French Phenomenology

Resumen: el ensayo pone en relación la filosofía y la mística, atendiendo a su diversa comprensión, desde las claves de fondo del exceso y la donación. Para ello, recoge las aportaciones de Maurice Blondel sobre este tema y ofrece las inspiraciones contemporáneas de algunos filósofos encuadrados en la llamada fenomenología francesa.

This paper concerns a basic ambiguity in Merleau-Ponty's ontology between the reversibility of flesh and its écart. Where the former suggests continuity between the sensing and the sensible, the latter suggests their separation. It is difficult to know from reading The Visible and the Invisible which is to be prioritized or how one is to be read alongside the other. I argue that such a relation comes to light by thinking through the negation that is, for Merleau-Ponty, always constellated with being. This becomes more explicitly an ontology of differentiation or difference itself which does not prioritize identity. Such an ontology is, I argue, prefigured in Merleau-Ponty's work on passivity and its symbolic formation. The idea is that the dynamic between negation and being and of symbolic formation happens at the level of, or even in, the body. The final section is thus a consideration of "the implex," a term Merleau-Ponty borrows from Paul Valéry along with "chiasm."

Aquello que era extraordinario y único de J.-P. Sartre como intelectual era su capacidad para expresar sus ideas en múltiples géneros y estilos de la literatura. Novelas, relatos cortos, obras teatrales, crónicas de viaje, ensayos filosóficos y artículos periodísticos fueron algunos de sus
vehículos ideológicos. Por ejemplo, la pieza de teatro A puertas cerradas (1944) atesora en sus diálogos la concepción sartriana de la intersubjetividad, que asimismo aparece expuesta en el ensayo filosófico El ser y la nada (1943). Este despliegue de un mismo tema en modos de expresión distintos hace que éste gane en riqueza de contenido y transmisión. La literatura ficcional y el teatro fueron los medios más éxitos para la divulgación de su pensamiento. En cambio, sus escritos teóricos se mantienen, lamentablemente, reservados para lectores expertos.
Todo el mundo habrá escuchado o leído alguna vez el famoso diálogo dicho por Garcin “El infierno son los otros”, pero la intención conceptual de Sartre detrás de esa frase aún hoy permanece oculta para la mayoría. El objetivo de este artículo es acercar al público general, no
experto en filosófica, la teoría de las relaciones intersubjetivas que se esconde en A puertas cerradas.

Ce qui était extraordinaire et unique de J.P. Sartre comme intellectuel, c’était sa capacité pour exprimer ses idées en plusieurs genres et styles de la littérature. Des romans, des nouvelles, des pièces de théâtre, des chroniques de voyage, des essais philosophiques et des articles de presse
ont été quelques-uns de ses véhicules idéologiques. Par exemple, la pièce de théâtre Huis clos (1944) thésaurise dans ses dialogues la conception sartrienne de l’intersubjectivité, laquelle est aussi exposée dans l’essai philosophique L’être et le néant (1943). Ce déploiement d’un même sujet dans différentes façons d’expression fait que celui gagne en richesse de contenu et transmission. La littérature fictionnelle et le théâtre ont été les milieux les plus succès pour la divulgation de sa pensée. En revanche, ses écrits théoriques restent, malheureusement, réservés pour les lecteurs experts. Tout le monde un jour a lu ou entendu le célèbre dialogue dit par Garcin « L’enfer c’est les autre », mais l’intention conceptuelle de Sartre derrière cette phrase demeure cachée pour la plupart encore. Le but de cet article c’est de rapprocher au public
général, pas versé en la discipline philosophique, la théorie des relations intersubjectives qui se cache dans Huis clos

We have two ways of knowing. Our mind knows forms, things, both subtle and gross. Faces, hands, buildings, trees, math formulas, mind knows subject and the mind knows otherness. The mind knows dualities, the mind knows me and you, us and them, and this and that. Mind knows time, mind knows the past, the present and the sense of the future. The mind knows things and entities, the mind knows beings, infinite numbers of beings and things. The mind knows difference. The mind thinks conceptually, feels affectively, imagines through imagery, the mind has sense and the mind has memory. The mind knows dualistically.

One can discern passages in the writings of the Scholastic doctor Thomas Aquinas and the contemporary French phenomenologist Michel Henry which can be interpreted as putting forth very similar ways for grasping the existence of God. These "ways to God" can be fruitfully compared from the point of view of their philosophical starting points as well as of their consequences for theological epistemology. The purpose of the present essay is to pursue this comparative work and to see what philosophicaltheological fruit it can yield.

What does it mean to say that “I am always on the same side of my body” if the body is understood as flesh? This question of sidedness, and specifically of perspectival unilaterality, in Merleau-Ponty’s ontology leads to a careful sorting of the various relational metaphors that he deploys across his oeuvre, including reversibility, intertwining, possession, encroachment, incorporation, promiscuity, and many others. Curiously, each of these notions implicates a different image of sidedness, from sides that are impermeable in themselves but nonetheless interwoven with those of other bodies, to sides that are porous, interpenetrated, incorporable, and yielding. Ultimately, it is suggested with reference to Merleau-Ponty’s ontologically anticipatory concept of le schèma corporel that unilaterality is not a necessary feature of incarnate subjectivity after all, but is instead one of the last specters of modern metaphysics, haunting Merleau-Ponty’s thinking still. Insofar as perspectival individuation is a function of the dynamic operations of actual body schemas rather than a logical, topological, or ontological given, subjectivity will be essentially promiscuous rather than merely reversible, moving in and out of bodies, overflowing its own body, taking in the bodies of others, leaking into and absorbing the flesh of the world, at times to the point of indivision.

Timeless awareness is the essence of Dzogchen. Time experienced within timeless awareness is also an expression of the essence of Dzogchen. Dzogchen is an ancient form of Tibetan mystic humanism. Dzogchen makes the essential distinction between mind and awareness. A person can be located in mind alone and locked in time. As a person shifts from being located in mind alone (mindfulness) and goes beyond mind alone (mindfulness), one becomes aware of their own awareness. As we focus our awareness on our own innermost awareness, vast dimensions of awareness begin to open and self-reveal its nature to us. Awareness is a multidimensional experience and this awareness is infinite in its horizons. The innate qualities of awareness are spaciousness or openness or emptiness. Another quality of our awareness is luminous radiance and still another is awareness as energy. Awareness is alive and is both vast stillness and unceasing movement. The Union of Mind and Awareness When a person is able to experience the union of their mind and their awareness, then the person has a simultaneous experience of being in time and in timeless awareness. The mind is the place of thinking, feeling, sensation, memory and imagination and the mind is the mode of knowing singularity and difference in the world. This is the realm of ordinary knowingness and this is the realm of duality. Our mind is the realm of time. This time bound knowing is the knowing of you and I, us and them, this or that in time and place.

Sartre’s early works on phenomenology reveal the complexity of his relationship to Husserl. Deeply indebted to phenomenology’s method as well as its substance, Sartre nonetheless confronted Husserl’s transcendental turn from Ideas onward. Although numerous studies have focused on Sartre’s points of contention with Husserl, drawing attention to his departure from Husserlian phenomenology, scholars have rarely examined the way in which Sartre engaged and responded to the early Husserl, particularly to his discussions of intentionality, consciousness, and self in Logical Investigations. This essay focuses on Sartre’s critical response to Logical Investigations, arguing that Husserl’s understanding of these three notions shapes and informs Sartre’s own approach to them in The Transcendence of the Ego (1936-37), “Intentionality: A Fundamental Idea of Husserl’s Phenomenology” (1939), and Being and Nothingness (1943). By carefully reading Sartre side by side with Husserl, this essay articulates the ways in which Sartre allowed himself to think along with, and not against, Husserl.

Dans un texte intitulé « La philosophie transcendantale de Husserl après la révision », Patočka cite le De anima, III, 8, 431 b 20 : « En rassemblant maintenant dans un même tout ce que nous avons dit au sujet de la ψυχή [l’âme, la vie], nous dirons à nouveau que la  ψυχή est, d’une certaine manière (πώς), tout ce qui est (τά ὄντα) » . Que veut dire « d’une certaine manière (πώς) » ? Selon Patočka, la difficulté de cette formulation, qu’il est nécessaire de faire ressortir, est l’embryon des problèmes avec lesquels lutte toute la phénoménologie. Plus précisément, cette formule d’Aristote dont l’interprétation phénoménologique est ici notre thème, peut contribuer au débat philosophique sur l’intentionnalité. L’hypothèse de recherche qui nous guide est alors la suivante : nous croyons  qu’en restaurant le concept grec d’âme et en mettant en suspens le subjectivisme moderne, Patočka va retrouver l’âme comme l’essence de l’intentionnalité et va thématiser par ce biais une théorie désubjectivisée de l’apparaître

In the literature on Derrida’s philosophical formation, the name of Eugen Fink is usually forgotten. When it is recalled, it is most often because of his 1930s articles on phenomenology. In this paper, I claim on the contrary that Fink’s writings exerted a lasting influence on Derrida’s thought, well beyond his early phenomenological works. More specifically, I focus on a 1957 paper presented at conference on Husserl’s thought where Fink formulates an important distinction between operative and thematic concepts. By adopting a both historical and theoretical perspective, I show how this couple of notions can help to understand Derrida’s singular way of reading philosophical texts. In particular, I present the Derridean concept of supplement as a reworking of Fink’s notion of operative concept. I conclude by suggesting that deconstruction can be understood in part as a radicalization of Fink’s theses.

Casi al día siguiente de la llegada de Hitler al poder, Emmanuel Levinas, en su doble condición de filósofo y judío, publicó un texto en el que manifestaba -ya en 1934- una especial sensibilidad para presentir lo que se estaba gestando en Alemania.
En ese escrito trascendente se formulan, quizá por primera vez, algunas de las preguntas esenciales para la comprensión del fenómeno hitlerista: ¿Por qué el hitlerismo cuestiona los principios básicos de la civilización europea? ¿Qué nueva concepción del hombre propone? ¿Cómo concibe el tiempo y el cuerpo? Levinas elabora un nuevo término en el que funda su argumentación: el ser encadenado. ¿Qué significa? ¿Cómo es su génesis? ¿Cómo se relaciona el ser encadenado con la exaltación de la sangre y de la raza?

Dans un article resté célèbre, M. Henry a formalisé les « Quatre principes de la phénoménologie », définissant l’objet et la méthode de cette école de pensée . Nous trouvons dans ces principes un présupposé commun, selon lequel la réceptivité et la passivité seraient l’essence de la manifestation, et l’attitude à adopter pour saisir cette essence. Dans le présent article, nous essayons de montrer, tout à l’inverse, que c’est l’activité sous toutes ses formes qui constitue le principe fondamental de la conscience. L’intensité et la qualité de la phénoménalisation se proportionnent à l’activité et à sa forme la plus éminente : la liberté.

Índice

1. Prólogo ............................................................................................ 7
Jorge Luis Roggero
2. La banalidad de la saturación ........................................................... 13
Jean-Luc Marion

Primera parte:  Problemas de la saturación

3. Después de la banalidad de la saturación ......................................... 51
Carla Canullo
4. La saturación entre tipología y hermenéutica.  Pensar Jean-Luc Marion desde Latinoamérica .................................. 75
Stéphane Vinolo

Segunda parte:  Doctrina, Tópica y casuística del fenómeno saturado

5. El mundo como pliegue y despliegue ............................................... 95
Roberto Walton

Primera sección: doctrina y tópica del fenómeno saturado.  El ídolo, el icono, el acontecimiento y la carne
6. La sorpresa de ver. La apertura del espacio de manifestación  en la experiencia pictórica................................................................ 115
Patricio Mena Malet
7. La palabra que no dice nada y la palabra que es necesario interpretar.  La cuestión de la hermenéutica en la relación con el otro ................. 139
Chiara Pavan
8. Acontecimiento y carne en Jean-Luc Marion ................................... 151
Eric Stéphane Pommier

Segunda sección: Casuística del fenómeno saturado
9. Cuerpo herido, carne sufriente.  El sufrimiento como fenómeno saturado  ........................................ 165
Ezequiel D. Murga
10. Otros fenómenos saturados.  El caso del perspectivismo amerindio de Viveiros de Castro............. 175
Santiago Andrés Duque Cano

Tercera parte:  Fenómemo saturado y pensamiento medieval

11. La certeza negativa a la luz del vocablo cusano possest:  aportes para un lenguaje de la saturación ....................................... 191
Matías Ignacio Pizzi
12. ¿“Por el mismo y único amor”? Análisis crítico  de la exigencia de univocidad del fenómeno erótico ........................ 201
Marcos Jasminoy

Cuarta parte:  Fenómeno saturado y teología balthasariana

13. Hospedar la gloria del amor como fenómeno originario.  De la estética teológica a la fenomenología del don ....................... 219
Cecilia Avenatti de Palumbo
14. El fenómeno sacramental:  posibilidades para la saturación en la dramática de la historia ........ 229
Francesca Peruzzotti

Los autores .......................................................................................... 241

The purpose of this enquiry is to lay out the core features of Garelli's conception of the world as a "pre-individual field," as they emerge from his confrontation with Heidegger's thought. In the first part, I am exploring Garelli's interpretation of the "poetical expression" and the consequences he draws from it with regard to the process of "worlding" (Verweltlichung). Then, I am restating his criticism with regard to the concept of the world Heidegger developed within the framework of "fundamental ontology" and show why, on Garelli's account, an understanding of the world as an "existential structure of Dasein" fails to grasp its proper meaning. In the final part, I expose Garelli's objections to Heidegger's later understanding of the world as "Fourfold" (Geviert) and underline the dependency of this conception on a set of assumptions which perpetuate the theoretical privilege of individual being.

Si la phénoménologie s'intéresse au traumatisme, c'est d'abord dans la mesure où le traumatisme résiste à la phénoménologie. À la limite même de toute expérience, de toute mondanéité et de toute subjectivité, le traumatisme semble résister à toute prise descriptive ainsi qu'à toute saisie compréhensive. C'est au creux de cet aveu qu'Emmanuel Levinas et Claude Romano se rejoignent en un sens, nous permettant tous deux de penser une « expérience » de l'inassimilable. En partant de certains passages de L'événement et le monde et d'Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence, cette étude se propose donc tout d'abord d'éclairer la possibilité d'une rencontre entre ces deux pensées, afin de mieux dégager la spécificité d'une approche phénoménologique du traumatisme. Mais, pour nous permettre de dégager la structure typique de l'expérience traumatique, ces deux approches ne s'en distinguent pas moins radicalement dès lors qu'il s'agit de circonscrire le concept même de « traumatisme ». Alors que Romano conçoit le traumatisme dans sa concrétude événementiale et l'emploie au sens étroit et clinique d'un type insigne d'évènement susceptible de faire irruption dans l'histoire personnelle de l'advenant, Levinas n'emploie jamais le concept de « traumatisme » que par voie de métaphore ou de comparaison, afin de décrire le « heurt » et le « choc », indissociables de toute épreuve de l’altérité.

Léon Brunschvicg's contribution to philosophical thought in fin-de-siècle France receives full explication in the first English-language study on his work. Arguing that Brunschvicg is crucial to understanding the philosophical schools which took root in 20th-century France, Pietro Terzi locates Brunschvicg alongside his contemporary Henri Bergson, as well as the range of thinkers he taught and influenced, including Lévinas, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, and Sartre. Brunschvicg's deep engagement with debates concerning spiritualism and rationalism, neo-Kantian philosophy, and the role of mathematics in philosophy made him the perfect supervisor for a whole host of nascent philosophical ideas which were forming in the work of his students. Terzi outlines Brunchvicg's defence of neo-Kantian judgement, historical analysis and the inextricability of the natural and humanist sciences to any rigorous system of philosophy, with wide-ranging implications for contemporary scholarship.

The postmetaphysical context of the contemporary philosophy emphasizes the sustained refusal of metaphysics, pointing to the lack of legitimacy for modernity’s meta-narrations. The reason loses its power, allowing the development of new religious movements, without dogmatic foundations and more sentimental and experiential. Jean-Luc Marion’s thinking is one of the contemporary possibilities for the dialog between theology and postmetaphysical philosophies. Concepts like "God without being", "idol", "icon" and "distance" offer a coherent phenomenological answer to the weak thought. Starting from these considerations, my paper analyses Vladimir Lossky’s apophatic theology, arguing for the paradoxical status of thought in the Tradition of Orthodox Church: first, a dogmatic strong thought, very important for the Christian faith; second, a thought that needs to become weak in order to remain strong, being overcome by the negative theology and the mystical experience.

This essay offers a new understanding of Merleau-Ponty's notion of the Other, the problem that revolves around it, and its far-reaching repercussions by shedding light on aspects that usually go unnoticed in the interpretation of his late thought in these regards. I show how Merleau-Ponty's emerging ontology in his late writings opens anew, in a complex manner, the problem of the Other, transforming it in a way that dismantles, to begin with, traditional epistemological questions regarding the Other, as well as principal difficulties regarding the Other's appearance within the realm of phenomena which have occupied phenomenology from its very beginning. I demonstrate how Merleau-Ponty's late writings in fact bind the problem of the Other with the question regarding the very limits of phe-nomenology and the realm of meaning as a whole.

Ce livre développe, à partir de Merleau-Ponty, Henry et Sartre, une phénoménologie décrivant la vie perceptive du point de vue du désir d'éprouver qui s'y déploie. L'auteur interroge, selon différents chemins tout à la fois opposés et noués les uns aux autres, le rapport de la vie perceptive à l'imaginaire et à la théâtralité originaire du corps. Il montre comment chaque expérience perceptive est la mise en jeu d'un désir de vivre, comment elle est susceptible d'accroître ou d'affaiblir la capacité des individus à se laisser affecter en profondeur par leur situation, à l'endurer, à y ouvrir du possible.

Contenu : Maurice Merleau-Ponty : La perception comme toucher à distance - La texture imaginaire du réel - Violence et événementialité de la vision - La théâtralité originaire du corps - Michel Henry : La vulnérabilité intrinsèque du pâtir - Affectivité, sensibilité, temporalité - Vie et possibilité - Impression et réalité - La texture imaginaire des impressions - Jean-Paul Sartre : Immanence, affectivité et intentionnalité - L'imaginaire et le retard originaire de la conscience - Émotion et imagination - Liberté et théâtralité.

Arnaud Dandieu (1897-1933), théoricien du groupe personnaliste Ordre Nouveau, s’appuya comme Merleau-Ponty sur la psychiatrie phénoménologique d’Eugène Minkowski (1885–1972) pour prolonger Bergson tout en contestant les termes de son opposition entre durée vécue et espace abstrait. L’identification clinique par Minkowski d’un espace vécu procède déjà d’une approche phénoménologique de l’âme dans son lien charnel au monde. En une sorte de cogito de la chair, Dandieu peut alors refonder la pensée sur l’expérience psychophysique du réel comme tension féconde entre «l’autre en tant qu’autre» et «l’autre en tant que semblable», dont les points-limites seraient l’exclusion schizoïde et la participation syntonique.

Talk given on 26th July on the occasion of the Summer Module Course “Affective Intentionality in Medieval Philosophy and Phenomenology” (Forschungsfragen der Philosophie II, 06-Ph-B-P6/2-152-m01), University of Würzburg, 26th-30th July 2021 (held online via Zoom)

In this interview, Claude Romano discusses his phenomenological project of the event in relation to hermeneutics, reason, realism, and some other fundamental problems of phenomenology. He explains common themes in his phenomenological project and elucidates why he considers it important to leave behind the transcendental perspective in phenomenology. He distinguishes his descriptive realism from other realist movements in contemporary French philosophy. The interview also questions the Eurocentric orientation of many phenomenological authors and considers the possibility of going beyond such assumptions in phenomenology.

While one of the arguments against religious belief relates to its apparent irrationality, it can be shown phenomenologically that there is a di erent kind of rationality at work in religious knowledge, undermining the sharp distinction between sacred and secular that enables theology to be marginalised as irrational. Approaching Christianity through the category of revelation, that is, as a way of living and believing that draws not only on founding narratives of revelation but on the ongoing ‘experience’ of transcendence in unveiling truth, I seek to examine how the possibility of truth itself can inspire hatred and so open onto violence. ‘Religious’ violence typically emerges from a hatred directed at otherness. Hatred of what truth reveals is a powerful motivation for violence, but it cannot be shown that this is speci cally religious. Nevertheless, otherness is characterised by an excess that resists objecti cation and may be revelatory of truth. Violence may be religious precisely to the extent that it is directed against the otherness before which each person stands accused.

This paper attends to Emmanuel Levinas’s criticism of the univocity doctrine as it pertains to Baruch Spinoza and in view of Gilles Deleuze’s interpretation. The analysis will have a narrow focus on univocity because it will exclusively treat the univocity of cause in Spinoza and its ethical and political implications. Narrowing the approach will illustrate the importance of the doctrine in Levinas’s minor engagements with the modern philosopher and its convergence with Deleuze’s project in Difference and Repetition and  Expression-ism in Philosophy namely, the univocal relation between Substance and the modes. Although both Levinas and Deleuze will converge on basic observations about the univocity of cause, they will depart at significant moments on the implications of the doctrine itself. The analysis will acknowledge Deleuze’s reflections on the Ethics, but it will focus on Levinas’s critique and indictment of Spinoza’s thought—that it eliminates singularity and that it is in itself a justification of perpetual war.

The approaches of Hans Urs von Balthasar and of Jean-Luc Marion are similar in terms of the shared search to define the absolute, without reducing it to the anthropological measure.
However, it is interesting to compare the two authors on the topic of temporality : Balthasar’s theology, starting from the historical singularity of Christ, reveals the insurmountable weight of history, up to showing the eschatological side of finitude.
Subsequently this approach commits phenomenology to achieve the same. In comparison, the notion of event that characterises Marion’s latest production implies the reversal of the phenomenology of givenness, beginning from the intertwining between possibility and actuality. Some events – birth, the liturgical speech, and the loving speech – illustrate the unsurpassable form of finitude without losing its eschatological relief.

La definizione delle Logische Untersuchungen del 1900-1901 come opera d’inizio è dello stesso Husserl: nella prefazione alla seconda edizione, scritta nel 1913, afferma infatti: «le Ricerche Logiche furono per me un’opera di rottura, e quindi non un punto di arrivo, ma un inizio» . Se si tiene conto del fatto che in questo scritto la fenomenologia husserliana non presenta ancora alcun tipo di riduzione, la quale verrà sviluppata solamente nel 1907 con L’idea della fenomenologia, né un’impostazione genetica, la quale vedrà la luce solo a partire dal 1918 con le Analysen zur passiven Synthesis, s’è tentati d’interpretare questo “inizio” come una semplice scintilla, ampiamente superata dagli sviluppi posteriori della riflessione di Husserl. Eppure tutto il pensiero husserliano, sino alle ultime evoluzioni contenute nella Crisi delle scienze europee e la fenomenologia trascendentale, è assillato da questa origine a cui continuamente fa riferimento e ritorna. Sorge quindi spontanea una domanda: in cosa propriamente consiste tale “rottura”? Verso cosa apre? Questa è l’interrogazione che segna l’incipit di Réduction et donation, il primo libro della trilogia dedicata da Marion alla fenomenologia della donazione , da cui si cercherà di farsi accompagnare per l’interpretazione dell’opera husserliana.