue, the “transcendental clue”, which leads to the transcendental investigation that is
phenomenology, that Husserl mentions in §150 of his 1913 Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie.
Name: Dimitrios Kladiskakis, PhD Candidate at the University of Sussex
Email: [email protected]
Title: Heidegger and Marx: a dialectic on practicality.
Abstract: Both Marx and Heidegger have founded their theories on the inseparability between man and
his surroundings. In the case of Heidegger, the point of entry for the exploration of the question of being
is a departure from the Cartesian understanding of the subject and object. Namely, in 'Being and Time'
Heidegger introduces the concept of the 'ready-to-hand', that is, things as they are immediately and nonreflectively used, and at the same time envisions man as inseparable from the world. For Marx, on the
other hand, it is productive activity that defines man as a historical being, and therefore, the relationship
between man and what is immediately useful is similarly emphasised.
In this paper, I will attempt to draw parallels between these two approaches. In detail, I will argue that
Marx's conception of productive activity as marking the beginning of human history, and therefore as the
birth of historical man himself, can be seen as complimentary to Heidegger's exploration of practical
everyday life as a primary mode of being. In particular, I will proceed to focus on the primacy of the
concept of 'equipment' and 'production' as these appear in Heidegger's 'Being and Time' and Marx and
Engels' 'German Ideology' respectively, and look into the possibility of a conceptual unification of the two
notions. The paper will therefore begin with a dialectic which will outline the aforementioned concepts of
'equipment' and 'production' and emphasise their importance to the understanding of the human
ontological situation. After this assertion, a constructive dialogue will be attempted between the two,
based on the primacy of practical activity, and finally a critical conclusion will discuss the possibilities of a
concrete synthesis and elaborate on its consequences.
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Name: Abraham Jacob Greenstine, PhD Candidate at Duquesne University
Email: [email protected]
Title: Aristotle’s Metaphysical Alternative to Heidegger’s Fundamental Ontology
Abstract: Heidegger’s Being and Time changed the landscape of phenomenology by bringing the
question of the meaning of being to the forefront of philosophy. However, he enters into this question by
taking up a particular kind of being, namely Dasein, and thus most of Being and Time engages in an
interpretation of Dasein. Despite this, Heidegger insists that this project is fundamental ontology, and not
a sort of anthropology. I want to argue that in Being and Time Heidegger (semi-consciously) follows a
path which is suggested, but not taken, by Aristotle in the Metaphysics. In the Metaphysics Aristotle
says that there are four meanings of being, namely the accidental, the true, the figures of predication,
and the actual/potential (!.2). However, Aristotle only takes up being as the true twice: he first addresses
and discards it in !.4. It next comes up at ".10, after the thorough analyses of being as substance and
as actuality; here Aristotle surprisingly says truth is the #$%&'()() (strictest or most governing) meaning
of being. Interpretations of Metaphysics have typically ignored this passage of the text, but Heidegger’s
Being and Time takes up being as true as the guiding thread of fundamental ontology (cf. VI.44).
However, I want to argue for a new reading of ".10 which interprets #$%&'()() as referring to our human
state; hence in this reading being as the true is better known to us, but not better known simply (cf. *.2).
This interpretation illustrates that phenomenology has been implicitly dominated by being as the true,
which Heidegger takes up explicitly in his analysis of Dasein, and also shows that this is misguided.
However, it would be naïve to simply return to a ready-made Aristotelian ontology or theology. Instead, I
want to suggest that we need to reawaken the overlooked aspect of Aristotelian metaphysics as the
sought science (*.2).
Name: Keith Whitmoyer, PhD Candidate at New School for Social Research
Email: [email protected]
Title: Phenomenology of Perception, Untimeliness and Transcendental Philosophy
Abstract: This essay argues that Phenomenology of Perception develops an account of temporality that
attempts to extricate the project of transcendental phenomenology from what one might call the
philosophy of “timeliness.” While such a philosophy makes a claim to being on time by presupposing a
certain sense of the a priori and evidence, a sense designed to guarantee the unmediated contact
between thought and world and thereby secure an eternal and apodictic ground for philosophy, MerleauPonty’s pivotal text offers a philosophy of “lateness” that attempts to recover the “temporal thickness” of
transcendental philosophy and which thereby recognizes the constitutive opacity and transcendence of
the ground it seeks to elaborate. By examining Le sentir, Le cogito, and La temporalité, we see that
Merleau-Ponty’s account of temporality plays a crucial role in elaborating the themes of sense-genesis,
evidence, and the a priori. By bringing his account of temporality as the autoconstitutive passage of an
écoulement, flow, and an éclatement, explosion, to bear on these themes, Merleau-Ponty attempts to
show that the secure transcendental ground sought by the philosophy of timeliness is impossible. In
other words, the philosophy of lateness recognizes the impossibility of coinciding with the conditions of
possibility for experience and for philosophy and thus recognizes its task as unfinalizable and
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incomplete. It is in this sense, then, that Merleau-Ponty will famously remark that the phenomenological
reduction cannot be completed and that the task of a radical inquiry is, as he says referencing Husserl, a
perpetual beginning. Moreover, in “Brouillon d’une rédaction,” Merleau-Ponty notes that lateness defines
philosophical interrogation, which is “too late for knowing the naïve world which was before it” (MerleauPonty, 1996, 358). Phenomenology of Perception therefore already introduces a revision of
transcendental philosophy that is further developed in his later work.
Name: Peter Andras Varga, PhD Candidate at ELTE-University Budapest
Email: [email protected]
Title: The Historicity and Endgültigkeit of Phenomenology: The Case of Husserl
Abstract: One of the most intriguing features of phenomenology, in comparison with other philosophical
movements, is its special relation to its founding father, Edmund Husserl. It is universally agreed that
phenomenology was made possible by a decisive breakthrough initiated by Husserl; yet almost every
phenomenologists, even Husserl’s closest associates, tried to overcome him. Phenomenology is the
history of Husserlian heresies: Husserl is both continuously rejected and rediscovered.
This ambivalent relation is apparently rooted in Husserl’s idea of philosophy that is thought to be unable
to accommodate phenomenology as a living philosophy. As I believe that there is a significant
discrepancy between Husserl’s own idea of philosophy and what was imputed to him by the subsequent
generations of phenomenologists; I argue that a revisiting of Husserl’s ideas on the historicity and
Endgültigkeit of phenomenology might prove relevant for our present understanding of phenomenology
and its ends.
First, I explore a historical episode that shows Husserl’s awareness of the fragmentary character of his
oeuvre and its implications. In the late 1920s Husserl corresponded with Misch, who supervised the
critical edition of Dilthey’s literary estate. Husserl reflected on its editorial principles, which, at a closer
look, reveal surprising resemblances to our modern framework used when reading historical authors like
Husserl. The study of Husserl’s letters shows that he was far from propagating an immutable philosophia
perennis and that he was conscious of the problem that the history of philosophy poses for the
independent thinker.
This problem came to the fore during Husserl’s preparation of the Crisis. I propose an interpretation of
Husserl’s Crisis and its context from this angle. The crucial point is that Husserlian phenomenologists
are able to learn from the history of philosophy without surrounding their special commitments. In order
to support this interpretation, I focus on Husserl’s analyses of various interpretive communities.
In sum, Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy could be closer to the historical approach to philosophy
than usually assumed; and the way of doing phenomenology through the study of history might give a
genuine chance for reinvigorating phenomenology – while revisiting Husserl again.
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