Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
VOLUME LXXXXI
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
Hanover, New Hampshire
Edited by
ANNA-TER ESA T YMIE NIE C KA
The World Phenomenology Institute, Hanover, NH, U.S.A.
Published by Springer,
P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
www.springer.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
THEMATIC INTRODUCTION
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA / Unveiling the Logos of
Scientific Interrogation xi
SECTION I
THE INTERROGATIVE LOGOS OF DISCOVERY
MARIA GOŁASZEWSKA / Scientific Knowledge and Human
Knowledge 3
LEO ZONNEVELD / Science in Mind: Exploring the Language
of the Logos 21
ARIA OMRANI / ‘‘Objective Science’’ in Husserlian Life-World
Phenomenology 39
NIKOLAY KOZHEVNIKOV / Phenomenological Aspects of the
Natural Coordinate System 45
WENDY C. HAMBLET / Alienation and Wholeness: Spinoza,
Hans Jonas, and the Human Genome Project on the ‘‘Push
and Shove’’ of Mortal Being 57
ALEXANDER KUZMIN / M. Heidegger’s Project for the
Optical Interpretation of Reflexion: The Time, the Reflexion
and the Logos 67
A. L. SAMIAN / ‘‘Phenomena’’ in Newton’s Mathematical
Experience 81
ELDON C. WAIT / What Computers Could Never Do: An
Existential Phenomenological Critique of the Program of
Artificial Intelligence 97
ARTHUR PIPER / Sensible Models in Cognitive Neuroscience 105
ROBERTO VEROLINI and FABIO PETRELLI / Philosophical
Aspects of the New Evolutionistic Paradigms 119
v
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION II
SOCIETAL SHARING-IN-LIFE
GARY BACKHAUS / Toward a Cultural Phenomenology 169
W. KIM ROGERS / Contexts: The Landscapes of Human Life 191
NATALIA M. SMIRNOVA / Schutz’s Conception of Relevances
and its Influence on Social Philosophy 203
ANJANA BHATTACHARJEE / Demonstrating Mobility 219
AMY LOUISE MILLER / The Phenomenology of Self as Non-
Local: Theoretical Considerations and Research Report 227
SECTION III
LOGOS IN EXISTENTIAL COMMUNICATION (PSYCHIATRY)
SIMON DU PLOCK / An Existential–Phenomenological
Critique of Philosophical Counselling 249
CAMILO SERRANO BÓNITTO / Logos in Psychotherapy:
The Phenomena of Encounter and Hope in the
Psychotherapeutic Relationship 259
JARLATH FINTAN McKENNA / The Meaningfulness of Mental
Health as Being Within a World of Apparently Meaningless
Being 269
OLGA LOUCHAKOVA / Ontopoiesis and Union in the Prayer
of the Heart: Contributions to Psychotherapy and Learning 289
EVA SYŘIŠŤOVÁ / Das Lachen als die Kehrseite der
Existenziellen not. Beitrag zur Phänomenologie einer
Grenzsituation des Lebens 313
We are now bringing to the public the fourth volume of papers from the
Third World Congress of Phenomenology, ‘‘Phenomenology World-Wide:
Phenomenology of the Logos and the Logos of Phenomenology,’’ held
in Oxford, August 15–21, 2004.
I want to thank all those who helped to prepare and to carry out this
marvelous Conference. First of all it is the initiative of William J. Smith
who brought us to Oxford, who with his wife Jadwiga and Gary Backhaus
have also performed with expertise the task of making the local arrange-
ments: their efforts merit our appreciation. Professor Grahame Lock of
Queen’s College and Matt Landrus from Wolfson College must be
thanked for their valuable contribution to the local organization. Tadeusz
Czarnik, my personal helper, cannot be forgotten.
I wish to express special thanks to Jeff Hurlburt, our secretary, for his
assiduous and dedicated work in preparing this gathering. The enthusiasm
and expertise of the authors who joined us from the entire world – forty
countries – made this Congress an epoch-making phenomenology event.
A-T.T.
vii
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, vii.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
Wadham College.
THEMATIC INTRODUCTION
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
xi
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, xi–xvi.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
xii ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
tive logos of the mind, which have bedazzled the inquirer to the point of
giving them an absolute priority with the advantage of yielding a stable,
constant reality of Newtonian physics, dominated the view of reality in
the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet this view could not stand the challenges
of new insights and approaches of the scientific research which followed.
Incontestably, we are now witnessing a great transition in the scientific,
social and cultural spheres of our world-view. It is being called ‘‘the end
of the machine’’.1 It is, however, not only the abandonment of the
Newtonian mechanical – strictly intellective – view of nature with its far-
reaching consequences, but the concurrent new appreciation of the hith-
erto dismissed and ignored phenomena of turbulence (instead of con-
stancy), haziness (instead of clarity), fleetness (instead of fixedness),
arbitrariness (instead of order), precisely in physics, acceptance of time
in mathematics, etc., that is transforming the scientific outlook.2 One of
the major consequences is that the hitherto dominating sharp demarcation
between the so-called ‘‘hard sciences’’ that assume the priority of the
intellective logos, and the ‘‘soft sciences’’, which like the empirical sciences,
social inquiries and humanities deal with other types of rationale, fell
down. All sciences and inquiries seem to tend in their methodologies and
approaches toward a mutual interaction and participation in their search
after the ‘‘inner workings’’ of life, profiting mutually from this interaction
in their progress. I have discussed this transitory phase earlier.3 Now, I
would like to draw from this transformatory breakthrough two important
insights about the logos of scientific inquiry.
1.
logos of life, that the interrogative sense of science falls within a common
network. It is as if the logos of life which is radiating all the moves of life
(organic, physical, psychic, mental) carries in its very nature pertaining
to life this intrinsic dianoia thread which allows the infinite transformabil-
ity of the logos in its modes in their interaction, coalescence, interfusion
– a constructive cooperation without losing continuity. This thread is
also congenital with human cognitive modalities. It is this intrinsic thread
of the scientific logos which accounts for the striking move of sciences
toward cooperation. Finally, it appears that it is also in virtue of the
intrinsic dianoia sense of the logos – which present day scientific inquiry
reveals – that this very inquiry may operate the transition from the stiff
abstractness of the intellective mode toward the fulgurating rays spread
by innumerable threads of sense of the logos of life.
The dianoia thread of scientific inquiry brings about this ‘‘new alliance’’
of the sciences. It accounts also for the alliance of science and the phenom-
enology of life to which we will come in the next section when we
introduce the second recent innovation of the sciences.
2.
The second most significant turn in the scientific spirit of today is the
almost unanimously accepted change in the conception of the inquiring
agent himself.4 Until recently, the scientist, that is, inquiring agent, has
been conceived in abstraction of its human characters and endowments
as an impersonal neutral observer. Its neutrality was supposed to guaran-
tee the ‘‘objectivity’’ of the scientific result to be obtained. With Kojeve
came the proposal that this view of inquiry should be abandoned; that
the inquirer is in fact a human subject, who gathers observations from
his/her position, who obtains insights according to his/her talents, disposi-
tions, preparation, etc. Instead of floating in the air, the inquirer and his
work are situated.
First of all, the inquiry itself stems from the system of the human mind.
As a matter of fact, below the abstract work of the intellective logos
common to all human endeavor as a final ordering, structurizing, synthe-
sizing factor, the inquirer as subject participates in all the modalities of
the mental logos (communicative, sharing in life, psychic, vital, modalities,
and acts) as the directing factor of the interrogating logos and its central
organizer.
xiv ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
the creative-poietic logos of the mind we may not only identify the reason
of the emergent innumerable rationale springing forth in present day
scientific inquiry – breaking the strictures of the hitherto governing intel-
lective logos – but following it in its impetus we advance toward a
common network of all the reasons for life: the ontopoietic groundwork of
life’s individualization. The logos of life, holding the secrets of its scientific
queries, offers a basis for the new alliance of the sciences and founds an
ultimate groundwork for a phenomenological mathesis universalis.
NOTES
1 Cf. introduction to: Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order out of Chaos. Man’s New
Dialogue with Nature, Boulder, New Science Library, New York, Random House, 1984.
2 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ‘‘Ontopoiesis of Life as the new Philosophical Paradigm’’,
pp. 112–116, Analecta Husserliana, Volume LIX, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1999.
3 Cf. The study cited above as well as the ‘‘Theme’’ to the above cited volume.
4 Cf. The above cited study, pp. 16–26.
5 Ibid., pp. 16–26.
6 Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ‘‘The Human Condition-within-the-unity-of-everything-
there-is-alive and its logoic network’’, pp. xi–xxxi, Analecta Husserliana, Volume LXXXIX,
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2005.
7 Cf. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Impetus and Equipoise in the L ife Strategies of Reason,
Book IV of the treatise: L ogos and L ife, Analecta Husserliana, Volume LXX, Dordrecht:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000.
SECTION I
THE INTERROGATIVE LOGOS OF DISCOVERY
A dinner in common in the refectory of Wadham College: At left, in front, William Melaney
and Conrad Rockstad; at right, Eldon Wait.
MARIA GOŁASZEWSKA
INTRODUCTION
3
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 3–20.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
4 MARIA GOŁASZEWSKA
disturbed persons (a paranoiac lives in two worlds and each of them has
a different way of reasoning). There exists extra-discursive and pre-reflec-
tive behaviour where, however, we can find logical structures applied
spontaneously, intuitively, sometimes even unconsciously. Finally, there
emerges the conception of ‘‘open logic’’, i.e. logic which cares not so much
for the creation of a perfect abstract system as for getting a chance to
fully explain phenomena and states of affairs that take place in the
anthroposphere and in the physical world. For instance, it would be logic
of potentialities, and its traces could be found in the art where even a
masterpiece is merely one of a number of propositions, and univocality
has the same rights as equivocality.
Physics also started as that branch of theoretical philosophy which
dealt with the general properties of material bodies and all natural phen-
omena. In this sense Democritus, the author of atomism, was a physicist.
It was as late as at the time of Galileo and Newton that physics became
a particular science, and its rapid development in the 19th and 20th
centuries has the result that nowadays it has developed into an extensive
domain of science with many branches including theoretical physics and
chemical physics.
Thus, physics obviously became knowledge about matter, but it has
also attempted to move towards a general theory of being. In this way,
as it were, it returned to the ancient understanding of its tasks. This was
how the neo-positivists’ physicalism, proclaiming the programme in which
all concepts of empirical sciences can be reduced to the language of
physics, came into being. The postulate of the unity of knowledge is
proclaimed. Finally, a thesis was put forward that all knowledge should
use terms of an empirical, intersensual and inter-subjective character.
Thus, it is the farthest-reaching programme of ‘‘objectivity’’ of cognition,
rejecting the humanistic coefficient. Only these elements of reality are
recognized as the object of science, which can be conceived as empirical
facts and explicitly defined.
The possibility of explaining all phenomena – including the anthro-
posphere – through their reduction to the structure and activity of the
primitive energy, e.g. thinking reduced to energetic transformations of
elementary particles or waves of primitive energy, became the perspective
of the universal science understood in this way, and based on physics.
Maybe, this far-reaching reductionism could find common points with
mystical pantheism – and this is that in which the paradox of physical-
ism consists.
8 MARIA GOŁASZEWSKA
Let us now turn to the humanities. There also the problem of ‘‘objectiv-
ism-humanism’’, i.e., respecting the humanistic coefficient in research
work, manifests itself very clearly. We shall consider the domains of
axiology and history.
Axiology has been studied in two ways: 1) as a general theory of values,
a branch of philosophy analysing the content of concepts and general
ideas connected with the domain of values, or 2) as a more particular
branch of knowledge investigating real phenomena that take place in the
anthroposphere. And so, general axiology analyses the concept of value,
attempting to define what value is (the following definitions of value are
most commonly accepted: that which is valuable, that which can satisfy
needs). Further, attempts at a classification of values have been made
(cognitive, ethical, aesthetic, vital, personal, social, and ideological values
are distinguished). Finally, axiology tries to establish a hierarchy of values
(traditionally, the following three highest values are mentioned: truth,
good, and beauty), and searches for the criteria for evaluation.
Particular axiological disciplines include, first of all, ethics and aesthet-
ics. My professional interests are the reason why I shall speak here mostly
about aesthetics. Still, these disciplines are, in a certain respect, similar
to each other. The statement that aesthetics is the study of beauty is,
perhaps, correct, but it is insufficient and may lead to hypostasis of
concepts, i.e., to recognizing them as real beings. We do not know what
beauty is, we do not know the mode of its existence, so we should state
precisely what aesthetics actually deals with. I assume that the object of
this branch of knowledge is the ‘‘aesthetic situation’’. This consists of the
following elements: the artist, the work of art, the recipient and the
aesthetic value as the supreme factor. We must also state precisely what
this ‘‘aesthetic value’’ is. I define it as the artistic ‘‘rationalization’’ of
what is illogical in the human world, so that it can function in this world
in accord with the laws of the existence and development of humanity.
This is where the controversy between the ‘‘objectivistic’’ and the
‘‘humanized’’ appears. Namely, each of the elements of an aesthetic situa-
tion may be treated as a ‘‘thing’’. It may be ‘‘reified’’, reduced to a fact
measurable in accord with a physical system, or it may be endowed with
the ‘‘humanistic coefficient’’ (values, evaluations, the moment of under-
standing, experiencing or emotional attitude, etc.). For instance, a work
of art can be described as any physical object is described, measured and
evaluated. Yet, one can also search for its aesthetic value, the beauty
which is actualized in the aesthetic experience. A question arises in what
way the cognitive attitude that allows one to reach the value of a work
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 9
STYLES
philosophy giving too hasty solutions and accepting a priori that which
required analyses. Sterilisation of metaphysical thinking caused the disap-
pearance of broader philosophical interests, the eager limitation to frag-
mentary and secondary problems as well as the attitude of non-creative
development of thinking and dwelling on issues that could once more be
submitted to logical analysis with no cognitive involvement.
Another of the reductionistic orientations is neo-positivism, sometimes
called ‘‘the third positivism of the Vienna Circle’’, ‘‘logical positivism’’ or
‘‘physicalist empiricism’’. It is characterized by: 1) empiricism – sense
experience is the only source of cognition; 2) positivism – only facts are
the object of cognition; neither transcendent beings nor the essence of
things are; 3) physicalism – physics is the most perfect system of concepts,
and it is what all scientific knowledge, including analyses of a philosophi-
cal nature, should be reduced to. Thus, it has been claimed that all
statements included in metaphysics are not false, uncertain and unjustified,
but simply nonsensical. Questions about the general nature of being, the
sense of existence, etc., are apparent. There was also an attempt at the
elimination of the theory of values – both ethical and aesthetic ones. They
cannot be derived from knowledge about facts, and they merely show the
human need of assuming a postulative attitude. It is only the language
of ethics and aesthetics, created in the course of the development of
culture, which can be examined.
Neo-positivism is mostly attacked for the internal contradictions inher-
ent in it, and the lack of arguments supporting its major theses. We may
also raise another objection: it is a style of thinking that leads nowhere,
enclosed in formalism and not taking into consideration the humanistic
coefficient in its attempts at a theoretical description of the anthropo-
sphere. It seems that the technical mastery in posing and solving formal
problems of knowledge, which has been achieved by many theoreticians,
may deserve admiration. Yet, for philosophy involved in values it is
insufficient. Perfection of language and linguistic analyses are not enough
to make philosophy as it is understood in the tradition and the present
of a thinking human.
For centuries philosophy has been secularized. Nowadays it is mani-
fested mainly in the two systems that are no longer reductionistic, but
maximalistic: phenomenology and existentialism. Philosophy has been
separated from theology; philosophers have simply renounced the discus-
sion of religious subjects. Neither do they proclaim, e.g., atheistic theses.
They do not tend to correct or improve theology – they have assumed
the attitude of indifference as regards faith. Maybe, this tending away
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 15
engaged, for it is philosophy that can bring the answer to these most
important questions. It oscillates between my own self about which no
one apart from me can know or say anything, and the essence of this self
includes a relation to values.
Human knowledge is the knowledge about values, how to preserve and
multiply them. It requires definite behaviour towards the world and
demands action. It does not allow unbiased observation of facts, because
facts of human life are always ether positive or negative, either good or
evil. Human knowledge strives to multiply the good.
Value – sense – primacy of truth. The essence of values consists in a
specific ‘‘rationalization’’ of that which is illogical, that which, though it
exists in the physical world or in the anthroposphere, has not been
cognizable so far or is not knowable for a human at all. By ‘‘rationaliza-
tion’’ I mean the intellectual mastering of the situation of illogicality and
introducing it into consciousness or practical life. Thus, values are not
beings that exist in themselves. They exist in a complex situation compris-
ing the world and man, his consciousness and inclinations, contradictions
(oppositions) that occur in himself and in the world and which he tries
to overcome with his active attitude, striving for a synthesis.
One of the vital needs of a thinking man is recognizing and understand-
ing how values operate in his life. As we achieve this, the feeling that we
learn the truth – this truth which we want to learn most, and which is
most worthy of being learned as the truth of life – increases.
Can values be the object of scientific research? Are questions about
them merely apparent? Because of their objective-subjective character,
values are potentially inherent in objects, while they are actualized and
realized in acts of consciousness. Their examination assumes a possibility
of reaching the so-called internal experience, i.e., the deep structures of
personality. It also assumes that the structures of actual reality and the
structures of logical thinking are parallel.
‘‘Sense’’, in turn, is treated as a category of final thinking – ‘‘something
has a sense’’, means that the real existence of this something is included
within the most general structures of the whole, fills a definite function
there and constitutes a necessary element of that whole.
The criterion of truth is the lack of internal contradiction, i.e., the
compatibility of elements in the structure of the superior whole.
Spirituality – sanctity – the absolute are values which are among the
highest in the hierarchy and belong to the summum bonum plane. Generally
every man respects these values, reveres them and longs for them. He
would like to get closer, e.g., to spirituality, to the subordination of
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 17
instinctive life and the vital values to those highest values. Yet, he does
not always work on it.
Spirituality and sanctity are phenomena which occur only in the
anthroposphere, while the absolute transcends both the anthroposphere
and the physical world. Because of the moment of transcending, cognition
of the Absolute may be treated as a Mystery or a Being attainable only
through mystic intuition.
Hope against all hope – this metaphorical expression signifies a certain
intellectual ‘‘virtue’’ whose components are: courage in thinking (not
avoiding even the most difficult questions), fortitude of thinking (not
being discouraged by failures in the search for truth), perseverance in
thinking (systematic mental work), and responsibility of thinking (not
being satisfied with partial and uncertain results of one’s intellectual
work).
Doctrines – life – fulfilment are the three supports of private, personal
thinking, the private philosophy of a man searching for truth. Is it right
to attach much importance to philosophical systems, theories and theses?
Philosophers are often asked the question how all this becomes known
and from where are the truth-syntheses derived. It is not enough to say
that we observe facts, because facts require analyses, interpretations, and
constructing of wholes – syntheses. It is the case, however, that the
structures of reality are homologous with the structures of thinking and
that there is a specific parallel between the structures of phenomena and
the logical structures of thinking.
We have been given a definite period of time for our lives on the Earth
– among people and objects, among ideas and religious yearnings. We
have been given certain typical, cultural and individual properties. Finally,
we have been given a definite amount of energy and abilities which allow
us to use this energy in a rational way. If we are not deprived of freedom,
we make a choice about how we wish to use our life energy – what to
turn it into. It sometimes happens that people spend their energy on
doing evil or on pessimistic considerations of the transientness and trivial-
ity of the world and of themselves. To be able to use one’s life energy in
accord with the optimal plan of existence, to achieve the fulfillment of
expectations worthy of man, it is necessary to assume the attitude of
acceptance of life and respect for the supreme values, particularly for the
Summum Bonum, the Absolute, God.
When are our intellectual hopes fulfilled so that we shall personally
touch the truth and participate in it? Such fulfilment is achieved only by
few spiritual leaders. Epiphanic, transient fulfilment comes to a man as a
18 MARIA GOŁASZEWSKA
very intensive spiritual experience that may transform his whole life.
Finally, there is fulfilment that comes as a quiet grace of hope that,
though we may achieve little, we still participate with all our personality
in being warmed up by the warmth of the truth.
There still remains the critical and distant attitude: hope versus hope-
lessness. A man draws a picture of the world of high values and desires
to participate in it, yet he is always confronted with inhibitions, repug-
nance, fights, crimes, the triumph of evil. He asks himself why it is so.
There are several possible answers to this question: 1) satan’s intervention
is the reason for the spreading of evil; 2) like the good, evil belongs to
the natural structure of the anthroposphere, it is a specific dialectical
necessity; 3) evil, as an insufficient recognition of the good and a moment
of trial or test of man’s good will, belongs to the necessary stage of
development; 4) evil is a manifestation of human weakness, the instinct
of fight, aggression and imperfection of the species; 5) manifestations of
evil should be treated as cases of ordinary mistakes having no great
importance in the anthroposphere. Which of these options is right? Maybe
each of them is, at least to a certain extent.
To cherish hope against all hope means to hold a conviction that the
good is stronger than evil, that a man can cognize the truth within his
own personal limits and that expectations may come true. Human knowl-
edge is founded on the hope and expectation of fulfilment – scientific
knowledge is based on calculated principles and models. There is no basic
contradiction here, but a lot of intellectual effort, responsibility and
courage is required to make these two opposites meet and see the light
of truth in both of them.
Human knowledge – knowledge about oneself, about another man,
about values – is knowledge ‘‘without arguments’’, intuitive, but, at the
same time, it is connected with understanding and based on ‘‘the logic of
the heart’’, emotion, and even dreams. We know about another man not
only when we base our knowledge on empirical proofs and experience,
but also – or, maybe, first of all – when we feel his closeness, when we
love him, when we trust that, even if he is the worst, he will change and
become fully human. This is the hope against all hope applied in practice.
A mother who does not lose faith in her son though he is a rake and a
thief may serve as an example here. She is not convinced by any rational
arguments that her son should be punished, deprived of a chance to
spend his life on entertainment, etc. And it sometimes happens that the
mother’s blind love wins: the son changes and finally becomes an honest
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 19
man. Let us now compare the traits of scientific knowledge and human
knowledge:
quantitative qualitative
only that knowledge is accepted taking into account the
as scientific which is included in humanistic coefficient and
mathematical – logical – sensual axiological problems
conception
Jagellonian University
LEO ZONNEVELD
Towards the midst of this mystic night, in which Anaximander’s problem of Becoming was
wrapped up, Heraclitus of Ephesus approached and illuminated it by a divine flash of
lightning. ‘I contemplate Becoming,’ he exclaimed, ‘and nobody has so attentively watched
this eternal wave-surging and rhythm of things. And what do I behold? Lawfulness, infallible
certainty, ever equal paths of Justice, condemning Erinyes behind all transgressions of the
laws, the whole world the spectacle of a governing justice and demoniacally omnipresent
natural forces subject to justice’s sway. I do not behold the punishment of that which has
become, but the justification of Becoming.’1
21
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 21–37.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
22 LEO ZONNEVELD
were obsessed with questions on the nature of the mind, or if you wish,
the intellectual soul. Mental phenomena and physical phenomena were
mutually inclusive concepts for philosophers of the late Middle Ages and
the Renaissance: they did not treat psychology or the philosophy of mind
as separate fields of enquiry. Questions in the philosophy of mind were
approached through Aristotle’s De Anima and Parva naturalia. De Anima
is one of Aristotle’s natural books (libri naturalis) concerned with the
most precious centre of reality namely with living bodies. How senses
function was a central concern with most medieval thinkers. It continued
to be a central topic in philosophy as well as in science up to the end of
the seventeenth century.
Cognitive science today comprises the study of the higher-level mental
functions, including reasoning, intelligence and recognition. In character-
izing the origins, acquisition and processing of knowledge it tries to
understand how we develop into thinking, reasoning beings. Cognitive
science was rooted in the work of logicians, psychologists, computer
scientists, and neuroscientists. Scientists deeply engaged in the interdis-
ciplinary quest to understand the mind included great thinkers such as
Alan Turing, Kenneth Craik, Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, Walter
Pitts and Warren McCulloch,5 Karel Lashley and John van Neumann.6
They laid the groundwork for cognitive science, each offering contribu-
tions from their own scientific background, thrilled as they were by the
prospects of blending insights in order to understand the mind.
I have mentioned Leonardo da Vinci before and I would like to go
back to him for a few seconds in connection with technological aspects
of brain science as reflected in the methodologies of neuroimaging, which
I will discuss later on. Leonardo’s pioneering research into the brain led
him to discoveries in neuroanatomy. His injection of hot wax into the
brain of an ox provided a cast of the ventricles, and represents the first
known use of a solidifying medium to define the shape and size of the
internal brain. I will quote from his writings:
Make two vent-holes in the horns of the greater ventricles, and insert melted wax with a
syringe, making a hole in the ventricle of memory; and through such a hole fill the three
ventricles of the brain. Then when the wax has set, take apart the brain, and you will see
the shape of the ventricles exactly.7,8
diseases, replace parts of living brains, build artificial brains and use our
brains more efficiently.
Contemporary civilisation is much more complex than before and its
scientific and technological requirements are incessantly growing.
Although scientific description is based exclusively on the physical uni-
verse, our contact with reality is entirely through our subjective experi-
ence, whose consensus of stable representations we assemble into the
physical world view. All our knowledge of the physical universe is gained
through the immediate conduit of our subjective experience and our
intentionality in turn has major impacts on the physical world around
us. Brain mapping uses the third-person perspective in describing the
subject through measurements ‘from the outside.’ Even today, the stan-
dard cognitive psychological experiment sidesteps consciousness by focus-
sing purely on objective measurements in which the subjectivity of the
subject, her or his inner life, plays no apparent role.
We are both the experience of consciousness and the neurochemical
and associated physical activities of our organism. We have difficulty in
getting past our primary sense data. In consequence, we consider that
our personal consciousness of the world is the world. The rational process
of perception invokes a picture from countless raw data. Each time our
brain contemplates producing an objective reality out there, which is
perfectly represented by access to our experience. The immediacy of the
impact of stimuli by the senses by the organic world make it difficult to
disengage and allow the thought that since Werner Karl Heisenberg
formulated his uncertainty principle in February 1927, we know we live
in a participatory universe, a world to which we lend our process of
observation to actually complete it; a quantum world, where we share
discrete, personalised conscious experiences.10
While mathematical analysis in conventional scientific disciplines is
both discrete and firmly unidirectional, the discipline of science itself is
correlative, not cause and effect. A true science of consciousness should
search to create a multi-level, transqualitative, cross-functional and inter-
dimensional substrate of reality. In order to be objective it should seek
its roots in the mystery of subjectivity. Human experience is born from
metaphysical self-transcendence – building upon the depth of being that
results from self-reflexive self-awareness and empowers critically reflective
self-integration. Subjectivity requires such direct personal experience, and
direct personal experience requires disciplined reduction of the investiga-
tor to the ultimate inclinations of the human substratum from which the
unique persona has emerged.
EXPLORING THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOGOS 27
But nowadays the term ontology is also part of the technical jargon of
artificial intelligence researchers and the formal definition of a body of
knowledge. Computer implementations of semantic networks were first
developed for artificial intelligence and machine translation. Ontologies
are often able to provide an objective specification of domain information
by representing a consensual agreement on the concepts and relations
characterising the way knowledge in that domain is expressed. Nowadays
there are unique ontological identifiers for associated sets of items in
areas of formalised knowledge such as machine-learning, molecular engi-
neering, and even quantum physics, to link and query databases.
Science has brought us in a position to investigate how the human
brain is built to process language and how it deals with the tasks of
decoding sounds, words, grammar and meaning. Scientific investigation
world-wide centres itself around the brain’s plasticity, its ability to adapt
and help in the design of new computer technologies. One of the most
intriguing questions which science is asking itself is: how do we build
systems that can dynamically and automatically self-organise and recon-
figure whilst being developed as a result of the experience of its senses?
Cognitive systems – natural and artificial, as there is more and more
congruence in how they are perceived in a technical environment – sense,
act, think, feel communicate, learn and evolve. The natural world shows
us how systems as different as a colony of ants or a human brain achieve
sophisticated adaptive behaviours. Growing understanding of natural
cognitive systems is now contributing to artificial cognitive systems. The
fascination with ourselves, with the future of our brains and the modalities
of our perception in a participating universe, require an inward reorienta-
tion towards the human phenomenon. And with it we need reorientation
on the responsibilities we have as sentient observers and autonomous
participants in world history.
We must scientifically investigate and understand how subjective con-
scious experience in the participatory universe of the acting human person
has become a necessary function embedded in nature’s overall strategy.
It is already perceived as requiring a radical investigation down to the
foundations of physics. The foundations of physics must contain a prin-
ciple of space-time anticipation, taking the subject away from immediate
sensory effectiveness that is not covered by any machine intelligence
alone, or subjectivity would become a superfluous quality and would
have never been selected for in the process of evolution. Or, reverting to
words of Jonas Salk, ‘‘The natural selective pressure will now favor one
who not only accepts change but welcomes it, and contributes to it.’’16
EXPLORING THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOGOS 31
Louder than Anaximander, Heraclitus exclaimed: ‘I see nothing but Becoming. Be not
deceived! It is the fault of your limited sensibility and not the fault of the essence of things
if you see firm land anywhere in the ocean of Becoming and Passing. You need names for
things, just as if they had a rigid permanence, but the very river in which you bathe a
second time is no longer the same one which you entered before.’17
emerge at the same time, there will be drugs to control behaviour, ‘brain
fingerprinting’ to identify criminals, genetic predestination, electromag-
netic thought control by means of hypersound, and the general erosion
of the human agency. Ethicists worry that if cognitive enhancers were
used en masse, human society, and the values it cherishes, could drastically
change. If we are to substantially improve our overall cognitive function-
ing, we may also alter aspects of our identity that are fundamental to
who we are.
The greatest scientific challenges, which could enrich human life beyond
our wildest dreams are right in front of us, but they come accompanied
with ethical issues, issues that touch the core of our human body and
inner being. We don’t know where we are going, but our inquisitiveness,
our zest to understand life and the nature of the human phenomenon,
our desire to understand, will not stop. Being deeply involved in discus-
sions of this nature in my job, I anticipate that such technologies will
take hold. And once they do, human evolution is likely to proceed at a
greatly accelerated rate; human nature as we know may change markedly,
if it does not disappear altogether, and over centuries, a new intelligent
species may well be created.
Knowledge must forever change otherwise it withers and each discovery
creates in the long run more mystery than it solves. On close introspection,
we will need to state that the real meaning of the Self are voiced through
the language of the Logos upon which all our experiences and memories
have been transposed, and whose script we are reading. For language to
be meaningful and true to its creative principle, it must very carefully
sustain its intimate connection with the phenomenal universe. There is
an ethical and metaphysical discourse taking place between the word and
what it creates.
A strange singularity is apparent in language as one observes that a
limited group of phonetic elements can give birth to potentially infinite
clusters of existential and imposed meaning. Language presents itself as
selective absorber of passing streams of external and internal presence
desiring to objectify reality through the sound of the voice, to accumulate
to the majestic existence of the Word, which – as scripture would have it
– one day took the shape of Man. Language binds its user into a
metaphysical relationship to law, ethics and epistemology. Yet language,
through which all our scientific concepts find expression, can only mimic
or approximate the creative expressive principle. Ultimately, language
remains metaphysical, while all natural phenomena are forms, or reflec-
tions, of the Word, of the Logos.
EXPLORING THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOGOS 35
NOTES
apud D. Elzevirium, 1668, 1670; Leiden, 1671; Geneva, 1676; London, 1678, 1681; Lyon,
1681; Dutch translation, Middelburg, 1677; Amsterdam, 1681. Thomas Willis, An Essay on
the Pathology of the Brain and Nervous Stock; in Which Convulsive Diseases are Treated of,
English trans. Samuel Pordage (London: T. Dring, 1684), pp. 69–78.
5 Warren S. McCulloch, Embodiments of Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965). A
reprint edition appeared with MIT Press on May 13, 1988. Warren McCulloch was a doctor,
a philosopher, a teacher, a mathematician, and a poet who termed his work ‘‘experimental
epistemology.’’ In his collection of 21 essays and lectures he pursues a physiological theory
of knowledge that touches on philosophy, neurology and psychology: ‘‘There is one answer,
only one, toward which I’ve groped my work for thirty years; to find out how brains work ...’’
6 John von Neumann, T he Computer and the Brain (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, June 1958 and November 2000). John von Neumann was one of the most
celebrated and prolific mathematicians of the 20th century. His ‘‘The Computer and the
Brain’’ is a record of a lecture series that Von Neumann delivered at Yale University in 1957.
In these lectures, Von Neumann set out to explore connections between computing hardware
and what he believed to be their biological counterparts: brains. Von Neumann compared
neurons with physical computing elements in terms of size, speed, heat dissipation, capacity,
in an attempt to discover what, if anything, could be said to unite them or to set them apart.
He drew from what had been learned in designing computer instructions and memories in
an attempt to glean some insight into what the brain might be doing.
7 C. D. O’Malley and J. B. de C. M. Saunders, L eonardo da V inci on the Human Body (New
York: Henry Schuman, 1952), p. 340.
8 Leonardo da Vinci, Corpus of the Anatomical Studies in the Collection of Her Majesty, the
Queen, at W indsor Castle, K. Keele and C. Pedretti (eds.), 104 recto (New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1978–1980).
9 Jonathan Pevsner, Leonardo da Vinci’s contributions to neuroscience, T rends in
Neurosciences, 25:4 (April 2002): 217–220.
10 Werner Heisenberg, T he Physical Principles of the Quantum T heory, originally published
in German, 1930, re-issued 1950 (Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press, 1930). This
is Heisenberg’s most important work, and contains themes of early papers amplified into a
treatise. Studying the papers of Dirac and Jordan, while in frequent correspondence with
Wolfgang Pauli, Heisenberg discovered a problem in the way one could measure basic
physical variables appearing in the equations. His analysis showed that uncertainties, or
inaccuracies, always turned up if one tried to measure the position and the momentum of a
particle at the same time. (Similar uncertainties occurred when measuring the energy and the
time variables of the particle simultaneously.) These uncertainties or inaccuracies in the
measurements were not the fault of the experimenter, said Heisenberg, they were inherent in
quantum mechanics. Heisenberg presented his discovery and its consequences in a 14-page
letter to Pauli in February 1927. The letter evolved into a published paper in which
Heisenberg presented to the world for the first time what became known as the uncertainty
principle.
11 Proceedings of the congress T owards a Science of Consciousness (Tucson, Arizona: The
University of Arizona, April 7–11, 2004). Over the last 10 years, the Center of Consciousness
Studies at the University of Arizona has been contributing extra-ordinarily to the develop-
ment of the study of human consciousness. It aims to bring together perspectives of philoso-
phy, the cognitive sciences, neuroscience, the social sciences, medicine, and the physical
sciences, the arts and humanities, to move toward an integrated understanding of human
consciousness.
EXPLORING THE LANGUAGE OF THE LOGOS 37
12 Sir John Eccles, How the Self Controls Its Brain (Berlin, New York: Springer Verlag,
1994).
13 Roger Penrose, Shadow of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness
(Oxford University Press, 1994). The book was received with considerable criticism.
Penrose’s reply ‘‘Beyond the Doubting of A Shadow,’’ was published in Psyche, 2: 23
(January 1996). Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff have constructed a theory of human
consciousness in which human consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in
microtubules, which form a structural network within a neuron’s cytoplasm.
14 Chris King, ‘‘Chaos, Quantum-transactions and Consciousness: A Byophysical Model
of the Intentional Mind’’ Neuroquantology 1(2003): 129–162.
15 M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, C. Smith (trans.) (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1962).
16 Jonas Salk, op. cit., p. 11.
17 Friedrich Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 108.
18 Philo of Alexandria. ‘‘On the Creation’’ V; X; XLVIII; Allegorical Interpretation III
XXXI T he Works of Philo, C. D. Yonge (trans.) (Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, MA,
1993).
19 W. S. Hwang et al., ‘‘Evidence of a Pluripotent Human Embryonic Stem Cell Line
Derived from a Cloned Blastocyst,’’ Science, vol. 303 (2004): 1669–1674.
Leo Zonneveld.
ARIA OMRANI
39
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 39–44.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
40 ARIA OMRANI
conception itself does not always occur immediately, and cannot always
be made so self-evident in its way, as is the case in conceiving of geometri-
cal straight lines on the basis of the life-world self -evidence of straight
table-edges and the like [Ibid., 129].
The bodies familiar to us in the life-world are actual bodies, but not
bodies in the sense of physics. On the basis of Husserl’s sense, the same
thing is true of causality and of spatiotemporal infinity. These categorical
features of the life-world have the same names but are not concerned
with the theoretical idealization and hypothetical substructures of the
geometrician and physicist. As Husserl maintains, ‘‘just as other projects,
practical interests, and their realizations belong to the life-world presuppose
it as ground, and enrich it with science, too as a human project and praxis.
And this includes, everything objectively a priori, with its necessary reference
back to a corresponding a priori of the life-world. T his reference-back is
one of a founding of validity’’ [Ibid., 140].
To Husserl, prescientifically, the world is already a spatiotemporal
world; in regard to this spatiotemporality, there is no question of ideal
mathematical points of ‘‘pure’’ straight lines or planes, no question at all
of mathematically infinitesimal continuity or of the ‘‘exactness’’ belonging
to the sense of the geometrical a priori.
The life-world ‘‘for us who walkingly live in it, is always already there,
existing in advance for us, the ‘ground’ of all praxis whether theoretical
or extratheoretical’’ [Ibid., 142]. The point that should be made here is,
according to Husserl, the world does not exist as an entity, as an object,
but it exists with such uniqueness that the plural make no sense when
applied to it [Ibid ].
In Husserl’s view, there is a fundamental difference between the way
we are conscious of the world and the way we are conscious of things or
objects (though together the two make up an inseparable unity), which
prescribes fundamentally different correlative types of consciousness for
them. Husserl believes that things are given as being valid for us in each
case but in principle only in such a way that we are conscious of them
as things within the world-horizon (a horizon of possible thing-experi-
ence); ‘‘each one is something, ‘something of ’ the world of which we are
constantly conscious as a horizon, on the other hand, we are conscious
of this horizon only as a horizon for existing objects; without objects of
consciousness it cannot be actual’’ [Ibid., 143]. Every plural, and every
singular drawn from it, presupposes the world-horizon. All natural ques-
tions, all theoretical and practical goals taken as themes have to do with
something or other within the world-horizon. As Husserl says, ‘‘this is
‘‘OBJECTIVE SCIENCE’’ IN HUSSERLIAN PHENOMENOLOGY 41
this objectivity as a goal (the goal of a ‘‘truth in itself ’’) we make a set of
hypotheses through which the pure life-world is surpassed.
The life-world, in Husserl’s sense, does have, in all its relative features,
a general structure. This general structure, to which everything that exists
relatively is bound, is not itself relative. We can attend to it in its generality
and with sufficient care, fix it once and for all in a way equally accessible
to all. Husserl maintains that as life-world, the world has, even prior to
science, the ‘same’ structures that the objective sciences presuppose in
their substructure of a world which exists ‘in itself ’ and is determined
through ‘‘truths in themselves’’. Indeed, these are the same structures that
they presuppose as a priori structures and systematically unfold in a priori
sciences, sciences of the logos, the universal methodical norms by which
any knowledge of the world existing ‘‘in itself, objectively’’ must be bound.
According to Husserl, the contrast between the subjectivity of the life-
world and the ‘‘objective’’, the ‘‘true’’ world, lies in the fact that the latter
is a theoretical-logical substructure, the substructure of something that is
in principle not perceivable, in principle not experienceable in its own
proper being; whereas, the subjective, in the life-world, is distinguished in
all respects precisely by its being actually experienceable. Every immediate
cognition belonging to this sphere has the sense of an induction of
something intuitable, something possibly perceivable as having-been-per-
ceived [Ibid., 128]. Husserl emphasizes that all conceivable verification
leads back to these modes of self -evidence.
The ‘‘thing self ’’ lies in these intuitions themselves as that which is,
actually intersubjectively experienceable and verifiable and is not a sub-
structure of thought; whereas such a substructure, insofar as it makes a
claim to truth, can have actual truth only by being related back to such
self-evidence. To Husserl, the knowledge of objective-scientific world is
‘‘grounded’’ in the self-evidence. He writes:
We have seen that the propositions, the whole edifice of doctrine in the objective sciences
are structures attained through certain activities of scientists bound together in their collabo-
rative work or attained through a continued building-up of activities, the later of which
always presuppose the results of the earlier ... all these theoretical results have the character
of validities for the life-world, adding themselves as such to its own composition and
belonging to it even before that as a horizon of possible accomplishments for developing
science. The concrete life-world, then, is grounding soil of the ‘‘scientifically true’’ world and
at the same time encompasses it in its own universal concreteness [Ibid., 131].
He emphasized that true world in any sense, and within our own being,
becomes an enigma in respect to the sense of this being. That scientific
discipline, required for the solution of such enigmas, is not mathematical,
nor logical at all in the historical sense, since these are themselves objective
sciences in the sense which is presently problematical and as included in
the problem, cannot be presuppositions used as premises. Indeed, as
Husserl says: ‘‘What appeared to be merely a problem of fundamental
basis of the objective sciences or a partial problem within the universal
problem of objective science has indeed proven to be the genuine and
most universal problem ...’’ [Ibid., 133–134].
According to Husserl, the problem, which first appears as the question
of the relation between objective-scientific thinking and intuition, con-
cerns therefore on the one hand, logical thinking as the thinking of logical
thought (e.g. the physicist’s thinking of physical theory, or purely mathe-
matical thinking, in which mathematics has its place as a system of
doctrine, as a theory), and on the other hand, the intuiting and the
intuited, in the life-world prior to theory. As Husserl says: ‘‘Here arises
ineradicable illusion of a pure thinking which, unconcentrated in its purity
about intuition, already has its self-evidence truth, even truth about the
world’’ [Ibid]. Here, one concentrates on the separateness of intuiting
and thinking and generally interprets the nature of the ‘‘theory of knowl-
edge’’ as theory of science, carried out in respect to two correlative sides,
i.e., the subjective and the objective. But
as soon as possible the empty and vague notion of intuition has become the problem of
the life-world, as soon as the magnitude and difficulty of this investigation take on enormous
proportions as one seriously penetrates it, the great transformation of the ‘theory of knowl-
edge’ and the ‘theory of science’ occurs, whereby in the end, science as a problem and as
an accomplishment loses its self sufficiency and becomes a mere partial problem [Ibid., 135].
Husserl points out that things are ‘‘positional’’ in two sense (according
to spatial position and temporal position) – the spatiotemporal onta. To
Husserl, ‘‘Here would thus be found the task of a life-world ontology,
understood as a concretely general doctrine of essence for these onta’’
[Ibid., 142].
As defined by Husserl, the ‘ultimately accomplishing life’, is the life in
which the self-evident givenness of life-world forever has, has attained
and attains anew its prescientific ontic meaning [Ibid., 128].
Isfahan, Iran
N. KOZHEVNIKOV
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46 N. KOZHEVNIKOV
2. The natural coordinate system was felt and realized by various thinkers
throughout the history of mankind’s development. During a long period
of time, people, having the sense of such a system, looked for it in God,
metaphysical Absolute, Ideas and Spirit. Thus, they created very deep
religious, religious-philosophical and philosophical concepts and systems
which, being very divergent, nevertheless have many attributes in common
with God-Absolute as well as in the ways of the human interaction with
Him. Experience of asceticism, e.g. yoga, orthodox hesychasm and apo-
phatic divinity as well as the philosophical notions of Age are of great
importance for the development of knowledge about coordinate system.
During the New Age the accents are transferred to the theory of knowl-
edge in which the sign-symbolic systems of cognitive practice have now
been developed. Thinking implies active constructive functioning by pro-
cessing of the initial data; it is often considered to be projected.
It should be stressed that in the history of Philosophy two main
tendencies periodically changed each other: development and orientation
to equilibria. During the last two centuries there was a tendency in favor
of change, movement and development mainly due to Hegel. However, in
the 20th century thanks to the works of A. Bogdanov, L. Bertalanfy and
V. Vernadsky, organization and equilibrium became of interest.
rated into some systems (chains of systems); on the other hand, they are
all the remaining nonequilibrial chaotic processes and phenomena.’’ The
chains of systems integrate the equilibria of different types: fundamental,
relative, limited, inertial, metastable, while the laws of their formation at
different levels of the world organization are the same. Every process
starts and ends at definite equilibrium states, directing its development
and formed by means of self-organization. The destiny of Man is to take
part in the process of natural coordinate system formation and provide
its stability, as only Person is able to develop the spiritual components
of a coordinate system.
opposite sense. The most active part of Nature, which provides its self-
development, is distinguished there. Here is the passive part, consisting
of limits against which the processes of self-organization are carried out
in the rest of Nature.
Comprehensive study of the coordinate system suggests the use of
certain techniques taken from certain sciences (hydrodynamics,
thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, statistical physics, theories of evo-
lution, synergetics, cybernetics, ecology) in the theory of systems. Besides,
the search for the coordinate system aimed at the maintenance of stable
interconnections with it is covered by itself into the method of philosophi-
cal investigation (coordinate method). The coordinate method provides
unlimited opportunities. On the one hand – it should have a universal
flexibility allowing it to interact practically with any natural phenomenon
or processes; on the other hand – for all these processes universal criteria
and methodology appear.
hearth: because of the doors we may use the house. Thus tools come
from what exists, but use from what does not’’ (Dao-De Jing, chapter 11).
The experience of ascetics, to which much attention is paid in practically
all religions, also confirms the fundamental value of ‘‘void’’. We suppose
that void is pure being, in other words: the coordinate system itself as an
ideal design of all the possible limit conditions. It can’t merge with natural
systems, but optimum and steady natural processes periodically cooperate
with it incidentally or through certain time intervals, according to the
rhythms of the natural coordinate system.
10. Great possibilities for the development of ideas on the natural coordi-
nate system are provided by Silver Age Philosophy, where the Absolute
and Unity are the main subjects of research. With this developing concept
the works of S. Frank, L. Karsavin and N. Losskiy, dealing with a close
tangle of being and consciousness, correlate well. Thus, S. Frank distingu-
ishes consciousness in the narrow sense of the word (consciousness as the
stream of feeling, as self-consciousness) and consciousness in the broad
sense. Something out of consciousness does not exist. Frank considers
that consciousness in the broad sense is not consciousness ‘‘for I am a
stream of consciousness; this stream is a part of that universal Unity
which is in an absolute, primary and self-obvious form’’. But in the
developing concept consciousness intensively interacts with the coordinate
system, and being rises above object and subject opposition, keeping it
in itself.
Frank pays special attention to ‘‘incomprehensibility’’ as the synonym
for being, which we do not observe because it always exists. The same
synonym suits the natural coordinate system. We shall not be able to
cognize the natural coordinate system completely; although the fact that
it always surrounds us, it disappears at the same time. Consciousness
becomes possible due to the fact that the natural coordinate system
periodically appears, bewitching our mind and feelings. It is like a ‘‘gift’’
prepared by Nature for Man to fulfill special and unique functions in the
world around. These ideas, deeply investigated by Russian Philosophy,
have a great heuristic potential. Modern culture, education, the humani-
ties and natural sciences need them badly.
11. The existence of the natural coordinate system intensifies the ideas
of global evolutionism. Relations between the chain of dynamic equilibria,
comprising the nucleus of the coordinate system and the remaining
Nature, are the bases of Natural self-organization at the separate levels
of its existence and between them, thus providing the total evolutionism
of the Universe. More obviously the interrelation with the coordinate
system is displayed in the anorthic principle according to which the
Universe (and, hence, the basic parameters on which it depends) must be
such that the existence of observers was assumed at some stage (a powerful
anorthic principle). In other words, Man always feels the presence of
fundamental bases which are beyond the limits of everyday experience.
Man felt the world system of dynamic equilibria which consistently
changed the basic determinant parameters of the Universe and, thus,
provided the appearance of Man himself. The World evolves, forming the
ASPECTS OF THE NATURAL COORDINATE SYSTEM 53
12. In the XXIst century, culture will take the leading place among all
the spheres of mankind’s spirit. Complex, unique, historically developing
systems, where the most important are the interrelation with environment
(openness) and self-organization, are becoming objects of cultural scien-
tific research. Among them special attention is paid to ‘‘man-dimensioned
complexes’’, natural systems where a man actively shows his worth. The
formation of such complexes furthers the integration of the humanities
and the natural sciences, mutual influence between poetry and the sci-
ences, intuition and logic, Western and Eastern thinking, rational and
irrational research methods, scientific and non-scientific approaches, cor-
relation between explanation and understanding.
According to the developing conception: in present conditions all
cultures must be in a state of stable synchronistical or diachronistical
fluctuation. Synchronistical fluctuations appear between the nuclei of
traditional cultures’ self-identification. In the case of the diachronistical
ones – between the best samples of world cultural possessions and proper
orientations of informational society. Finally, the specific dynamic equilib-
rium with possible interaction between traditional, economical, financial,
technological, informational cultures is being formed. It is especially
important because the majority of cultures in the history of mankind
were the traditional ones. Amongst these, two great mutations happened:
classical and Christian. The dynamic equilibrium described above corre-
lates with the natural coordinate system, it allows the use of all concrete
contributions (front traditional to planetary) in forming a cultural
super-system.
54 N. KOZHEVNIKOV
13. The system of education connected with the natural coordinate system
must be supported by two principles: self-identification of a person and
the ‘‘to be nearer’’ principle. The first aims at personal formation, which
can be achieved only in the case of personal self-organizing. The second
is the instructor’s activity to catalytic influence the pupil, as he must
coordinate the pupil’s initiative: correct, amplify, recommend the right
literature, analyze the obtained results, etc. Education must be unin-
terrupted and contain exclusive blocks (2–4 years); within each of them
the complete integral world-outlook is formed. It is based on systematic,
structural knowledge as well as on criteria allowing one to distinguish
between true, original information and false, incomplete information,
destroying the natural coordinate system.
The basic task of instructors on each of the above-mentioned blocks
of the educational process is to ensure the interaction between their pupils
and the world coordinate system, which is possible at any age and with
any quantity of information. The process of such interaction is a unique
one; it is formed for every man and is one of the most effective methods
of personal education.
ASPECTS OF THE NATURAL COORDINATE SYSTEM 55
University of Yakutsk
Russia
BIBLIOGRAPHY
M. Heidegger, Basic Metaphysical Conceptions: T ime and Being. Moscow, 1993, pp. 331–332.
Dao-De Jing, Novosibirsk, 1995, pp. 13, 23.
S. Frank, T he Subject of Knowledge: Man Soul. St. Petersburg, 1995, pp. 156–157.
WENDY C. HAMBLET
It is a curious paradox that the greatest gifts of man, the unique faculties of conceptual
thought and verbal speech which have raised him to a level high above all other creatures
and given him mastery over the globe, are not altogether blessings, or at least are blessings
that have to be paid for very dearly indeed. ... There is much truth in the parable of the
tree of knowledge and its fruit, though I want to make an addition to it to make it fit my
own picture of Adam: that apple was thoroughly unripe!1
57
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 57–65.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
58 WENDY C. HAMBLET
the first human beings results, not only in the loss of a primaeval inno-
cence, but in the disconnect between humans and other creatures, perma-
nently fixed in God’s pronouncement to the wayward Adam that all the
creatures of earth and sea are given over to him for his use and consump-
tion. This myth connects a human rational drive that sets itself outside
the lawfulness of the god to a transcendentally justified mastery over the
earth and all other beings. This mythologem remains in conceptual sway,
secularized but persistent, in the scientist’s non-relationship with nature
as his ‘‘object’’ of inquiry.
Despite the scientist’s belief that he is operating in a myth-free world,
post mortem dei, the scientist’s orientation toward his ‘‘object’’ demon-
strates that Christian myth still deeply infects even the allegedly ‘‘secular’’
thinking of the modern era. The scientist’s ‘‘natural attitude,’’ as it is
called by Edmund Husserl,2 assumes an absolute disconnect between
subject–observer and object–observed, an assumption that is simply false.
There is no pure, free, unprejudiced starting point from which conscious-
ness might take place in a purely ‘‘objective’’ – non-subjectively infected
– way. The scientist’s assumption, that in his investigations the object of
inquiry is cut loose from its relatedness to the subject, encapsulates the
modern Western conception of subjectivity, an understanding of the self
as free isolated being over against an alien world. If the world is ‘‘full of
gods’’ now, these are gods that can, under the rational gaze of our apple-
munching heroes, be brought to their thunderbolt-tossing, plague-infect-
ing, earth-shaking knees. Earth and its myriad creatures, objectified as
alien other, can either by subjected to the appropriative processes of
cognition, re-present-ation, and manipulation, or can be fixed at an appro-
priately safe distance to reduce its menacing otherness.
Hans Jonas, eminent phenomenologist, student of Husserl and
Heidegger and colleague and friend of Hannah Arendt at the New School
for Social Research in New York until his death in 1993, explains that
we retreat from nature because we see in its ‘‘otherness’’ the source of
our mortal fragility. Jonas explains, in Mortality and Morality: T he Search
for the Good after Auschwitz, that human beings are but a link in the
great chain of being, albeit a very special link since we live our mortal
existence in full awareness of its ambiguity. We are the one kind of being
that understands that mortal existence is itself a paradox, a ‘‘gift’’ never
truly given, borrowed time that never permits its own purchase. Not-
being borders and infects every moment of our living. Death is an inescap-
able fact of our living that cannot be confronted nor dissuaded from its
course. In our intense and anxious awareness of this fact, we project
ALIENATION AND WHOLENESS 59
outside ourselves for the causes of our fragility. We feel palpably in nature,
in other creatures, and indeed in our fellows, the threat of extinction
posed toward us at every moment.
Humans, claim Jonas, actually feel a suffocating immersion in the
natural world, rather than embraced by its orderly logic, as the early
Greeks held. Emmanuel Levinas captures this anxious connection by
referring to the real beyond our appropriative grasp as ‘‘the elemental,’’
the realm where we experience the menace of ‘‘archaic gods.’’3 With this
phrase, Levinas is marking the shift from the comfort felt in the trust in
an orderly logos to the terror experienced in the face of the unknown. In
the face of this terror, we retreat to the world of our own creation, the
world of human artifacts. Its neon blinds us to our fears, its concrete
gives solid assurance of continuance, and its manicured plasticity reminds
us of our godlike power to create and transform. We retire to a ‘‘human
world’’ and subdue the elemental forces – name them, understand them,
bend them to our will. Where they will not be ‘‘bent,’’ we build barriers
against them to hold off their destructive forces and to forget our ‘‘natural’’
– mortal – being. Jonas places humans on a great continuum of being
and, although, for Jonas, alienation from other is characteristic of every
link along the great chain, the rational superiority that gives the awareness
of vulnerability widens the gap of alienation for humans. Hence, we
position ourselves over against the chaos of things and forge our identity
as other to other beings. We aggressively pursue our differences to deny
our connectedness.
Ironically, the disconnect between the human world and nature, so felt
in the human mind, cannot be justified by reference to the latest scientific
findings. One of the most fascinating – and most humbling – revelations
of the Human Genome Project has been the discovery that, not only all
human life, but all life per se, is, beyond all doubt, connected. Encoded
in the ‘‘book of history’’ recorded in the human genome is the unequivocal
fact of the integral oneness of all being. As Mart Ridley phrases this
remarkable fact: ‘‘... seaweed is your distant cousin and anthrax one of
your advanced relatives.’’4 The fact of the unity of all life places human
being as a not-so-very-different chapter in an unbroken chain of life
co-evolving from the primaeval soup. The human species is, by no stretch
of the rationalizing, egoistic imagination, the pinnacle of evolution. In
fact, the humbling truth revealed by the ‘‘book’’ of the human genome is,
rather, that there is no such thing as ‘‘evolutionary progress.’’ Natural
selection is simply the blind process whereby life forms mutate in response
to the myriad opportunities arising in the physical environment.
60 WENDY C. HAMBLET
Certainly, this is not to imply that the human species, and every
individual member of that species, is not utterly unique. But rather the
latest genetic discoveries imply that uniqueness is a property of every
species and every member within each species. Uniqueness is a commodity
that is, if anything, in over-supply on the planet. Humans may consider
themselves an evolutionary success, the favoured creations of a god in
whose image we are carved, the pinnacle of being because the rational
masters over the planet and its myriad beings, but the stunning truth is
that we are just as much the result of a long line of evolutionary failures,
the culmination of a massive process of trial and error between trillions
of bodies constructed, tested and enabled to reproduce once they had
met ever increasingly stringent criteria for survival. Ridley concludes the
discussion of the ‘‘superiority’’ of the human by stating:
The story of a briefly abundant hairless primate originating in Africa is but a footnote in
the history of life ...5
We began at one with all things but, once we emerged onto the
savannah as stupid little grass-eaters and later transformed into the thick-
craniumed thugs (who probably ate the grass-eaters into extinction), we
became too big for our evolutionary britches. With mastery over fire
came weapons of formidable destructive potential, and our fate was cast:
we would be masters of the planet, not by evolutionary success, but,
ironically, by evolutionary failure! According to the groundbreaking work
of Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, humans from the first moments of
culture, soon, in a very important respect, fell ‘‘retarded,’’ by comparison
with other creatures. They failed in the development of natural inhibitors
to intraspecies aggression.6 Lorenz states:
A raven can peck out the eye of another with one thrust of its beak, a wolf can rip the
jugular vein of another with a single bite. There would be no more ravens and no more
wolves if reliable inhibitors did not prevent such actions ... Anthropologists ... have repeat-
edly stressed that [Australopithecus] hunting progenitors of man have left humanity with
the dangerous heritage of what they term ‘‘carnivorous mentality.’’ ... No selection pressure
arose in the prehistory of mankind to breed inhibitory mechanisms preventing the killing
of conspecifics until, all of a sudden, the invention of artificial weapons upset the equilibrium
of killing potential and social inhibitions.7
And we shudder all the more when we add to this frightening image the
certain fact that the first human beings that really represented our species,
Cro-Magnon, had roughly identical instincts and natural inclinations to
our own.9
Thus we can say that the aggressiveness of the prehistoric hunter,
inherited from those first thick-craniumed carnivores, remains with the
species today, despite all our visions of grandeur built on the assumption
of superior rationality. Reason, as Lorenz also demonstrates, has no
means of persuading us against those natural inclinations. Lorenz
explains:
not be seen as a functionality superior to, but only different from, the
kind of bodily thinking done by other creatures. If we can reconnect with
others on the basis of fragility, not mastery, we might find it possible to
heal the rift between us and other beings. Connecting with others on the
basis of fragility rather than mastery means acknowledging our kind of
ratio, not as a ruling principle, but as an instrument for alleviating
suffering, reducing fragility. We might be capable of finding ways to
employ that unique rationality that is ours to help those who live their
lives even closer to the fleshy cusp of existence than we. Once we are able
to rediscover the other as Other, then perhaps we can find ourselves once
again in the loving embrace of the m(Other).
Spinoza suggests a similar solution in his Ethics when he redefines
virtue as ‘‘like community’’ and reason as ‘‘good will’’ toward neigh-
bours.14 Spinoza sees that the best life for all is the life in which all people
‘‘desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest
of mankind and, consequently, [they] are just, faithful, and honorable in
their conduct’’ (PXVIIInl). However, it could be argued that Spinoza
meant ‘‘like community’’ to embrace all mortal beings, not simply human
beings (who, as we have seen, share a fundamental unity in any case),
since Spinoza concludes Book IV of his Ethics with the following call to
harmony:
... in so far as we have a right understanding of [necessity and truth], the endeavor of the
better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.15
If the way in which I have pointed out as leading to this [harmony] seems exceedingly
hard, it may nevertheless be discovered. Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found.
How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great
labor be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are
as difficult as they are rare.16
Adelphi University
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coen, Enrico. T he Art of Genes: How Organisms Make T hemselves. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
Jonas, Hans. Mortality and Morality: A Search for the Good After Auschwitz, Lawrence Vogel
(ed.). Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1996.
Levinas, Emmanuel. T otality and Infinity, Alfonso Lingis (trans.). Pittsburg: Duquesne
University Press, 1969.
Lorenz, Konrad. On Aggression, Marjorie Kerr Wilson (ed.). New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, 1963.
Ridley, Matt. Genome: T he Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. London: Fourth
Estate, 1999.
ALEXANDER KUZMIN
In 1927 M. Heidegger published his famous work Sein und Zeit. Long
before that, the classical tradition of European philosophy had expressed
its ultimate conviction that the fascination of time could be dispelled by
the evidence and truth of thought. Confer, e.g., Hegel’s principal thesis
that ‘‘philosophy, being engaged in the true, deals with what is eternally
present’’.1
When M. Heidegger correlated being, the key concept of the preceding
metaphysics, with time, he apparently thought that thus he designated
the prime cause which must inevitably bring us to the ascertainment of
the essence and nature of the ‘‘end of metaphysics’’. So, time becomes the
principal problem of philosophy.
It was the problem of overcoming metaphysics as a monistic study of
the being of all the real that incited M. Heidegger and his contemporaries
to form the time concept as the main issue for philosophical reflection.
Philosophy in the metaphysical tradition was represented by them in the
image of a demurrage fashioning the eternal for the sole purpose of
surpassing time and burden of terminal being. Plato’s doctrine of ideals,
the basis of European metaphysics, was considered by them from a
position of its aiming at the actual abolition of time and inconstancy.
Aristotelianism, which breathed the soul into medieval thought, becomes
the subject of analysis only as aiming at the predominance of the real
over the variety of forms of its manifestation assigned to the categories
of existence, space and time. Moreover, the subsequent doctrines of sub-
stance had for their basis the truth of eternal being to arrive at. Eventually,
in the spirit of the metaphysical tradition, the New Age philosophy raised
a question of attaining the manifestation of the positively existent. To
sum up the aforesaid, we could concur that the metaphysical tradition
was apprehended by M. Heidegger as emancipation of mind from the
temporal and frail.
At the same time, M. Heidegger realizes that his work belongs to
phenomenology. However, interpretation of time in E. Husserl’s phenome-
nological philosophy differs essentially from M. Heidegger’s phenomeno-
67
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© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
68 ALEXANDER KUZMIN
light only together with understanding the other, and this is the purpose
of hermeneutics. By nature, ‘‘phenomenological hermeneutics’’ is con-
cerned with revealing a distinctive feature of such types of philosophizing
which seek to exceed the bounds of classical forms of expression.
M. Heidegger put forward the problem of being as the definitive one
anew, but he did it in a nontraditional way.2
We are also indebted to M. M. Bakhtin for discovering nontraditional
forms of analysis of time. For M. M. Bakhtin, one of the main types and
levels of philosophical approach to the theme becomes considering the
problem of time in connection with analysis of artistic creativity.
Questions of interpenetrating the concepts of time and consciousness,
as described in E. Husserl’s phenomenology, do not exhaust the complete-
ness of confirmation of being apart from meaning’’.3 With the exception
of semantic functions of consciousness, ‘‘confirmation of being’’, takes
place in the creative artistic act, owing to which ‘‘naivety of available
being becomes beauty’’.4 Artistic creativity, according to M. M. Bakhtin,
exceeds the bounds of the semantic life content and it, aesthetic comple-
tion, in essence, is unattainable from within being as such. It is only
‘‘passive activity’’, ‘‘activity from the outside’’, conditioned by all forces
and energies of the world, predetermined by all givens and availability’s
of being, that comes out of the author’s artistic creativity. For all this,
such activity does not change the semantic aspect of being’’,5 by any
means.
Refusing to recognize forms of ‘‘pure self-expression’’ as the source of
artistic creativity of the author of a work, so long as they will be semantic
forms, M. M. Bakhtin takes to analyzing forms of ‘‘relation to the other
and his self-expression’’6 as time forms of the aesthetic realization of inner
life and a directly given world. All aesthetic philosophical categories, time
(temporality, rhythm) inclusive, according to M. M. Bakhtin, ‘‘shine with
the reflected value light of otherness’’.7
The idea of ‘‘other’’, ‘‘otherness’’ in the humanitarian philosophy of
M. M. Bakhtin deserves attention not only for its existential significance,
being a breaking-off from the traditional philosophy of subject–object
relations, but also for its breakthrough to an analysis of the core of time
– absolute time – the time by which and in which the other lives; thus
the problem of time, raised at the beginning of the XXth century, can be
examined from a different angle.
As is generally known, E. Husserl’s philosophy, having taken for its
theme phenomenology of the inner consciousness of time, is the philoso-
phy of phenomenological time of pure Ego. In E. Husserl’s phenomeno-
70 ALEXANDER KUZMIN
the metaphysical tradition together with the other, but it would be errone-
ous to treat it as an attribute of being. Time is a possibility of understand-
ing the other, i.e. being. ‘‘The project of the sense of being in general’’,
stresses M. Heidegger, ‘‘may be realized on the horizon of time’’.16
Thereby it is very difficult to ascend from E. Husserl’s understanding
of phenomenological time to understanding hermeneutically phenomeno-
logical temporalities in the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger. For
that it is essential to have as a medium an analysis of experience of time
of the other, which we present here thanks to M. M. Bakhtin’s humanitar-
ian philosophy.
According to M. M. Bakhtin’s philosophy of artistic creativity, the time
in which ‘‘the other’’ lives allows us to give an artistically formed idea of
completeness of time, of its absolute character. We cannot by ourselves
experience our birth anew, nor our death. They are given us as boundaries,
beyond which vagueness and absence of sense are in store for us. An
author can experience time in its complete integrity instead of a personage;
to put it more accurately, it is a personage’s life oriented to self-realization
that is the complete whole in time. ‘‘The other has a more intimate
connection with time’’, says M. M. Bakhtin, ‘‘ – he is entirely in time’’.17
Semantic unity as self-experience of my unity, is opposed by M. M.
Bakhtin to temporal unity, as the other’s experience of his unity. In my
attitude to myself semantic unity serves as an organizing principle of my
life apart from me. Brought face to face with meaning I experience
temporality as not-yet-complete, ‘‘not-yet-fulfilled’’, ‘‘not-all-yet’’.18
Semantic definiteness of an experience of temporality, thereby, will not
correspond to a self-experience ‘‘in the act embracing time’’.19 I embrace
time being a subject constituting time, and as such, I am nontemporal.
Thus, temporalization of experience of a subject constituting time is
impossible in principle, devoid of sense, and it lead to regress. Semantic
unity of my Ego excludes a possibility of constituting any temporality as
absolute time. It is obvious to M. M. Bakhtin that temporally completed
life is hopeless from the standpoint of its meaning’’.20
Only temporal unity as an organizing principle of my experiencing the
inner life of the other allows one to establish a non-semantic relation
between time and temporality. Temporality of time, according to M. M.
Bakhtin, becomes a convincing postulate of immortality, eternity, abso-
luteness, ‘‘inner definiteness of the other – his inner face (memory) – loved
besides meaning’’.21
So, we can maintain that temporality of experience about the other
must be considered a thematically indispensable aspect of constituting
72 ALEXANDER KUZMIN
* * *
Heidegger’s thought of the Sein und Zeit period turns, among other
things, to the phenomenon of the self. For this, reflexion is chosen as a
modus of the self, the comprehension of which is noticeably linked with
the problems of the interpretation of a subject’s life.
What are the motives that induced the existential analytics of Dasein
to turn to comprehending the themes of reflexion? In the course of lectures
on the problems of phenomenology Heidegger, explaining the existence
of Dasein, emphasizes the significance of the intentionality of the percep-
tion phenomenon. It is characterized by such definitions as intentio and
intentum. Intentional relation already possesses the being’s intelligibility
of the real, just of the real which is first revealed by this relation. Having
stated the initial exposition of perception phenomenon intentionality,
HEIDEGGER’S OPTICAL INTERPRETATION OF REFLEXION 73
Heidegger puts the question of how the being’s intelligibility of the real
combines with the intentional order. In correlation with the projected
interpretation of a subject’s being the question resounds as follows: how
is Ego determined by any intentionality? As a rule, phenomenology
designates Ego as the center or the pole of all possible outflows of
intentional acts. Yet, the question of the aspect of the Ego-pole’s being is
left open, which, in Heidegger’s opinion, is inadmissible since this is the
most important phenomenological question.
‘‘How’’, inquires Heidegger, specifying his position, ‘‘is Dasein given its
Ego, its self, i.e. how is Dasein, existentializing in the strict sense of the
word, itself proper, authentic it?’’.22 In all intentional relations the self is
always here by itself. Heidegger deliberately expands the bounds of signi-
ficance of the notion of intentionality. This notion is expanded by the
introduction of both the directness of itself to something and the being’s
intelligibility of the real, but not only these. Besides, ‘‘the self ’s self-
disclosure’’ will also be called an intentional relation since it is always in
the position of correlativity with some other.
However, the problem of the mode of the self ’s givenness is not thereby
resolved. Heidegger rejects the Kantian attitude to the problem so impor-
tant for the analytics of Dasein. Kantian transcendental unity of appercep-
tion, ‘‘cogito’’, accompanies all our notions and follows the acts which
will be directed at the existent. It will mean a reflecting act, for it represents
a cogitated connection between initial acts. Heidegger has nothing against
the formal correctness of statements about the Ego being conscious of
something and of itself as well. He also admits the correctness of the
characterisation of res cogitance as cogito me cogitare, i.e. as self-con-
sciousness. The foregoing formal definitions of Ego, in Hidegger’s opinion,
make up the framework of the dialectics of consciousness of idealism.
They are alien to the interpretation of the phenomenal existence of Dasein
and do not shake the foundations of existential analytics.
Attempting to construe intentionality Heidegger projects the horizon
for understanding Dasein. How is this real in its factual existence exposed
to him, if not confused with the epistemological notions of subject and
Ego? Heidegger compares his vision of the problem to the tenets of
phenomenology, in accordance with which the inner perception essentially
differs from the outer perception owing to the Ego’s turning on itself. By
turning on itself Ego addresses itself. Existentializing, Dasein is here for
itself. According to Heidegger, we should clearly conceive such a state of
things. ‘‘The self ’’, emphasizes Heidegger, ‘‘is Dasein here by itself, without
reflexion and without inner perception, before any reflexion’’.23
74 ALEXANDER KUZMIN
What then is the correlation between the self of the factual Dasein and
reflexion? What allows reflexion to play the role of a medium between
the self and objects? Analysing intentionality, Heidegger outlines the
semantic aspects of the distinction between reflexion as turning on itself
and as self-disclosing. According to the former, reflexion in the sense
identical with turning on itself is the modus of self-comprehension and
does not require the status or the initial mode of the self ’s self-disclosure.
Yet, he assumes that under proper conditions the mode of the self ’s self-
disclosure to the factual Dasein may be called reflexion.
As a rule, the notion of ‘‘reflexion’’ is understood as ‘‘a bent-over-Ego
self-examining’’.24 It does not coincide with its optical, primary meaning.
Therefore, Heidegger proposes to revert to the initial understanding or
reflexion as correlation. Summing up his reasoning, Heidegger says: ‘‘To
reflect means to be refracted into something, and radiated out of it, i.e.
to discover something in reflexion’’.25
The interpretation of the optical meaning of the term ‘‘reflexion’’ under-
taken in the course of his lectures Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie
essentially helped to introduce clarity into Heidegger’s conception of the
self as a structure of the self-disclosure of the factual Dasein. In Sein und
Zeit the phenomenon of the self is included in the sounder-understood
structure of care. Here the problem of the self is raised preliminarily as
the problem of a further fundamental comprehending of the integrality
of the structural whole of Dasein. Unlike Sein und Zeit, the course of
lectures aims at articulating the parent-phenomenon of the pre-ontologi-
cal comprehension of the self by means of interpreting intentionality as
having for its bases being-in-the-world.
In Sein und Zeit Heidegger gives the description of ‘‘correlation’’
between care and self,26 aiming not only at clearing up a particular
problem of Ego’s being, but also at the search for the ontological meaning
of care. And yet the meaning of ‘‘correlation’’, i.e. reflexion, remains
obscure.
How is the term ‘‘meaning’’ interpreted by Heidegger? Explicating this
term, so important for fundamental ontological analysis, the philosopher
maintains: ‘‘Meaning is a primary on-what draft from which something
as what it is can be understood in its possibility’’.27 Further specifying
the initial definition he emphasizes that the term ‘‘meaning’’ acquires its
strict sense after the primary on-what draft of the comprehension of being
has been ascertained. Then, to say that the existent has ‘‘the meaning’’
would spell out that it is understood as the meaning’s ‘‘on-what’’: i.e. the
meaning is always set by the primary draft of the comprehension of being.
HEIDEGGER’S OPTICAL INTERPRETATION OF REFLEXION 75
* * *
symbolizes the life of the logos, not being any thing and not assuming
something designated for itself.
Most likely, with what ease the philosophy of the new time has deprived
reflection of its ontological status, it is hardly possible to expect con-
sidering the radical return to a recognition behind it of a similar status.
To tell the truth, the hope dies hard.
NOTES
1 G. V. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte. Saint Petersburg, 1993,
p. 125.
2 See O. Poggeler, ‘‘Zeit und Hermeneutik’’ in Krisis der Metaphysik. Berlin, N.Y., 1989,
pp. 364–388.
3 M. M. Bakhtin, Aesthetics of L iterary Art. Moscow, 1986, p. 127.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., p. 28.
6 Ibid., p. 25.
7 Ibid.
8 E. Husserl, ‘‘Ideen zu einer reinen phänomenologie und phänomenologischen
Philosophie’’. Buch 1. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Neue, auf Grund
der handschriftlichen Zusatze des Verfassers erw. Aufl. Hrsg. Von Walter Biemel. Bd. 3, The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1950, p. 198.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 See R. Bernet, ‘‘Einleitung’’ in E. Husserl, Texte zur Phänomenologie des inneren
Zeitbewusstseins (1893–1917), herausgegeben und eingeleitet von R. Bernet, Hamburg, Felix
Meiner, 1985, pp. XI–LXVII.
13 M. Heidegger, ‘‘Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie’’ in Gesamtausgabe. Abt 2.
Vorlesungen 1923–1944. Bd. 24. Frankfurt am M.: Klostermann, 1975, p. 430.
14 Ibid.
15 M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, in Gesamtausgabe. Abt.1. Veröffenlichte Schriften
1914–1970. Bd.2.- Frankfurt am M.: Klostermann, 1975, p. 308.
16 Ibid, p. 312.
17 Bakhtin, op. cit., p. 103.
18 Ibid., p. 3.
19 Ibid., p. 3.
20 Ibid., p. 9.
21 Ibid., p. 4.
22 Heidegger, op. cit., Bd. 24, p. 225.
23 Ibid., p. 226.
24 Ibid.
80 ALEXANDER KUZMIN
25 Ibid.
26 Heidegger, op. cit., Bd. 2, p. 428.
27 Ibid., p. 324.
28 Heidegger, op. cit., Bd. 24, p. 226.
29 Ibid., p. 228.
30 M. Heidegger, On the Essence and Concept in Aristotle’s ‘‘Physics’’ B,1. Moscow, 1995,
p. 81.
31 See: A. F. Losev, T he History of an Antique Aesthetics: T he Early Hellenism. Moscow,
1979, p. 90.
32 M. K. Mamardashvili, A. M. Pyatigorsky, T he Symbol and Consciousness: Metaphysical
Reasonings on Consciousness, Symbolics and L anguage. Moscow, 1997, p. 104.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., p. 113.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid., p. 104.
37 Ibid., p. 130.
38 See A. F. Losev, op. cit., pp. 90–178.
A. L. SAMIAN
1. INTRODUCTION
And these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from Phenomena that there
is a Being, incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent ... And though every true Step made
in this Philosophy brings us not immediately to the Knowledge of the first Cause, yet it
brings us nearer to it, and on that account is to be highly valued.5
81
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© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
82 A. L. SAMIAN
owed with discussions about God to the extent that theology and his
‘natural philosophy’ are amalgamated together, what more of his mathe-
matical experience!
Since the ancients (as we are told by Pappus) esteemed the science of mechanics of greatest
importance in the investigation of natural things, and the moderns, rejecting substantial
forms and occult qualities, have endeavoured to subject the phaenomena of nature to the
law of mathematics.8
Arithematicks is set down preposterously in the 12th Article after almost all the rest of
Mathematicks. For a man may understand and teach Arithmetick without any other skill
in Mathematicks, as writing Masters usually doe, but without Arithmetick he can be skilled
in non other parte of Mathematicks, & therefore Arithematick ought to have been set
downe in the very first place as the foundation of all the rest.10
Newton further claims that both geometry and mechanics are equally
important. He reminds Hawes of their significance: ‘‘If you admit this
learning, your school will certainly grow into greater reputation, ... for
the scheme of learning ... is an entire thing which cannot well want any
of it’s members, for ‘its nothing but a combination of Arithmetick,
Geometry, Perspective and Mechanicks, ...’ ’’11
NEWTON’S MATHEMATICAL EXPERIENCE 83
The ancients considered mechanics in a twofold respect: as rational, which proceeds accu-
rately by demonstration, and practical. To practical mechanics all manual arts belong, from
which mechanics took its name. But as artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it
comes to pass that mechanics is so distinguished from geometry that what is perfectly
accurate is called geometrical; what is less so is called mechanical.12
He that works with less accuracy is an imperfect mechanic; and if any could work with
perfect accuracy, he would be the most perfect mechanic of all; for the description of right
lines and circles upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics.13
Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn; for it
requires that the learners should first be taught to describe these accurately before he enters
upon geometry, then it shows how by these operations problems may be solved. To describe
right lines and circles are problems, but not geometrical problems. The solution of these
problems is required from mechanics, and by geometry the use of them, when so solved, is
shown; and it is the glory of geometry that from those few principles, brought from without,
it is able to produce so many things. Therefore geometry is founded in mechanical practice
and is nothing but that part of universal mechanics which accurately proposes and demon-
strates the art of measuring.14
From the above passage, we can trace the general schema of Newton’s
conception of reducing ‘‘the phaenomena of nature to the laws of mathe-
matics’’. Beginning with phaenomena, the mathematician applies geomet-
rical principles to the phaenomena, yielding some axioms. Mechanical
principles are then applied to these axioms in order to explain other
phaenomena. If the resulting mathematical formulae are successful in
84 A. L. SAMIAN
Dia. 5.2. Newton’s conception of the importance of mechanics and geometry in mathematics.
But since the manual arts are chiefly employed in the moving of bodies, it happens that
geometry is commonly referred to their magnitude, and mechanics to their motion.17
Bearing in mind the ‘‘vulgar’’ aspect in the usage of the words ‘‘geometry’’
and ‘‘mechanics’’, he gives a definition for his ‘‘rational mechanics’’:
In this sense rational mechanics will be the science of motions resulting from any forces
whatsoever and of the forces required to produce any motions, accurately proposed and
demonstrated.18
Geometry is the foundation of Mechanicks, & Mechanicks the accomplishment & Crown
of Geometry, & both are assisted by Arithmetick for computing and perspective for drawing
figures: So that any part of this Systeme being taken away the rest remaines imperfect.’19
Is not the Sensory of Animals that place to which the sensitive Substance is present, and
into which the sensible Species of Things are carried through the Nerves and Brain, that
there may be perceived by their immediate presence to that Substance? And these things
being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from the Penomena that there is a Being
incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite Space, as it were in his Sensory,
sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends
them wholly by their immediate presence to himself; ... 22
... in serving false or feigned Gods, that is, Ghosts or Spirits of dead men, or such like
beings which you make your Gods, by feigning that they can hear your prayers, do you
good or hurt, and praying to them for protection and blessings and trust in them for the
same, and which are false gods because they have not the powers which you ascribe to
them, and on which you trust.25
different names. The only mechanic and geometer ‘‘forming and reform-
ing’’ the universe is God and not ‘‘forces’’.
An example that we have in mind is his concept of gravity. Although
Newton uses the phrase ‘‘the power of gravity’’, it is not the case that
power is inherent in gravity such that gravity has an equal power to God.
He even insists that gravity is not ‘‘essential and inherent to matter’’.26
To believe that it is so is ‘‘so great an absurdity that I believe no man
who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can
ever fall into it’’,27 according to Newton.
Newton ventures on explaining the operation of gravity. Like any other
hypotheses on natural causes, gravity has to be understood mathemati-
cally and used ‘‘in so far as they may furnish experiments’’.28 This is
Newton’s position with respect to the natural causes in his scheme of
reducing natural phaenomena to mathematical laws. More than anything
else, gravity is a mathematical notion, a mathematical entity which can
be ‘‘deduced from the phaenomena’’ and ‘‘rendered general by induction’’.
It is sufficient for Newton that a mathematical entity such as gravity
‘‘does really exist and act according to the laws ... and abundantly serves
to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea’’.29
Just as ‘‘force’’ should never be perceived as God or His equal, so gravity.
Gravity is merely a mathematical notion used to describe the mathemati-
cal relationship between mathematical objects in nature.
In addition to his concept of gravity, Newton’s distinction between
what counts as relative and absolute, apparent and true, common and
mathematical, likewise reflects his position on the need for the
de-deification of nature. It is worth noting that, by and large, Newton
equates that which is absolute to that which is true and mathematical;
and that which is apparent as equal to that which is relative and common.
The mathematical experience of the mathematician is a passage to under-
standing some aspects of the world of intelligibles.
Newton’s concept of time is an example to illustrate the distinction
between the sensibles and the intelligibles and his belief that mathematics
function as a bridge connecting them.
Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself and from its own nature, flows equably
without relation of anything external, and by another name is called ‘duration’; relative,
apparent, and common time is some sensible and external (whether accurate or equable)
measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time,
such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.30
It is not the Business of Experimental Philosophy to teach the causes of things further than
they can be proven by Experiments. We are not to fill this Philosophy with Opinions which
cannot be proved by Phaenomena.31
4. STAGES OF MATHEMATIZATION
As Mathematicians have two Methods of doing things which they call Composition and
Resolution and in all difficulties have recourse to their method of resolution before they
compound so in explaining the Phaenomena of nature the like methods are to be used and
he that expects success must resolve before he compounds, for the explications of
Phaenomena are Problems much harder than those in Mathematics. The method of reso-
lution consists in trying experiments and considering all the Phaenomena of nature relating
to the subject in hand and drawing conclusions from them and examining the truth of those
conclusions from those experiments and so proceeding from experiments to conclusions
and from conclusions to experiments until you come to the general properties of things.
Then assuming those properties as Principles of Philosophy you may by them explain the
causes of those Phaenomena as follow from them which is the method of Composition ...36
According to Newton, the sensorium is the place into which data of the
phenomena passes. It is the place of sensation. ‘‘The right side of the
sensorium come from the right side of both eyes ... the left side of the
sensorium come in like manner from the left side ...’’41 claims Newton.
In his discussion of God, Newton hints that images of the phenomena,
are transferred into the sensorium by means of the organs of sense, ‘‘... of
which things the images only carried through the organs of sense into
90 A. L. SAMIAN
our little sensorium are these seen and beheld by that which in us perceives
and thinks ...’’42 As important as the sensorium and the external senses
may be, it is not from them that the mathematician perceives. Rather it
is the soul that perceives the mathematical meanings of the mathematical
images. We posit that Newton also expounds on the perceptive aspect of
the soul when he states that: ‘‘Every soul that has perception is, though
in different times and in different organs of sense and motion, still the
same indivisible person.’’43 As a point of fact, Newton alludes that it is
the soul which holds the place of primacy in the act of perception,
mathematical or otherwise; for that matter in the existence of man. Let
us consider the following statement with respect to the preceding quota-
tion which is given almost as its continuation in the same scholium.
‘‘Every man, so far as he is a thing that has perception, is one and the
same man during his whole life, in all and each of his organs of sense’’.44
We can still investigate Newton’s mathematical experience even further
by questioning the way of the arrival of mathematical meaning at the
soul from God.
That God who is the creator of every phenomena has all mathematical
knowledge is clear to Newton. In Art. 4 of the Twelve Articles, Newton
states: ‘‘The Father is omniscient, and hath all knowledge originally in
his own breast, ...’’45 and elsewhere, God ‘‘governs all things and knows
all things that are or can be done’’.46 In other words, mathematical
knowledge originates from Him.
Moreover Newton believes that the external world which is the world
of phenomena is not a result of ‘‘unguided’’ necessity. ‘‘Blind metaphysical
necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could
produce no variety of things’’47 says Newton. According to Newton, the
world of phenomena come into being only through God. God creates
phenomena from His divine Ideas and Will. It is worth re-emphasizing
that Newton states: ‘‘All that diversity of natural thing which we find
suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas
and will of a Being necessarily existing’’.48 In light of this statement, from
Newton’s point of view God is pure existence because only He is necessar-
ily existing.
Following Newton, what sense are we to make of God’s existence and
the mathematician’s perception of phenomena? Newton gives an enlight-
ening remark with respect to this question. In his discussion of God and
motion, he tells us:
He is omnipresent not virtually but also substantially; for virtue cannot subsist without
substance. In him are all things contained and moved, yet neither affects the other; God
NEWTON’S MATHEMATICAL EXPERIENCE 91
suffers nothing from the motion of bodies, bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence
of God.49
By the phrase ‘‘In him are all things contained and moved’’, we maintain
that what is meant by Newton is the knowledge of the pervasive Divine
Immanence and Divine Transcendence. It also points to his admission
that mathematical perception and consequently the attainment of mathe-
matical knowledge is only possible in so much as it is sanctioned by God;
God grants mathematical knowledge particularly by means of His Divine
Presence. Also, if we were to take into account his position on God’s
Essence, His Qualities and that God ‘‘may give his angles charge over
us’’,50 as well as the subtility of gravity and the world of phenomena, the
phrase ‘‘In him all things contained and moved’’ bears a hierarchy of
reality with Divine Essence at the outermost layer. The next inner layer
will be Divine Qualities, followed consequently by ‘‘angelic,’’ ‘‘subtle,’’
and the innermost layer, the world of phenomena.
God maintains phenomena like the mechanic who plays a very creative
role only in the first act of invention (creation). Elsewhere Newton refers
to the initial creative role of God in his discussion about ether whereby
he says that: ‘‘... and after condensation wrought into various forms, at
first by the immediate hand of the Creator, and ever since by the power
of nature, ...’’51
Once mathematical images of phenomena are sent to the brain, the
memory of the perceiver which is the retentive faculty retain the images
in the absence of the mathematical objects from any of the external senses.
The mathematical images also function as mathematical symbols. The
imaginative faculty, which is yet another kind of internal sense, manages
the mathematical symbols and formulates them for the soul. This is the
level whereby mathematical symbols are stripped from their correspond-
ing phenomena, and the process of mathematical reasoning which at this
stage consists of ‘‘resolving’’, is carried out.52 There are extensive use of
geometric figures which are consonant with his belief that God is the
perfect geometer. At this level, the mathematician intermittently checks
the conclusion of the interpolation by conducting experiments,53 that is
by ‘‘proceeding alternately from experiments to conclusions from conclu-
sions to experiments’’.
So far we have addressed the process of mathematical observation
understood within the schema of Newton’s mathematical experience. In
sum, mathematical images from the phenomena are sent via the senses
into the brain when sensation is excited, and thereafter is analysed and
92 A. L. SAMIAN
5. CONCLUSION
NOTES
1 For example, see Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh, Elena Anne Marchisotto. T he
Mathematical Experience (New Jersey: Birkhauser, 1995), Jean-Pierre Changeux and Alain
Connes, Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics, M. B. DeBevoise (ed. and trans.)
(New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press, 1955), Mathematics and Mind, Alexander George (ed.)
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994).
2 See H. Wellman, ‘‘The Origins of Metacognition’’, in Metacognition, Cognition, and
Human Performance, D. L. Forrest-Pressley, G. E. MacKinnon and T. G. Wailer (eds.)
(London: Academic Press, 1985).
3 See Newton’s preface to the first edition of the Principia, 8th May 1686, Principia, Motte-
Cajori, pp. xvii–xviii.
4 See his General Scholium in Principia, Motte-Cajori.
5 See Opticks, p. 370.
6 See the first paragraph in his first letter to Richard Bentley in Opera Omnia IV, p. 429.
7 Keynes MS. 130 (6). University of Cambridge, King’s College Library.
8 See his preface to the first edition of the Principia. Principia, Motto-Cajori, p. xvii.
9 See Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. 192.
10 See Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes, L. L. Laudan and J.
Edleston (eds.) (London; Frank Cass Co. Ltd., 1969), p. 280.
11 Ibid., p. 286.
12 See Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. xvii.
13 Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. xvii.
14 See Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. xvii.
15 See Newton’s Philosophy of Nature: Selections from his writings, H. S. Thayer (ed.), J. H.
Randall (intr.) (New York, 1951), p. 20.
16 Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. 11.
17 Ibid., p. xvii.
18 Ibid., p. xvii.
19 See J. Eddleston, op. cit., p. 286.
20 See Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. xvii.
21 See ibid., p. xviii.
22 See Opticks, p. 370.
23 It is worth noting that in Bentley’s lecture sanctioned by Newton, the former states:
Now that all this Distances and Motions and Quantities of Matter should be so accurately
and harmoniusly adjusted in this great Variety of our System, is above the fortuitous Hits
of Blind Material Causes, and must certainly flow from that eternal Fountain of Wisdom,
the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who always acts Geometrically, by just and adequate
numbers and weights and measures.
See R. Bentley, ‘‘A Confutation of Atheism (III),’’ in Isaac Newton’s Papers and L etters on
Natural Philosophy and Related Documents, I. Bernard Cohen and Robert F. Schofield (eds.)
(Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 364.
24 Ibid., p. 49.
25 Ibid.
26 See Newton’s second letter to Bentley. See also Correspondence III, p. 240.
27 See Newton’s third letter to R. Bentley.
28 See Newton’s letter to Oldenburg in Opera Omnia, IV, p. 314.
29 See Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. 5477.
94 A. L. SAMIAN
30 Ibid., p. 6.
31 See Sir Isaac Newton: T he Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton. A Selection
from the Portsmouth Collection in the University L ibrary, A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (eds.)
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1962), p. 312.
32 Opticks, p. 370.
33 That Newton believes in the plurality of the world, see Brewster, Memoirs, ... Vol. II,
p. 353. Concerning the glorification of God as the desired product of Newton’s natural
philosophy, it is interesting to note that in Roger Cotes’ introduction to the Principia which
received Newton’s commendation, he writes:
Therefore we may now more nearly behold the beauties of Nature and entertain ourselves
with the delightflul contemplation, and which is the best and most valuable fruit of
philosophy, be thence incited the more profoundly to reverence and adore the great Maker
and Lord of all. He must be blind who, from the most wise and excellent contrivances of
things, cannot see the infinite wisdom and goodness of their Almighty Creator, and he
must be mad and senseless who refuses to acknowledge them. [underlined mine] (See
Principia, Motte-Cajori, pp. xxxii–xxxiii).
34 See Isaac Newton’s letter dated 31 March 1713 to Roger Cotes in Correspondence of Sir
Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes, L. L. Laudan and J. Edleston (eds.) (London; Frank Cass
Co. Ltd., 1969), p. 156.
35 Quoted in I. B. Cohen, Introduction to Newton’s Principia, op. cit., p. 30. See also ibid.,
Issac Newton, T he Creative Scientific Mind at Work; W iles L ecture (Belfast; 1966), p. 128.
36 Ibid., pp. 98–99.
37 See Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. 399.
38 Newton also uses the phrase ‘‘five powers’’ to denote the five external senses. For example
in commenting on mechanics, he says: ‘‘This part of mechanics, as far as it extended to the
five powers which relate to manual arts, was cultivated by the ancients, ...’’. (See Principia,
Motte-Cajori, p. xvii).
39 See Opticks, p. 403.
40 Ibid., p. 399.
41 See Query 15 in Opticks, p. 346.
42 See Opticks, p. 370.
43 See Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. 545.
44 Ibid., p. 545.
45 See T heological Manuscripts, p. 56.
46 See Principia, Motte-Cajori, p. 545.
47 Ibid., p. 546.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., p. 545.
50 See T heological Manuscripts, p. 51.
51 See Brewster, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 390–393.
52 An example of Newton’s mathematical reasoning is given by Roger Cotes in his preface
to the second edition of Principia. Writes Cotes:
Now it is evident from mathematical reasoning, and rigorously demonstrated, that all
bodies that move in any curved line described in a plane and which, by a radius drawn to
any point, whether at rest or moved in any manner, describe areas about that point
proportional to the times are urged by forces directed toward that point. (See Principia,
Motte-Cajori, p. xxii).
NEWTON’S MATHEMATICAL EXPERIENCE 95
53 For some examples on the variety of experiments performed in the Principia, see
Principia, Motte-Cajori, pp. 22–5 wherein he describes experiments with pendulums to verify
the conservation of momentum; ibid., pp. 316–26 (to detect ‘the resistance of mediums by
pendulums oscillating therein’); and ibid., pp. 337–45 (‘to find the motion of water running
out of cyclindrical vessel through a hole’). For other experiments, see ibid., pp. 353–5, 355–66
and 382–4.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brewster, David. Memoirs of the L ife, W ritings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, 2 vols.
Edinburgh: Thomas Constable & Co., 1855.
Cohen, I. Bernard. Introduction to Newton’s ‘Principia’. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1971.
Manuel, Frank. E. A Portrait of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1968.
Newton, Isaac. T he Correspondence of Isaac Newton, H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall
and Laura Tilling (eds.), 5 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959–1975.
——. ‘‘Four letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Doctor Bentley: containing some arguments in
proof of a deity’’, in T he Works of Richard Bentley, Rev. Alexander Dyce (ed.). London,
1838.
——. Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the
World. Translated into English by Andrew Matte in 1729. The translations revised, and
supplied with an historical appendix, by Florian Cajori. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1934.
——. Sir Isaac Newton’s T heological Manuscripts, selected and edited with an introduction
by H. McLachlan. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1950.
——. Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (eds.).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.
——. Correspondence of Isaac Newton and Professor Cotes with an appendix containing other
unpublished letters and papers by Newton, L. L. Laudan and J. Edleston (eds.). London:
Frank Cass Co. Ltd., 1969.
——. Isaac Newton’s Papers and L etters on Natural Philosophy and Related Documents, I.
Bernard Cohen and Robert E. Schofield (eds.). Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958.
——. Newton’s Philosophy of Natural Selection from His W ritings, H. S. Thayer (ed.), John
Herman Randall (intr.). New York, 1951.
——. Opticks, or a T reatise of the Reflections, Inflections and Colours of L ight. Albert Einstein
(Foreword), Sir Edmund Whittaker (Introduction), I. Bernard Cohen (Preface), Duane
H. D. Roller (Analytical table). New York: Dover Publications, 1952.
——. Isaac Newtoni Opera quae Exstant Omnia, Samuel Horsley (ed.), 5 vols. London,
1779–85.
ELDON C. WAIT
97
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 97–104.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
98 ELDON C. WAIT
is in complete harmony with the laws of nature ... (1964: 174). But he
immediately points out that if this were the case, the categories would be
no more than subjective dispositions of thought and their necessity would
have been sacrificed.
The concept of cause, for instance, which expresses the necessity of an event under a
presupposed condition, would be false if it rested only on an arbitrary subjective necessity,
implanted in us, of connecting certain empirical representations according to the rule of
causal relation. I would not then be able to say that the effect is connected with the cause
in the object, that is to say necessarily, but only that I am so constituted that I cannot
think this representation otherwise than as thus connected. (1964:175)
Computers are not able to prevail over their hardware or their program-
ming, they cannot be directed to something which lies beyond them or
to something which is not represented in their system in any way. If I
am to think of myself as a computer I would have to accept that the
experience I have of my own thinking whenever I deduce a conclusion
from its premises, is an illusory experience, that what my thinking is for
me is numerically distinct from what it is in itself, that although I may
have the impression of pursuing ‘the’ conclusion of the syllogism, I am
actually doing nothing of the sort, that I am actually passive to a causal
process, which triggers beliefs in me. This would mean that any assurance
I may have that a conclusion follows its premises is based on an illusory
experience. What reasons can there be to reject as illusory my experience
of thinking whenever I deduce a conclusion from its premises?
Perhaps the most obvious argument would be the argument from past
irrational behaviour. I have at times been assured that I pursued ‘the’
conclusion and prevailed over my subjectivity, only to find that the
conclusion I drew was not ‘the’ conclusion of the premises, that I had
not prevailed over my neuro-psychological make up, but rather, that the
conclusion I ended up with was explicable as an effect of that neuro-
psychological make-up, and that the experience of being intentional was
an illusion. This means that we have to introduce a numerical distinction
102 ELDON C. WAIT
between what my thinking is in itself and what it is for me. Once that
distinction has been established, I will be free to ignore my experience
and then I will be open to the argument that all my cognitions could be
the effects of causes.
But this argument from past irrational behaviour is itself an argument,
and I can be assured of its validity only if I can be assured that its
conclusion is actually implied by its premises. If the argument from my
irrational behaviour in the past could force me to draw a distinction
between what my thinking is for me and what it is in itself, it would place
me in a vicious circle. If there were such a distinction how could I ever
establish that the experience I have of pursuing in thought the conclusion
of the syllogism, provides me with a reliable representation of what I am
actually doing? I would have to test my representation and I could only
have confidence in the reliability of my test, if I knew that my actual
thinking was, during these tests, as I experience it to be, namely ‘inten-
tional’. I could never prove to myself that my experience of thinking
provides me with a reliable representation of what I was doing, since
every proof that I could carry out could only be accepted by me as
compelling in itself, if I already knew without any tests, that my act of
proving was intentional. To accept the argument would be to accept that
I could never ‘know’ whether it was valid or not. I would be able to
accept the argument only in an act of blind faith.4
Perhaps the reply will be that although I could never know whether
the argument was valid or not, I could still have good reasons for trusting
the conclusions which my neuro-psychological substrate ‘brings to mind’,
because if it did not ‘bring to mind’ the correct conclusions I would not
have survived. But the argument from survival is itself an argument,
which I should accept only if I can recognize that its conclusion is implied
by its premises. Once I accept that there is a numerical distinction between
what my thinking is for me and what it is in itself, I can have no assurance
that the argument from survival is valid. Nor can I take comfort in the
knowledge that my thinking is like that of everyone else, for here too,
this knowledge can only be based on my interpretation of empirical
evidence, and without the assurance that I am rational, I could never
trust my powers of interpretation.
If I reflect on the experience of drawing a conclusion from its premises,
I find that my thoughts, rather than being the effects of causes, prevail
over their neuropsychological substrate such that through these thoughts
I can direct myself to the goal of my thinking. Any argument which
dispels my naive assurance that in my thinking I am able to prevail over
WHAT COMPUTERS COULD NEVER DO 103
University of Zululand
NOTES
1 ‘‘But if, for any operation to be intelligently executed, a prior theoretical operation had
first to be performed and performed intelligently, it would be a logical impossibility for
anyone ever to break into the circle’’ (Ryle, 1962: 31).
2 ‘‘Whoever tries to limit the spiritual light to what is at present before the mind always
runs up against the Socratic problem. How will you set about looking for that thing, the
nature of which is totally unknown to you? Which, among the things you do not know, is
the one which you propose to look for? And if by chance you should stumble upon it, how
will you know that it is indeed that thing, since you are in ignorance of it? (Meno, 80D) ...
We must define thought in terms of that strange power which it possesses of being ahead of
itself ...’’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: 371).
3 ‘‘My awareness of constructing an objective truth would never provide me with anything
more than an objective truth for me, and my greatest attempt at impartiality would never
enable me to prevail over my subjectivity (as Descartes so well expresses it by the hypothesis
of the malignant demon), if I had not, underlying my judgements, the primordial certainty of
being in contact with being itself [if, before any voluntary adoption of a position I were not
already in an intersubjective world, and if science too were not upheld by this basic doxa]’’
(Merleau-Ponty, 1962: 355).
4 There will have to be other ways of accounting for the fact that I have often been mistaken
about drawing ‘the’ conclusion from its premises, ways which do not introduce a numerical
distinction between what my thinking is for me and what it is in itself.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Searle, J. R. ‘‘Minds, Brains and Progams’’. T he Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1980):
417–457.
Wait, E. C. ‘‘A Phenomenological Rejection of the Empiricist Argument from Illusions’’. T he
South African Journal of Philosophy, May, 14(3) (1995): 83–89.
––. ‘‘Dissipating Illusions’’. Human Studies, April, 20(2): 221–242.
ARTHUR PIPER
105
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 105–118.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
106 ARTHUR PIPER
Sensible Models
Like all cultural acquisitions which arise out of human accomplishment, they [the existing
images, shapes and methods] remain objectively knowable and available without requiring
that the formulation of their meaning be repeatedly and explicitly renewed. On the basis of
sensible embodiment, e.g., in speech and writing, they are simply apperceptively grasped
and dealt with in our operations. Sensible ‘models’ function in a similar way, including
especially the drawings on paper which are constantly used during work, printed drawings
in textbooks for those who learn by reading, and the like. It is similar to the way in which
certain cultural objects (tongs, drills, etc.) are understood, simply ‘seen’, with their specifically
cultural properties, without any renewed process of making intuitive what gave such
properties their true meaning. Serving in the methodological praxis of mathematicians, in
this form of long-understood acquisitions, are significations which are, so to speak, sedi-
mented in their embodiments.5
Part of Husserl’s project in the Crisis was to recover the original meaning
of geometry as a human accomplishment by peeling away the layers of
sedimentation that had accrued over time and that had served to fossilize
living ideas into physical facts that took on the quality of objects –
‘‘sensible models’’. For Husserl, the scientists in their everyday dealing
with such models are very much like the carpenter in Heidegger’s work-
shop.6 They simply use the tools that are ‘‘ready-to-hand’’ in their con-
cerned theoretical activity without having to reappropriate them through
intellectual intuition. This is normal praxis in the science setting. But in
doing so, however, they fail to grasp the truth that geometry, which is
taken by Husserl as exemplary of science in general, when properly
understood, contains within itself a possibility and a way of understanding
the world. Therefore the meaning of natural science for Husserl, like all
meaning, is a human accomplishment and is discoverable through tran-
scendental analysis.
In Husserl’s view, then, ‘‘sensible models’’ such as graphs, charts and
brain scans embody the network of presuppositions (or thinking that has
become objectified during historical praxis) underlying the scientific enter-
prise. When the natural attitude of the scientist is bracketed off by the
phenomenological reduction, the models can be seen for what they are:
‘‘purely subjective phenomena throughout, but not merely facts involving
psychological processes of sense-data; rather, they are mental [geistige]
processes which, as such, exercise with essential necessity the function of
constituting forms of meaning’’.7 But the scientist, in the heat of everyday
laboratory work, misses the significance of the tools she is using. She sees
them perceptually as things, which is why they are classified by Husserl
as ‘‘sensible’’ and, for the purposes of our interpretation, she passes over
their imagistic properties in favour of the practical business of working
with handed-down thinking. The images are only meaningful in relation
108 ARTHUR PIPER
Photographs which are ‘used’ in lab research, provide materials which members explore,
and ‘work with’ in delimiting neural events. The documentary character of such photographs
is not that of illustrating an already completed text, but is itself a ‘text’ which is used as
discriminable grounds for claims, arguments, measurement, and statistical accounting work
by the parties to the lab’s research.11
levels of reading ability. In their paper ‘From Thing to Sign and ‘‘Natural
Object’’: Toward a Genetic Phenomenology of Graph Interpretation’
(2002), Roth, G. Michael Bowen and Domenico Masciotra start with the
assumption that cognitive neuroscientists and others presuppose that the
graphs already say something about the natural world. The authors’
method of understanding how graphs are read is essentially semiotic,
within which the process of reading has two distinct phases. The first is
‘‘structuring’’,12 where things become signs; the second is ‘‘grounding’’,13
where signs refer to world. During their fieldwork, they noted that with
experienced scientists ‘‘reading leapt beyond the material aspects of the
text to the natural objects it is said to be about. Map (text) and territory
(nature, world) are no longer separate but become fused in the process
of transparent reading’’.14 The same could not be said of inexperienced
readers, or for those scientists who were unfamiliar with the data sets
and pictures with which they were confronted. Those readers often strug-
gled to form signs from the material, or to relate their unstable signs to
the world. This suggests that the ‘‘sensible’’ aspect of the model has
become opaque and problematic. It had ceased simply to be the necessary
background material of the tool and had erupted as an unstable visual
element into consciousness. That should alert us to the fact that more
needs to be said about the sensible nature of the science image if we are
to achieve a richer understanding of how they come to mean what they
do to scientists and non-scientists.
Image-Consciousness
It would seem that the transparent reading ability associated with this
tool-use aspect of science images breaks down as soon as the object is
dislodged from its original context. Does it then become an image pure
and simple, or is it a thing, but just not the type of thing that can be
used as a tool? Is it during the scientist’s training that the object ceases
to be either a thing or an image and becomes a tool, as Husserl implies?
Husserl’s concept of image-consciousness from his writings on art can
shed light on these questions. For this purpose, I draw on recent work
by John Brough,15 who has looked at Husserl’s understanding of image-
consciousness in Husserliana 23 from an art historical perspective, but I
modify his account slightly so that we can deal with issues posed by Roth
and his colleagues about how non-art images become transparent to
scientists.
110 ARTHUR PIPER
Pigment and canvas, as actually existing material things, simply are; they do not represent.
An actual person, the subject of a portrait, does not represent or depict either; it simply is
what it is. But the image in its nullity, in its interplay and conflict with its physical support
and its subject, is what it is not and is not what it is, to borrow a formulation from Jean-
Paul Sartre. And thus it can represent without being what it depicts.19
become opaquely sensible when the visualization practices are not avail-
able to the viewer because he or she is a novice in science, or a scientist
presented with unknown imagery. In this case the image is seen perceptu-
ally – or from the perspective of the ‘‘internal horizon’’21 of the observer.
Both accounts of the image are needed if we are to understand how this
difference arises. Perhaps the former perspective provides us with the
basis for an analysis for understanding images ‘‘in’’ science, and the latter
with a basis for understanding images ‘‘of ’’ science.
Seeing in Practice
The documentary use of a photograph in a research article differs considerably from that
of a photograph used by lab members as the material visibility of topical events and
structures ... In those instances in which photographs were presented in research publica-
tions, however, it was not simply the case that they illustrated the naturalistic account made
in the papers. They were also available as exhibits of a lab’s practical competence with
electron microscopy ... The extreme concern with finding ‘‘perfect’’ pictures free of exhibits
of artefact (however incidental they might be to a paper’s claims) addressed the availability
of the photographs to a ‘‘practitioner’s reading’’ that could assess the competence of the
lab’s program in the ‘‘aesthetics’’ of its photography.24
SENSIBLE MODELS IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 113
Lynch’s subjects remark on the ‘‘beauty’’25 of the pictures that are free
from error and joke among themselves about being able to capture the
type of high-quality images that they find in certain journal articles. In
fact, I will return to this process of image-making for public consumption
later, but note that in as much as such images are manipulated by digital
image-processing tools in the work of perfecting them for display, the
scientists are engaged on an aesthetic enterprise that is almost indistin-
guishable from the artist’s.26 This activity suggests that they are looking
at the ‘‘image-object’’ and its constituent semiotic elements as an image
apart from whatever use it may serve in the laboratory. It appears that
the scientist is capable of becoming aware of these pictorial elements, but
suppresses this awareness in favour of the underlying model. So we can
perhaps conclude that as the context of use for the scientist changes, so
too does the type of seeing associated with the image, which suggests
further that defining the essence of the science image solely with regard
to its properties as a sensible model in tool use is too restrictive if we are
to understand such images in the full range of contexts within which
they arise.
Among those who do not have access to the highly technical way of
seeing science images that prevails in the science laboratory, the aesthetic
aspect of the sensible model comes to the fore and dominates understand-
ing. In her study of public ways of perceiving images created by electron
micrographs, Emily Martin says: ‘‘As well as a sense of drama, there is
certainly a lively aesthetic involved when scientists produce, choose and
display these images. After many a lecture, I heard people commenting
to each other about the ‘beautiful’, ‘incredible’, ‘stunning’, ‘technically
perfect’ micrographs that were shown’’.27 Electron micrographs are used
primarily to image microscopic elements in nature, such as brain cells,
usually prepared for the purpose by staining techniques. Martin argues
that the primary purpose in deploying these pictures in teaching is to
‘‘clinch an argument by revealing visual evidence of what one is claim-
ing’’.28 For Martin, this method of teaching prevents students from devel-
oping anything other than the standard interpretation of the significance
of the image-set held by science practitioners and those who lecture on
the subject. In the study, however, not all of the students accepted the
standard interpretations presented to them in the lectures where the
images were displayed, which is perhaps not too surprising given their
range of backgrounds and ability level. What is more remarkable is that
when she presented similar images to people with non-science back-
grounds, they related to them in a wide variety of emotional and concep-
114 ARTHUR PIPER
tual ways. Often an image received multiple interpretations from the same
viewer. As Martin says: ‘‘Taken as a whole, the things people said can
only be described as a profusion, an extravagance, an excess of images.
Sometimes they tumble out one on top of another’’.29 Electron micro-
graphs depicting immune cells became space satellites, deep sea scenes,
food stuffs, strange deserts, populated cities and alien beings. Images
constantly made and unmade themselves, jumping to a sudden gestalt
and then falling back into their unstable semiotic elements as viewers
grappled to make the images signify. As far as they pointed to a world,
it was not the world of mathematical, natural science, but the world of
nature understood through cultural acquisition; through the TV docu-
mentary, the news programme and the blockbuster film.
Images L et L oose
In our everyday lives, science images acquire significance for us. When
there is no specific context for understanding, when there are no special-
ised visualization practices, the personal domain steps in via everyday
ways of seeing image-objects. They become pretty pictures, objects of
reverie, more like art objects than scientific evidence. It would appear
that the meaning of these images only becomes narrower and specific to
the scientific enterprise during training – a process that helps develop the
necessary visualization techniques. Yet as the scientist’s knowledge
increases, so the meaning of the image is reduced to the model upon
which it is based. Its sensible aspect, while still objectively available,
recedes into the background of the laboratory. Those elements only tend
to take on aesthetic qualities when the context alters, for example, when
the images are produced with public or peer display in mind. A different
way of seeing them, essentially aesthetic in nature, comes to the fore.
The scientific training that produces ‘‘sensible models’’ seen one-sidedly
as tools denigrates the status of images as images among many science
practitioners. But why might this be the case? Anne Beaulieu, who has
conducted anthropological work on scientists’ attitudes to imaging work
in cognitive neuroscience, has concluded that ‘‘researchers reject the visual
yet maintain its use in their work’’30 for largely professional reasons. In
fact, it would be a fair assumption that most would disagree with my
application of Husserl’s notion of image-consciousness to the perception
of their technological products. Brain scans are not images and any
definition of them as visual is seen as a ‘‘sort of radiological misnomer’’.31
Yet while the tools that brain imagers use – Positron Emission
SENSIBLE MODELS IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 115
sense of calls from visual theorists such as Stafford and Elkins to apply
art historical practices to science images, both as a way of investigating
how far the theoretical concerns and confusions of scientists are embodied
in the pictorial representation of those artefacts and as a way of under-
standing the traditions to which they belong and to which they might
come to belong in the future. That would be one way of beginning to
think differently about these images.
James Elkins has argued that the cleaning and manipulating of images
that have been photographed for scientific research is a form of aesthetics
that lends itself to art historical traditions of analysis. In fact, he notes
that this type of care with pictures ‘‘is the original, pre-Kantian sense of
aesthetics as the ‘perfecting of reality’ – the very doctrine that governed
Renaissance painting ... What happens in non-art images can be just as
full of aesthetic choices, just as deeply engaged with the visual, and just
as resourceful and visually reflective as in painting’’.34 Notions of perspec-
tive and the translation of 3-D reality onto two dimensional surfaces have
been among the stock-in-trade themes of art theory since it began. An
informed appreciation of the particular representational strategies
deployed in cognitive neuroscience in depicting the brain would enable
scientists to improve on the representational aspects of their work. In
addition, art theorists can offer valuable insights into how well images of
mixed representational styles point to the intended model beneath. For
example, cognitive neuroscience deals with the marriage of cognitive
psychology and neurobiology. Its textbook images are sometimes com-
posed of apparently realistic elements of anatomy drawn from biological
studies and flow diagrams representing neural networks drawn from
theories of mind in psychology. The connections and dissonances between
the two fields that make up the inter-discipline of cognitive neuroscience
are embodied within such images. Art theoretical analysis can serve to
make them visible.
In fact, phenomenology itself is well equipped for the task of deciphering
the complexity of non-art images – whether they arise within a science
context, or within the context of more mundane life. It may be that the
status of the artwork over more prosaic images has to be re-examined
and seen in its broader historical context. It may even be that new forms
of sensible models become available to phenomenologists as these bound-
aries are challenged in ways that enable us to think with images as well
as about them. The intelligence and thoughtfulness of images could be
allowed to co-exist within a conception of the logos that is not construed
in a predominantly linguistic way.
SENSIBLE MODELS IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 117
Acknowledgements
I thank Sujatha Raman for introducing me to science studies work in
this area and Jon Simons and Andy Hamilton for reading an earlier draft
of this essay. I also thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council
(AHRC) in the UK for their continuing financial support.
NOTES
1 James Elkins, T he Domain of Images (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999)
and V isual Studies: A Skeptical Introduction (New York and London: Routledge, 2003).
2 Barbara Maria Stafford, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and
Medicine (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1993) and Good L ooking: Essays on
the V irtue of Images (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1996).
3 Edmund Husserl, T he Crisis of European Sciences and T ranscendental Phenomenology,
David Carr (trans.) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 162.
4 Ibid., p. 26.
5 Ibid., pp. 26–27.
6 Martin Heidegger, Being and T ime, John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (trans.)
(Oxford, UK and Cambridge, US: Blackwell, 1962), pp. 95–102.
7 Husserl, op. cit., p. 112.
8 Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, L aboratory L ife: T he Social Construction of Scientific
Facts (London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979).
9 Karin Knorr-Cetina, T he Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and
Contextual Nature of Science (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1981).
10 Michael Lynch, Art and Artefact in L aboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop
T alk in a Research L aboratory (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985)
11 Lynch, op. cit., p. 95.
12 Wolff-Michael Roth, G. Michael Bowen and Domenico Masciotra, ‘‘From Thing to Sign
and ‘Natural Object’: Toward a Genetic Phenomenology of Graph Interpretation,’’ in
Science, T echnology and Human Values 27: 3 (Summer 2002): 333.
13 Roth et al., op. cit., p. 333.
14 Roth et al., op. cit., p. 335.
15 John Brough, ‘‘Art and Non-art: A Millennial Puzzle’’, in T he Reach of Reflection: Issues
for Phenomenology’s Second Century, Steven Crowell, Lester Embree and Samuel J. Julian
(eds.). Electronically published by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology Inc
at www.electronpress.com, 2001, pp. 1–16.
16 Ibid., p. 9.
17 See, for example, Don Ihde, Expanding Hermeneutics: V isualism in Science (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1998).
18 Brough, op. cit., p. 9.
19 Ibid., p. 10.
118 ARTHUR PIPER
20 Roth et al., op. cit., p. 334, quoting Umberto Eco, A T heory of Semiotics (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1976), p. 176.
21 Husserl, op. cit., p. 162, what Brough calls the ‘‘internal structure’’, op. cit., p. 9.
22 Roth et al., op. cit., p. 351.
23 Ibid.
24 Lynch, op. cit., pp. 95–96.
25 Ibid., p. 94.
26 See Elkins, op. cit., 1999, pp. 10–12.
27 Emily Martin, ‘‘Interpreting Electron Micrographs’’, in T he Future of Anthropological
Knowledge, Henrietta L. Moore (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 18.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., p. 23.
30 Anne Beaulieu, ‘‘Images are Not the (Only) Truth: Brain Mapping, Visual Knowledge,
and Iconoclasm’’, in Science, T echnology & Human Values 27: 1 (Winter 2002): 56.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., p. 78.
33 Beaulieu, op. cit., p. 61.
34 Elkins, op. cit., 1999, p. 11.
ROBERTO VEROLINI and FABIO PETRELLI
In the 150 years which separate us from Darwin, the evolutionistic para-
digm has had a strong extension and improvement, becoming the concep-
tual frame of reference of modern biology and other subjects such as
geology, paleontology, ecology, neurosciences and last but not least
modern cosmology.
The peculiarity of the evolutionistic idea is given by the evident indeter-
mination1 of the evolutive processes – a character that comes out especi-
ally from a ‘‘coarse grained’’ analysis of such phenomena. This
indeterminateness is due to the chaos and the intrinsic complexity of the
‘‘subtle’’,2 very detailed, chemical biological phenomena, which originate
from subatomic ones where quantum indeterminateness3 is in force.
To this basic indetermination is added, in higher levels, a further source
of chaos due to the non-linear and stochastic nature of the biological
processes as for example the genetic, ethologic and ecologic transmission
modalities in living beings. The experimental data concerning the complex
systems dynamics, known as ‘‘sensible to the initial conditions’’, all convey
towards this universal quality of human nature, living and inorganic. In
particular the bio-evolutive processes are related to such a wide number
of factors that they show complex and univocal dynamics intrinsically
unforeseeable a priori and irreproducible.
This intrinsic indetermination leads to the theme of the feasible ‘‘teleol-
ogy’’ of the evolutive dynamics, that is to the eventuality that evolutive
processes let naturally develop can tend more or less to the realization
of a well defined natural reality, a foreseeable a priori last goal. It must
be said that the analysis of the available data and theoretic basis of the
evolutive mechanism don’t permit any teleonomy, that is no finalism
similar to the one invoked by the most part of philosophical analyses so
far carried out, especially those connected with important theological
ideas.
These facts have concurred to increase the philosophical diatribe
between the upholders of evolutionistic thought and those who, on the
contrary, have vigorously opposed the evolutive paradigms in favour of
cosmological visions where a firm natural finalism is asserted. A necessary
reference must be made to the contrast faith/science developed decades
119
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 119–136.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
120 ROBERTO VEROLINI and FABIO PETRELLI
The ETK’s object is the origin and nature of the ontological, biological
and physical being: the modern man, the Homo sapiens sapiens. Still it
refers also, and above all, to the origin and nature of the philosophical
agent’s rational/logical capabilities par excellence: the Self, the sentient
subject, the ontological fundament of the res cogitans.
From that theory some considerations emerge inherent to the theme
of conscience and the ‘‘conflict about world existence’’, deeply intercon-
nected subjects, proper to an ancient philosophical research still actual
as shown by the in fieri skirmishes between the advocates of realism and
idealism. Phenomenology also develops an analysis concerning this sub-
ject: it seems to be detached from the other currents of thought proposing,
above all, an atypical approach based on a suspended judgement about
world existence (epoché). However, as shown by the studies of Husserl,
Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology also tends to
direct one, after a wide parabola, to the same ontological themes as
shown by Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Which new
developments can derive from the ETK, as regards these philosophical
currents?
A first and most important ETK consequence is represented by the
solution it provides to the a priori and the ‘‘transcendental idealism’’
of Kant.4
The analysis of these problems is not our aim but it represents an
important basis to move our reasoning from. The ETK answers Kant’s
problem intrinsic to our potential knowledge of the ‘‘noumenal’’ world,
of the ‘‘world out-there’’ as regards the sentient Self and connected with
the noumenal correspondence of ‘‘phenomenal’’ perceptions.
The logical and ontogenetic definition of the Self by ETK involves the
necessity of a strong correspondence between noumenal reality and phe-
nomenal perception which are necessarily consistent one with the other.
This conclusion implies a classification of the meaning of our percep-
tions different from what Kant postulated and from what has been
considered by all the philosophical currents that followed him.
To put it briefly, the ‘‘grades of freedom’’ (that is the possible ‘‘non-
correspondence’’ between two beings or realities) between the phenomenal
reality perceived by us and the noumenal subjacent one must be necessar-
ily very tiny. It is impossible to conceive the first as ontologically distinct
and logically incoherent from the second unless we want to incur phen-
omena never seen before. Phenomenal reality has to express a consider-
able ‘‘clue’’ to the content of noumenal reality. This content must be
understood as ‘‘probative’’ of the intrinsic ontological characteristics of
122 ROBERTO VEROLINI and FABIO PETRELLI
itself can be caught. For example, the study of the brain’s nature and
origin, of its activities and intellectual potentialities, demonstrates how
all this is a ‘‘direct and active’’ expression of an evolutive genesis carried
out by the natural noumenal reality over a million years. As Konrad
Lorenz demonstrated, such an organ is a real ‘‘cast’’ of the ‘‘external’’
reality, of its intrinsic and objective qualities that through the same
perceptive modalities arrive in the end at our conscience and awareness.5
During the millennia, the evolutive process has led to a severe selection
of the bio-evolutive structures that continuously emerged, rewarding the
perceptive modalities (and the subsequent phenomenal compositions)
intrinsically coherent with the noumenal reality with a bigger
survival/reproduction level and cancelling all the perceptive modalities
incoherent with such reality, through the physical elimination of the
organisms which manifested them.
From this incessant and repeated process emerges the significant episte-
mic overlapping of the phenomenological perception that we bring about
with the authentic noumenal reality whatever it is. Obviously, this episte-
mic overlapping is not absolute and perfect as is clearly shown when
considering, for example, Einstein’s relativity.
The noumenal reality of gravitational and space-time status different
from those of our planet, is basically incompatible with that which we
perceive on the Earth’s surface. (N.B. a similar example is given by
quantum mechanics which has shown us the logic and ontological oddity
underway at an atomic phenomena level). In spite of everything, our
epistemic overlapping is ‘‘evolutively adaptive’’, so ‘‘necessarily’’ and
essentially efficacious, and gives us at a logical and perceptive level,
objective ‘‘evolutive noumenal signs’’. Furthermore it constitutes an
‘‘extended epistemic overlapping’’ in the sense that being epistemologically
present in the logic of modern scientific method, it historically results as
a continuously explicative extension of the ‘‘last noumenal essence’’ pre-
cisely thanks to such cognitive means.
To be sure, we can turn to the common philosophical themes from a
new perspective from where it is possible to perceive an important ‘‘indica-
tive’’ validity of the ‘‘noumenally connected’’ reality where we are placed
and where we express our intellectual abilities: in other words our being
‘‘philosophers who philosophize’’.
An important request for our discourse is the following: taken for
granted that evolutive dynamics cannot be intended as expressions of the
universal finalism concerning fixed cosmologic philosophic positions, shall
we deny ‘‘any teleology’’ in the evolutive phenomena? Can we analyse it
124 ROBERTO VEROLINI and FABIO PETRELLI
‘‘tablelands and mountains’’ which would represent the blind alleys, the
links, the ways and the balances of the evolutive processes. They describe
the structures and the functions of the feasible ‘‘building and functioning
levels’’ of living forms’ organs and bodies as for example the sensorial
apparatus in the anthropoids, the mammal’s ear, the chordate ‘‘sagittal’’
body’s structure or the plane morphology of Ediacara’s fauna etc.
Through the ‘‘topology’’ of these landscapes we can follow the evolution
that the morphologic phenotypic structures of living forms have
undergone for millions of years: these would represent the status of major
functional efficaciousness and structural complexity accessible to the evo-
lutive dynamics.
This imponderability, this deep indeterminateness is then expressed at
meta-individual and interspecies level when defining the complex
ecologic/biochemical equilibrium among the forms of life on the Earth –
a phenomenon that we can imagine taking place in planetary systems
similar to our solar one. The dynamic unity and the natural phenomena
of the recurrent realization modalities are so understood up to the widest
cosmological context and this gives an overall account of the ‘‘noumenal
reality’’, expressed in our ‘‘extensive epistemic overlapping’’, completely
alien to the traditional goals of teleologies.
Now, refused every reference to any intentional planning towards the
biological context where well-defined forms of life emerged and where it
was impossible to predetermine single historical/evolutive facts, what
could we conclude? Which contents could we turn to if we wanted to
outline the features of the authentic teleology of nature?
The answer could be an original inversion of perspective. Let’s try to
define in a ‘‘complementary’’ way the same idea of teleology.
The traditional teleologies turn, without relevant exceptions, to the
realization of specific ontological realities of particular historical facts
that, through their manifestation, would represent the last goal of the
natural being. For an example of a typical teleologic finality, take the
emergence of the human species on the face of the Earth after events such
as the extinction that 65 million years ago allowed mammals to take the
place of dinosaurs.
Moreover we could mention the adaptive developments that led to
Homo erectus and then Homo sapiens and so on.
More specifically such facts and events would theologically connect
the appearance and destiny of humanity to the creative plan ascribed to
the God of the biblical tradition. In the cosmology and eschatology of
this theological tradition, the appearance of the human species on the
126 ROBERTO VEROLINI and FABIO PETRELLI
Earth, the events that mark the plot of the biblical narration, from
the Genesis to the Gospels, would represent facts and historical events
to be intended as phases and fundamental moments of the entire divine
plan.
It is obvious that these facts, these ontological contexts are not able to
represent finalities accessible to a bio-evolutive one, so much so that in
the attempt to relate the evolutive processes interpretation to these goals,
it has been postulated, with no exception, that there is direct though
improbable ‘‘guide and supervision’’ of the natural phenomena on the
part of divinity.
As already shown,8 these in itinere supervision interventions, necessarily
circumscribed, can’t overcome the theoretical and interpretative difficul-
ties raised by the ideas and theories of modern physics to be finally
accepted in natural dynamics. The natural reality, as pervaded as it is by
‘‘non-linear’’ influences, by the becoming of intrinsically chaotic phen-
omena and dynamics ‘‘sensible to the initial conditions’’, can in no way
be canalized and guided by isolated interventions with the efficaciousness
implicitly attributed to them in those ideas. And apart from any other
considerations such purposes are inadequate at an epistemological level.
So how can we do this? We can overcome this empasse by changing
our perspective.
Instead of looking for more improbable methods to force evolutive
processes into the ‘‘already known teleological framework’’, try to consider
as the ‘‘consistent teleological framework’’ the evolutive dynamics them-
selves, taken as they are: indeterministic and historic, contingent, casual,
‘‘blind’’. Without any other strained interpretation, especially of a meta-
physical nature.
What changes can we expect? First of all a new teleological scene,
absolutely legitimate, appears where all the previous epistemological
difficulties are avoided. The evolutive dynamics are not forced or chan-
nelled inside artificial banks, in unnatural beds imposed by metaphysical
interference.
As a result, the natural evolutive processes, as shown by the evolution-
ary theories, can be interpreted without restriction or exception as having
completely new contents. If we observe the development of the cerebral
modules and neural anatomic definition during the learning process, the
affective and cultural experiences of a subject, we can find that the
histological configuration on which their cognitive and perceptive cogni-
tions will be based, emerges very unexpectedly.
ASPECTS OF EVOLUTIONISTIC PARADIGMS 127
precise and determinate basic roles. To explain it better, not one evolutive
cosmological process allowed spontaneously to develop can lead to a
natural specific reality as the one indicated by the following sentence:
‘‘Formation of a rocky planet around a G2 star type where a conscious
animal species emerges and is indicated as being human’’. This purely
contingent scenario cannot be intended as the final and predetermined
goal of any evolutive process left to itself.
As Stephen J. Gould used to say, ‘‘rewinding’’ an evolutive process and
then letting it ‘‘play’’ from the same point, we would never see again the
same process, the same evolutive sequence, the same facts and living
beings, even if we had cosmological times. Against this possibility, against
such ideas, stands (ignoring evolutive dynamics) a huge quantity of phen-
omena (from the queen of the hard science, the physics), that go from the
universally accredited non-linear dynamic roles of natural phenomena
to quantum indeterminateness. Last but not least, ‘‘Mach’s principle’’
according to which any being or physical process, though tiny, has space-
time in an absolutely unique position and definition in the universe; every
event must be physically intended as absolutely unrepeatable and it will
never be physically replicated in the universe, owing to the uniqueness,
and irreproducibility of the infinite factors from which those beings and
phenomena originated.
Given this disconcerting uniqueness but above all the uncertainty and
contingency of natural dynamics, it is impossible to exclude the common
teleological ideas – as they regard, without any exception, a metaphysical
location that goes deeply into theological concepts which become of great
significance in this context. This is a very important connection which
cannot be ignored even in this eminently philosophical analysis. The
teleological paradigm that philosophical attention and speculation have
been concentrated on for centuries, postulates an uncreated being (God)
who, by means of a powerful divine finalism, creates ex nihilo a created
being (the natural reality). Through this act, the natural historic reality
is originated, where facts and dynamics typical of the eschatological and
soteriological ambit will take place. References to Christian/Catholic
theology, from which a rich osmosis of content has been derived in
western philosophy, are obvious.
This archetype lay on one side a first cause that expresses an ‘‘impera-
tive’’ will in a ‘‘passive’’ created being which should manifest in his intrinsic
characters ‘‘the imprint’’ of the original intention. This is the archetype
to which all the attempts to lead against the evolutionary conceptions
into teleological interpretations are referred. But this is only one arche-
ASPECTS OF EVOLUTIONISTIC PARADIGMS 129
In other words, this new idea presents a vague finalism, only statistically
perceivable, since the objects and dynamics of a certain space-time context
are always connected to the manifestation of many different factors,
endogenous and exogenous to that context, so full of a deep unpredictabil-
ity and contingency. The analogy with the example of tissue formation
in the nervous system should be noticed!
The second important aspect that comes out from a different analysis
of evolutionary dynamics is the absence of the absolute ‘‘logical-ontologi-
cal break’’, particularly in the genesis of the natural reality where we are
located, to which anyway we apply at a cognitive level, logic aspects
connected to the nature of our language, to our semantic dispositions.
Our intrinsic and logical perceptive capacities allow us to distinguish
beings and phenomena, to bring about an essential semantic classification
when composing and interpreting logically the cognitive and perceptive
experiences: for example when we distinguish an inanimate object from
a living organism, a bird from a man. As the ETK shows such cognitive
ability expresses an intrinsic categorization and classification of natural
reality, not a mere speculative fact: it represents an irreplaceable instru-
ment of our physical existence, of our experiences, which is the basis for
building our rationality and our capability to philosophize.
The point is that if we applied this ‘‘sound and objective’’ capacity to
discriminate to the realisation of the evolutionary processes, we would
immediately face evident contradictions. This happens because in an
evolutionary ambit these ‘‘discrete’’ categorizations are completely inap-
plicable. So our ‘‘intuitive’’ recourse to such logical cognitive perspectives
leads immediately to serious interpretative mistakes: this is what has
happened as regards the accurate evaluation of the evolutionistic
paradigm.
For example, modern biology carries out a detailed classification of the
current forms of documented fossils. Examining the process on a chrono-
logical and evolutionary basis we observe that any taxonomic classifica-
tion softens in a continuum, a never ending becoming where we witness
an uninterrupted as well as imperceptible and widely scientifically docu-
mented transformation of the various forms. Every taxonomic classifica-
tion represents a ‘‘snapshot’’ of a continuously becoming process where
the evident and undeniable simultaneously perceived divisions, at a
synchronous level, irreparably dissolve. It is obvious that to maintain the
usual logical interpretative categorizations in front of this reality creates
paradoxes such as the one referred to by Daniel C. Dennett about the
ASPECTS OF EVOLUTIONISTIC PARADIGMS 131
University of Camerino
Italy
NOTES
12 Also this value is significant for the freedom grades epistemological evaluation between
the phenomenological and the noumenal sphere, which we mentioned before when referring
to the ETK.
13 I. Prigogine and I. Stengers, L a nuova alleanza. Metamorfosi della scienza (Ed. Einaudi
Turin, 1993).
14 The ‘‘tunnel effect’’ represents an application of Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle.
The dualistic nature of subatomic particles is described by a function which determines the
probability that a particle is in a space region of a given width. When the distance between
two protons becomes less than that width, both have the possibility of ‘‘overlapping’’ in the
same area. As if the protons pierced the barrier which separate them, by means of a tunnel –
hence the process name – becoming an atomic nucleus formed by a proton and a neuron.
This disconcerting fact, experimentally verified, allows the reaction p-p also at temperatures
present in the Sun’s nucleus of about 1.5×107K, inadequate for the reaction according to
classical physics.
15 The resonance phenomenon is of the utmost importance in the chemical evolution of the
universe: only thanks to it can a sufficient quantity of Carbon be formed in the appropriate
mass of stars. Carbon is a basic element of life, starting from the fusion of a beryllium atom
with helium (He).
16 Verolini Roberto and Fabio Petrelli, Metamorfosi della Ragione. Esegesi evoluzionistico
psicosociologica di Gn 1,3 ed implicazioni bioetiche. Hygiene and Health-Environmental
Sciences Department (University of Camerino: Interdepartmental Audiovisual and Press
Center, September 1994), pp. 55–84.
17 Roberto Verolini, Il Dio L aico: caos e libertà (Ed. Armando Armando, Rome, 1999),
pp. 51–84. www.diolaico.it.
18 Roberto Verolini, Fabio Petrelli and Larissa Venturi, ‘‘Psychopathologies and cultural
factors: some neoevolutionist perspectives’’, in Analecta Husserliana LXXIX (Ed. A-T.
Tymieniecka: Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, 2004), pp. 799–807.
IGNACY S. FIUT
INTRODUCTORY NOTES
The subject of this chapter is the search for a common realm for philo-
sophical studies: a realm which stems from man’s direct experience of the
world and which arises on the borderline of phenomenological and eco-
philosophical studies. The results of analyses conducted so far, both
phenomenological and ecophilosophical, which focus on man’s approach
to the world, provide a basis for the following thesis: the realm in question
is the space of man’s direct and pre-reflective experience, which comes
into being in acts of his transcending towards the world. It is grounded
on the intentional property of consciousness, which enables one to have
a direct insight into the contents of experience. This insight, followed by
noesis, or research proceeding, which aims at discovering the primary
sense of objects given in that experience, seem to be the very thing the
new realm of philosophy, inspired by ecological studies and a sense of
crisis in man–nature relations, needs.
137
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138 IGNACY S. FIUT
tions of new modes of existence, which are the products of man’s creative
efforts. They are often inadequately understood and many of their charac-
teristics do not fit into traditional categories, which used to be helpful in
perceiving and valuing them. The world is becoming a continuous process
of change. Hence the continuous need for searching for and attaching to
it certain sets of meaning, which give sense to individual objects, entirities
of objects, and man’s activities.
The main problem the followers of phenomenological studies objected
to were definitely Husserl’s categories of the ‘‘transcendental I’’ and ‘‘pure
consciousness’’, which express his idealistic orientation. Among the ones
who have pointed to it are Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, Jean Paul
Sartre, Albert Camus, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Roman Ingarden and
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. The main line of criticism was levelled at
Husserl’s categories of philosophical reflection on the world, which had
been mentioned earlier. The followers of the phenomenological tradition
regarded these categories as a form of idealistic solution and location of
the problems of sense and essence, which decisively limited the sense-
generating and creative possibilities of human subjects, thus limiting
responsible anticipation of man’s future in the world.
Husserl’s ideas and constructs were even more radically approached
by neophenomenologically oriented philosophers, generally referred to as
postmodernists and deconstructionists, for example Jacques Derrida,
Jean-François Lyotard or Niklas Luhmann.1 They claimed that Husserl’s
system contains elements of the logo-phonocentric system, with no foun-
dation totalising the sphere of essence, which originated in Western culture
and civilisation. Despite being criticised, Husserl’s phenomenological
research has also revealed the mechanisms that lead to the totalisation
of the Western knowledge. This knowledge in the shape of technology
rules man and the world – a fact which was pointed to by Martin
Heidegger. Wolfgang Welsch says that
In his Die Krisis der europäischen W issenschaften Husserl shows how a completely new idea
arises in Descartes’ philosophy: ‘the endless totality of being in general is a rational totality
in itself and can be utterly controlled correlatively by means of universal knowledge.’ Husserl
has bridged the gap between that new impulse and the present time by presenting the
modern crisis as a consequence of the contemporary conception of science. Heidegger, in
turn, explained that modern technology is not a side-effect of the breakdown of knowledge,
but is internally related to it, that – in short – technology is the very essence of knowledge.2
parallel existential components: res cogitans and res extensa. This, in turn,
resulted in the rise of the so-called question of ‘‘the Cartesian bridge’’,
which separated man’s physical from his rational and spiritual domains.
In practical terms, this dichotomy led in the sphere of science into a
mechanistic and reductionist view of nature and then into the separation
of man’s rational sphere from his will and emotions.6 The negative conse-
quences of Cartesian dualism were pointed out earlier by such philo-
sophers as Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz, while Franz Brentano’s7
psychological research and the idea of intentionality proposed by him
has decisively diminished the separating influence of ‘‘the Cartesian
bridge’’, which reached its apogee in classical German philosophy. The
negative consequences of Cartesian dualism led – like in the case of Georg
W. F. Hegel’s idealism – to the absorption of nature by Absolute Reason.
Brentano’s psychological research had a key influence on the develop-
ment of Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy, to which his Cartesian
Meditations testify. In this work Husserl adopts Brentano’s conception of
intentionality, which enriches the phenomenological method of analysis
of phenomena given in natural experience, obtained by the human subject
in his direct, natural contact with the world, in coexistence with Other
man, that is in acts of transcending towards their common existential
basis, which seems to be the world of nature – the physical world,8
‘‘Philosophy’’ – according to Husserl
calls for explanations, which are based on ultimate and the most concrete vital necessities;
these, in turn, are the ones that comply with the truth that the whole objective world is
inherently rooted in transcendental subjectivity; the ones that necessarily explain the world
as constituted sense. Only they allow one to see [still other] the most vital and ultimate
questions, which can be posed at the world even if it has already been interpreted in this way.9
expressed in the awareness that there must be someone in the past who
would bear the burden of responsibility for the future, or take care of
‘‘the being of beings’’ in order to ensure the continuity of human species
on earth; someone who would safeguard something which originally
grants the right of existence, i.e. is to every man, as well as other living
creatures and their common living environment. Thus the first principle
of this ecophenomenological conception is the claim that mankind should
not be allowed to question the imperative which obliges man to maintain
human existence in general. ‘‘The imperative which says that mankind
must exist is – as long as only man is concerned – the first imperative.’’13
It is neither a categorical nor a hypothetical imperative in Kantian terms:
it is founded on a new understanding of metaphysics, which does not
sanction the impossibility of moving from being to duty, but which
assumes the absolute priority of being over nothingness. According to
Jonas, being is a value in itself, because it grants the right of existence to
all beings, whereas it cannot be predicated that nothingness grants a
similar value to annihilation processes.14 This situation can only be true
if the concept of value is rooted in objects and not merely in thoughts.
On the ground of ecophilosophy it must be assumed, then, that the
existence of values is objective in character, because such an assumption
allows one to derive duty from being, whose horizon can be experienced
in primal acts of intentional transcending of consciousness towards the
world.15
and activists. They claim that nature has been recently damaged by man’s
anthropocentric and consumerist activity to such a great degree that its
autonomous being is seriously endangered, which means that the existence
of man and other living creatures is also at stake. This situation is all the
more critical for the self-regulation mechanisms operating in nature having
been badly affected. Nature cannot restore itself to the state of harmonious
existence, which would ensure natural being to all living creatures, includ-
ing man. According to many researchers and enthusiasts of proecological
ideas the cause of the degeneration process in the man–nature relation
lies in the structure and functioning of the traditional awareness and in
systems of hierarchies and values favoured within this awareness. This
necessitates a prompt and radical influence on the contents of man’s
traditional awareness, altering it in such a way that would result in
friendly coexistence with man’s natural environment and nature as a
whole, understood in a global sense. In short, on the moral ground not
only members of his own species, but many living creatures must become
man’s neighhbours. Biotic and abiotic nature itself ought to be regarded
by men as a depository of all values and not only utilitarian and vital
ones. Nature should be understood and experienced as a sanctuary of
higher forms of values, e.g. ethical, aesthetic, cognitive, and even ‘‘systemic
values’’, including sacral values. It cannot be treated by men merely
instrumentally, like an object, but instead it should become a creative
partner in the development of man’s generic essence which stems from a
long and evolutionary coexistence with and within nature. Thus the
primary concern of proecological awareness are actions directed towards
constructing a new ecological order, which would sanction a new ecologi-
cal equity. This equity would be expressed by a new social contract
between man and nature, which would grant rights to our ‘‘little brethren’’
and the interests of their species.
To use Jean J. Rousseau’s terms, the matter in question is a new
renaturalisation of man, although it is obvious that there are no more
areas of nature unaffected by man’s activity which makes his return to
‘‘the primal wildness’’ utterly impossible.16
The adopted theses, which determine man’s friendly and responsible
relations with nature on a global scale at the beginning of the 21st century,
find expression in the so-called balanced development project – planning
development on both local and global scale. The development would also
constitute a political project, which would provide a programme of activi-
ties for local communities, states, and the international community.
PHENOMENOLOGY AND ECOPHILOSOPHY 145
the family values over the economic and political ones, as well as using
intuition in aid of thinking, which is directed towards the importance
of life in its present moment and which allows the intentionality of
human consciousness to develop naturally;
– a strong sense of transcendence, which assumes almost a divine dimen-
sion of man, nature, and all living creatures, to whom we owe respect
and due regard in the light of our transcendental attitude towards the
world as the existential basis of man;17
– a clear distinction between spirituality and religiousness, since spirituality
and its new global form is now becoming the aim of the entire biosphere
as yet another stage in its evolution, realised by means of the spread
of the Internet and its social counterpart – a society of information
technology, which is a new socio-economic structure originating at the
beginning of the third millennium. Assuming that spirituality is the
goal of the whole biosphere, pursued also by ecological man, his mode
of religiousness is only one of the means by which this spirituality is
achieved, provided that in spiritual practice this mode of religiousness
implies conscious renunciation of consumerist desires in favour of
transcendence;18
– respecting the NOMA (Non-Overlapping Magisteria) principle, which
instead of the fierce struggle for supremacy between science and religion
recommends actions based on dialogue, debates characterised by
mutual respect, and non-interference between the ‘‘magisterium of reli-
gion’’ and the ‘‘magisterium of science’’;19
– creating and cultivating language and forms of interpersonal communica-
tion, both on the verbal and non-verbal level, which would exploit
the semantic and syntactic capacities of language in order to develop
and consolidate man’s social interactions friendly to their living
environment.20
Tourists in the Yosemite National Park do not value a sequoia as potential wood, but as
a natural masterpiece; they value its age, strength, persistence, majesty. It is this view that
establishes the value of the tree, the value being not independent of man’s valuation. It
follows that subjectivity needs value to place it in the world, but objectively it had been
placed in the world earlier. Hence the value in question is neither a value because of man,
although he constitutes it, nor a value in itself.23
same time valuing subjectivity. In the real order it is the most fundamental
subject of all. It gives existence to not only ecosystems, living creatures,
and their environments, but also man himself; and therefore his valuation
must take account of other systems of values that are transcendental in
relation to him and which belong to other living creatures and their living
environments, which constitute ecosystems. In such an axiologically
arranged world the question becomes vital of other than traditional
perception of man’s place in this world and his role in nature. Hence the
need for creating a new ecological order, new ecological justice, and,
consequently, the programme for the policy of balanced development.
These postulates must relate to the remodelled and reverentially disposed
towards the world intentional layer of man’s consciousness. Within its
limits the imperative formulated by Hans Jonas should be binding, since
it points to the fundamental value of existence given in man’s direct
relation to the world of nature.
CLOSING NOTES
The considerations presented here indicate that if the search for man’s
harmonious existence with transcendence, which is examined by research-
ers into both psychophysical and psychosocial phenomena, is to follow
in the right direction, it will have to take into account the essential
moments of the philosophical analysis of man’s relation to nature. They
also justify a thesis that modern patterns of ecophilosophical thinking
cannot do without a method developed in phenomenology and based on
the analysis of phenomenological insight and visualisation of phenomena
connected with man’s transcendence towards nature, which is based on
the intentional property of consciousness.
The modern world is undergoing rapid changes on a global scale; it is
becoming a process and man’s perpetually uncertain position in it obliges
him to incessantly define the sense and meaning of his relation with all
forms of transcendence. Directing attention to the axiological contents of
acts of man’s intentional relating to the transcendent world seems now
to be the core problem of ecologically-oriented thinking both in the
sphere of nature and spirit. These axiological contents, which are
expressed in Jonas’ imperative of man’s responsibility for the future,
should include a duty to give priority to the value of existence over non-
existence.
Cracow, Poland
150 IGNACY S. FIUT
NOTES
Traditional ethics did not pay much attention to animals. It was usually
assumed that man could treat animals instrumentally and use them for
different purposes but should not cause unnecessary suffering to them.
Some attention, although not much, has been devoted to the problem
within the history of philosophy. Already Aristotle, two and a half thou-
sand years ago, stated that
Plants exist to give food to animals, and animals to give food to men – domestic animals
for their use and food, wild ones, in most cases, if not at all, furnish food and other
conveniences, such as clothing and various tools. Since nature makes nothing purposeless
or in vain, all animals must have been made by nature for the sake of men.1
The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater
part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly
upon the same footing as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still.
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which
never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have
already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should
be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be
recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os
sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate.
What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps
the faculty of discourse? But a full grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more
rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week, or even
a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not,
Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?2
151
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© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
152 LESZEK PYRA
According to me, Singer once more, at least partly so, comes back to the
so-called Schweitzer’s dilemma which puts so many restrictions on man’s
behaviour towards animals that hardly anything can be done in this
154 LESZEK PYRA
them from animals. He calls it ‘‘a trial list of human uniqueness and
superiority claims’’.13 They are not always very important, however, which
can be seen at the very first glance; the author himself turns the attention
of the readers to this unimportance. I personally would add that the list
was prepared, perhaps intentionally, in such a way as to mix up primary
with secondary and even tertiary characteristics. For example, the charac-
terisation of humans as being creative hardly compares with the opinion
that humans see better than animals (which is certainly not always true).14
Perhaps the intention of the author was to present man as not such an
extraordinary creature, after all; according to me, however, he definitely
failed in this respect.
There is no doubt that different species should be treated differently,
claims Holmes Rolston III. Therefore, one cannot introduce total equality
into environmental ethics as, for example, Schweitzer tried to do. In this
context the American author suggests a differential treatment of different
species. Undoubtedly, in the course of evolution, each species adapted
itself perfectly to its own ecological niche, and its representatives seem to
be especially efficient in just this, and not the other, niche. Man best
accomodated himself to his own niche, to the culture in which he lives,
and which is being constantly created and recreated by him; thus he also
follows a certain specific path of development. According to Anna-Teresa
Tymieniecka,
Culture is what gives continuity to the pulsating life of the individual as well as the human
group or society. It is transmitted as inheritance from generation to generation; however,
this inheritance is transmitted only when individuals are capable of retrieving ideals and
corroborate their meaning with their own living stream of existence.15
for what is around him, especially for everything which is alive. The
opinion of Kenneth E. Goodpaster sounds very convincing and seems to
be very promising in this respect:
Neither rationalism nor the capacity to experience pleasure and pain seem to me necessary
(even though they may be sufficient) conditions on moral considerability. And only our
hedonistic and concentric forms of ethical reflection keeps us from acknowledging this fact.
Nothing short of the condition of being alive seems to me to be a plausible and nonarbitrary
criterion.19
WILD ANIMALS
DOMESTICATED ANIMALS
Holmes Rolston III is fully aware of the importance of the role played
by animals in the process of forming culture. Therefore he writes:
Consider beasts of burden. It is difficult to think that civilization could have developed to
its advanced state without beasts of burden. Humans would not have figured out how to
build motor cars and trucs without ever having built buggies and wagons, if no humans
have ever ridden a beast nor laid a load on its back.20
HUNTING
Killing ‘for sport’ is the perfect type of that pure evil for which metaphysicians have
sometimes sought. Most wicked deeds are done because the doer proposes some good to
himself. The liar lies to gain some end (...). Even the murderer may be removing an
impediment to normal desire or gaining possession of something which his victim keeps
from him. None of these usually does evil for evil’s sake (...). The killer for sport has no
such comprehensible motive. He prefers death to life, darkness to light. He gets nothing
except the satisfaction of saying, ‘Something which wanted to live is dead’.22
tence of any such duties. On the other hand, there are some views
demanding respect for any forms of life. They are especially characteristic
of the East. Let us have a look, for example, at Jainism, which treats the
duties to all life extremely seriously. On the basis of ahimsa, which means
not inflicting suffering on anything alive and able to feel pain, Jain monks
condemn agriculture, especially using ploughs, because it may kill animals
living in the soil; they brush aside insects when they slowly walk along a
field or a forest path, etc. But Western culture does not go that far. For
example, Peter Singer notices that man’s duties to animals disappear
‘‘somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster’’,26 and the sphere of moral-
ity does not include lower forms of life, such as insects and plants. As it
is well known, Lynn White charged Christian tradition for the environ-
mental crisis. He wrote:
Modern science is an extrapolation of natural theology (...) modern technology is at least
partly to be explained as an Occidental, voluntary realisation of the Christian dogma of
man’s transcendence of, and rightful mastery over, nature (...). Over a century ago science
and technology joined to give mankind powers which, to judge by many ecologic effects,
are out of control. If so, Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt.27
life are value carriers, and if so, whether it is somehow reflected in ethical
theory? In connection with this one should stress, however, that in such
cases one talks only about moral objects but not about moral subjects
(moral agents), ‘‘for there are no moral agents in nature apart from
persons’’.29 In courts one often uses the notion of ‘‘legal standing’’ in
reference to companies, societies, etc. Holmes Rolston III suggests that
the notion should be transferred into the sphere of morality and used in
regard to some collective entities, namely, endangered species, ecosystems,
etc.; then they would be thought of as having ‘‘moral standing’’. A given
entity may only be considered as having moral standing when it has
value; in other words, having value is a necessary condition of having
moral standing. Possessing values always implies certain obligations on
the part of people, claims Holmes Rolston III. And one of them, probably
even the most important, is not to destroy values.
Sometimes it is quite difficult, according to Holmes Rolston III, to
decide what differentiates living organisms from the artifacts created by
man, for example computers. Biologists always tried to find entelechy in
living organisms, a kind of spirit animating them, and of course they
never succeeded. Though living organisms consist of chemicals commonly
appearing in nature, they do not constitute common, simple collections
but rather structures organised at biological level. Their most characteris-
tic trait is that they resist entropy outside. The phenomenon of life can
be most briefly expressed by saying that life is a negation of entropy. Life
as such must maintain a negentropy in organisms, taking energy from an
environment, in which entropy prevails. Life’s mystery is hidden in genetic
sets and carried by DNA. An organism exploits its environment, and this
differentiates it definitely from any artifacts. Holmes Rolston III writes
about an organism:
But the living thing cannot exist alone. It must claim the environment as source and sink,
from which to abstract energy and materials and into which to excrete them. It takes
advantage of its environment. Life thus arises out of earthen sources (as do rocks), but life
turns back on its sources to make resources out of them (unlike rocks), which is done
because life is a propositional and motivational set.30
Agricultural University
Cracow
NOTES
of the relation men–animals in his book: Medytacje o życiu godziwym, Warszawa 1976,
pp. 111–120. See also my discussion of the problem of animals, O pewnym poszerzeniu zakresu
moralności, in: Czy jest możliwa etyka uniwersalna?, Janusz Sekłua (ed.), Wydawnictwa
Uczelniane Wyższej Szkoły Rolniczo-Pedagogicznej w Siedlcach, Siedlce 1994, pp. 345–355.
10 Michael Polanyi, T he T acit Dimension. New York 1967, p. 67.
11 Albert Schweitzer, An Anthology, Charles R. Joy (ed.). Boston 1947, p. 252.
12 Paul W. Taylor, Respect for Nature. New Jersey 1986, p. 114. Compare also the whole
subsection of that book, contributing to the same issues, under the characteristic title: T he
Denial of Human Superiority, pp. 129–156.
13 Holmes Rolston III, Environmental ... , p. 65.
14 Compare also the importance of the meaning of the following statements: ‘‘Humans run
faster, they copulate face to face’’, and ‘‘Humans are self-conscious, they form cultures,’’ etc.
15 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, L ogos and L ife: T he Passions of the Soul, the Elements in the
Onto-Poiesis of Culture, Dordrecht – Boston – London 1990, p. 41.
16 Tom Regan, T he Case for Animal ... , p. 81.
17 Holmes Rolston III, Environmental ... , p. 71.
18 Ibidem, p. 72.
19 Kenneth E. Goodpaster, ‘‘On Being Morally Considerable’’, T he Journal of Philosophy
LXXV, no. 6 (1978): 308.
20 Holmes Rolston III, T heory Meets Practice, the paper presented at ‘‘The Second
International Conference on Ethics and Environmental Policies’’, April 5–7, 1992, Athens,
Georgia, USA, pp. 18–19.
21 Ibidem, p. 20.
22 Joseph Wood Krutch, T he Best Nature W riting of Joseph Wood Krutch, New York
1969, p. 148.
23 Holmes Rolston III, Environmental ... , p. 91.
24 Ibidem, p. 92.
25 Ibidem, p. 90.
26 Peter Singer, Practical Ethics. Cambridge 1979, p. 92.
27 Lynn White, ‘‘The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis’’, Science 155 (March 1967):
1206.
28 Holmes Rolston III, Environmental ... , p. 94; Mark 5, 10–20.
29 Ibidem, p. 99.
30 Holmes Rolston III, Science and Religion. A Critical Survey. New York 1987, p. 125.
31 Holmes Rolston III, Conserving Natural Value. New York 1994, pp. 168–169.
32 William K. Frankena, ‘‘Ethics and the Environment’’, in: Ethics and the Problems of the
21st Century, K. E. Goodpaster and K. M. Sayre (eds.), Notre Dame – London 1979, p. 11.
See also chapters V and VI in: Włodzimierz Tyburski, Etyka i ekologia, Polski Klub
Ekologiczny, Toruń 1995, pp. 73–108.
33 Compare: Leszek Pyra, ‘‘Suffering and the Rights of Animals’’, in: SuVering as Human
Experience, Jan Pawlica (ed.). Jagiellonian University – Institute of Philosophy, Cracow
1994, pp. 125–132.
SECTION II
SOCIETAL SHARING-IN-LIFE
Kim Rogers, lecturing; sitting: Jorge Garcı́a Gomez, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Mauro
Carbone, Maria Gołe˛biowska, Ignacy Fiut.
GARY BACKHAUS
INTRODUCTION
169
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 169–190.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
170 GARY BACKHAUS
critically challenges the view that morality is possible only on the basis
of apprehending a priori absolute values. Morality is not merely a social
construction, nor is it founded on a relative-natural, conditioned appre-
hension of preexisting absolute values; it is at the foundation for society.
‘Morality’ involves the ongoing process of moral negotiation, which is
always just that – a continual process of valuation. The moral sense is a
non-objectivating generator of meanings; the valuational process is an
interrogational process that must negotiate between the propensities of
self-interests and Other-interests, which brings morality into Beingness;
valuation is inherently dynamic. The deliberating process results in trans-
actions. This word, ‘trans-action,’ is hyphenated to signify and emphasize
that it transcends and does not synthesize the incommensurable centers
of interest, and it is this transcendence that forms the moral basis and
source for the emergence of society. It is a grave mistake to read this as
social contract theory, for human individuals are already in society and
they cannot help but exercise the moral sense. But, it is how they exercise
that moral sense (along with the other senses) that processually determines
the continually changing quality of society in its moral structurings. The
vital/sentient significance of animals only results in gregariousness (the
orientation to survival), whereas human significance involves the benevo-
lent sentiment that sustains social life.
A phenomenology of ontopoiesis must start from human experience,
and it is thus to the human being, to consciousness, that I now turn. If
ontopoiesis is the process of life’s constitutivity, the ‘‘sites’’ of constitution
need to be examined – those sites are forms of individuation. It is in the
investigation of the primordial structure of human consciousness (site)
that the catalyst for social and cultural meaning-constitution is to be
apprehended. The primordial structure is the I-me and the catalytic
principle is dehiscence.
T he Proto-Societal L evel
The inquiry starts from the experiences of the empirical individual human
being, because by examining the individuated human form that exhibits
life’s unfurlings of meanings at its station, it is possible to intuit their
logoic principles. Through description of the stream of consciousness
within human individuation, I propose that the I-me structural process
174 GARY BACKHAUS
T he Proto-Cultural L evel
bilities for the dynamic transformation of the content that becomes ret-
rojected back into the me/us. It is now possible to revise our primordial
structure from the I-me to the I/we–me/us, for the perduring individual
is at once an enculturated social being. Nevertheless, this Beingness
necessarily is enacted through the self-organizing perduring individuals.
This statement merely indicates the obvious point: there is no social or
cultural world without individual human beings as their carriers, but
individual human beings are at once dialectically united through processes
of mediation, in the sense discussed above – social mediation.
However, all of the expressions of the we that then become objectiv-
ations carry their own Beingness. For example, an aspect of societal
construction through the negotiations between us involves power rela-
tions-politics. When power relations are objectivated, they take on
different forms, e.g., those of father-son, those of feudalism, those of
mercantile capitalism. Regardless of our subjective intentions these forms
inform us, which is to say they are co-constitutive, for they then mediate
the I/we–me/us relations. These forms filter our intentions co-constituting
their significances. This mediational aspect, again, is the cultural level of
life. Thus, the sociological level of moral negotiation with others becomes
objectivated and power-relations are one aspect of internalization of a
form that carries its own systems-organization. Even though moral trans-
actions are always a continual valuational process, these take place on
the basis of the institutionalized power-relations that mediate such trans-
actions. As objectivated and as mediated the multitude of objectivations
within a society constitutes the level of meanings called culture. Once the
level of culture is reached, and with human beings, it is always already
reached, human expression is condemned to socio-cultural mediation.
The we of a particular society creates its own structurization that acts
back on it in-forming the us. Products of that society, objectivations that
carry their own Beingness, are the objective moment of the culture and
this in-forms the expressions of the we, which are the subjective moment
of culture. It is the subjective moment of culture for its expressions are
not merely formed on the basis of its own objectivations. As creative,
human subjects engage in changing culture over time through on-going
expressivities.
The essence of culture involves the principle that all human expressions
result in objectivations and that these objectivations manifest their own
Beingness. These objectivations form a context – not merely an assem-
blage, a nexus of relations that form a dynamic whole that we call a
culture. Thus, an emergent level of ontopoiesis is a cultural world brought
into its own Beingness through the ever-active human sense bestowing
capacities. The objectivations at this level of organization transcend the
human constitutive acts that brought them into Beingness and the emer-
gent Beingness of a culture informs its human source, fashioning humanity
in its image. Humans express their culture (subjective culture), which adds
objectivations to their culture. The human openness that we call freedom
means that culture is in many ways highly plastic, which dynamically
changes as cultural objectivations mold human expressivity and as human
expressivity molds cultural objectivations.
There is a predilective naiveté about this process. For example, human
beings express themselves by creating machines, but the machines exhibit
their own Beingness, which in turn informs humanity. So, what happens
is that in operating machinery human beings are made to be machine-
like, a cog in the machinery. Or to say this another way, humans create
machines to release them from the bondage of work, yet machines exhibit
their own meaning structures, their own Beingness, which do not correlate
with human intentions. This transcendence of culture puts us into a
position of having to study the cultural forces in order to understand
how they are molding us. This notion of cultural forces is quite obvious,
but its obviousness has been hitherto left up to positivistic science.
Cultural forces must be studied in terms of sense-bestowal and that is
why elsewhere I have proffered an indirect phenomenological methodol-
ogy in order to study them in terms of their mediational function.17
186 GARY BACKHAUS
CONCLUSIONS
NOTES
1966), p. 42. ‘‘The individual being distinguishes himself as the only self-sustaining factor
within the flux of change. ... The individual autonomous being defines himself on the one
hand as the factor holding the strings of the world context in process, and on the other hand,
as a transformer of the spontaneity which sustains the world process.’’
6 See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka ‘‘The Human Condition within the Unity-of-Everything-
that-is-Alive,’’ in Analecta Husserliana XXXI (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers,
1990), pp. 3–17.
7 Tymieniecka, Phenomenological Inquiry Vol. 19, p. 45, ‘‘The Human Condition is a station
in life’s dynamic stream due to the virtualities that the progress of life deposited as its
foothold on life: the creative virtuality with three absolutely novel valuative factors of sense,
the aesthetic, intellectual, and moral senses.’’
8 Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ‘‘The Moral Sense in the Origin and Progress of the Social
World,’’ in Analecta Husserliana XV (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979),
pp. 5–43.
9 See Aron Gurwitsch, Marginal Consciousness, Lester Embree (ed.) (Athens, Oh.: Ohio
University Press, 1985).
10 See Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ‘‘Aesthetic Enjoyment and Poetic Sense,’’ in Analecta
Husserliana XVIII (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1984), pp. 3–21.
11 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, Dorion
Cairns (trans.) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1960).
12 Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of L ogic, James
S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks (trans.) (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973).
13 See Gary Backhaus, ‘‘Introduction: Earth Ways: The Primordial Relation Between the
Ways of Knowing and the Ways of Earthly Phenomena’’ and Chapter 4: ‘‘Toward a
Phenomenology of Cognitive Mapping,’’ in Earth Ways: Framing Geographical Meanings,
Gary Backhaus and John Murungi (eds.) (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2004).
14 See Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, T he Social Construction of Reality: A
T reatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1966).
15 See for example, ‘‘The Conflict in Modern Culture,’’ in Georg Simmel: On Indivdiuality
and Social Forms, Donald N. Levine (ed.) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971),
pp. 375–393.
16 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, Sheila Faria Glaser (trans.) (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2000).
17 See Gary Backhaus, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in L ived-Images: Meditations in Experience, L ife-
World and I-hood, Matti Itkonen and Gary Backhaus (eds.) (Jyväskylä, Finland: University
of Jyväskylä Press, 2003).
18 Ibid.
W. KIM ROGERS
INTRODUCTION
CONTEXTUALITY
Benny Shanon writes that ‘‘as a factor that affects behavior context has,
of course, been the subject of extensive investigation.’’ Nevertheless, ‘‘a
perusal of the literature reveals, frequently as the term ‘context’ is
employed, it is seldom defined’’ (1990, 157). For the concept of context
191
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 191–202.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
192 W. KIM ROGERS
networks of actions that outlast the life-cycle of any one human being
(cf. 1996, 15).
We speak of contexts of actions and contexts for interpreting the
products of actions; for example, the contexts of ritual, work, play, the
contexts of a painting, an artwork or a musical piece, and so on. However,
one should be careful not to reify these contexts of actions as though
they were some kind of affair existing in the environment. Rather, as
connected landscapes of significant affairs they have suggestive and sup-
portive roles in the human-environment conversation.
Different kinds of interactions between human beings and environing
affairs arise from different kinds of contexts of actions and vice versa. As
one initiates specific forms of acting, specific types of contexts of actions
will be sometimes created, sometimes given, sometimes sought for, some-
times already present.
Human beings’ actions are contextualized as selected affairs in their
environment are connected and given significance in terms of meaning
and fit, that is, by what they afford for present and anticipated interactions
of living beings and their environment. In other words, as Tymieniecka
put it, ‘‘entering life’s constructive progress as a creator, the human being
assumes a crucial position with respect to its course: he introduces the
human significance of life’’ (1984, viii). ‘‘By inventively unfolding the
virtualities of the Human Condition the living being transforms the
primary avenues of life by bringing in new factors of sense. With these
new factors he expands his circumambient conditions into a socio-cultural
world, his very own universe within which he seeks his unique self-
realization’’ (1983, 68).
For example, let us consider the significance of the round white candle
which sits upon my desk. When the power goes off (as it does all too
frequently) it is a source of illumination as soon as I light the wick. I
often look at it as an affair I appreciate for its simple beauty, but at the
present moment it is something I placed there to hold some papers down
on my desk so they won’t get blown away. My little terrier rushes into
my study chasing the cat again and I consider throwing something at
him. Now I see how well that round white affair on my desk would serve
as a projectile.
The classical belief that this candle has a single meaning in itself is
clearly belied by the variety of my possible actions and experiences. The
meanings or affordances of this affair will correlate with my interactions
with my environment. But one affair’s significance cannot be determined
independently of its connection also to the fittingness and meaning of
194 W. KIM ROGERS
other significant affairs for the actions of human beings, that is, outside
of contexts of actions.
Contexts of actions are never fully determinate, significant affairs com-
posing them being added or subtracted, nor are they changeless. Just as
much as the kinds of interactions engaged in persist or change, so also
vary the contexts of actions related to them. As a variety of contexts of
actions may follow other contexts of actions, so too there may be a
variable sequence of shifting contexts of actions both up and down the
scales of size and duration.
Each context of action may be connected with others and may contain
or be nested in yet other contexts. No context of action, whether superor-
dinate or subordinate to others, is a cause of (explains) another context.
However, progressively inter-supportive layers of contexts of actions
within varying hierarchies of scale will promote the creating of new forms
of interaction and the creating of appropriate new contexts of actions.
The contextuality of actions in one’s environment is not just sometimes
there. Rather, none of one’s actions is context-free. The contextuality of
human activity is still present in the recognition of the absence of an
expected context of activity. Even when dreaming or daydreaming or in
the case of hallucinations such as those produced by human actors in an
artificially constructed stimulus-free environment, there are still affairs to
be given meaning in terms of what they afford for fantasied actions.
Contextualization occurs primarily but not exclusively in community
life. Community life is a social reality jointly made in and through the
interactions of human beings, in which the action of each comes to be
complemented and completed by the actions of the others. According to
Tymieniecka ‘‘the pristine nature, source, and significance of human
experience [i.e., the Human Condition] has to be elucidated and grasped
in its modalities in which man’s self-interpretation in existence blends into
the intersubjective existential network of the common life-world and its
natural milieu’’ (1983, 28).
One’s social activity involves reciprocity, that is, the mutual anticipation
of each other’s actions and experiences, a reciprocity that is actualized in
the following of commonly preferred patterns of acting or usages.
Reciprocity in turn involves familiarity with the affairs that are to be
regularly reckoned with in following such usages. In nearly all cases one
therefore does not need to invent meanings for the affairs met in one’s
environment. Rather, the affairs one encounters already have meanings,
have been made into ‘things’ through the interpretations of affairs incul-
cated by a community’s usages. One comes to know these ‘things’ through
CONTEXTS: THE LANDSCAPES OF HUMAN LIFE 195
CONTEXTED LANDSCAPES
PLACES
activities of these human beings give character and focus to a place and
confers upon it a quality of uniqueness.
A place is unique – in this it is like persons, though we should not
make too much of this analogy. I do not deny there may be similarities
between places, but each place has its unique role within the life of
individuals and communities. Our connections to these unique places can
serve to unite or divide individuals and communities.
We can talk about local and foreign places precisely because we can
move from place to place. Note that paths, sidewalks, squares or plazas,
roads and highways are special examples of landscapes as they are for
going through or to places in other landscapes. We also talk about being
‘‘in our place’’ or being ‘‘at home’’ and their opposites, because we have
feelings of fitting in or not, of being in accord or discord with our
environment. The experience of displacement occurs when one is removed
from one’s place. Today homogeneity is becoming a form of displacement
which current globalization processes are imposing ever more rapidly
and ubiquitously through our environments.
It is important here to distinguish the meanings ‘‘our place’’ takes on
when we relate it to movement or emotions, from the meaning of ‘‘our
living space’’, colloquially referred to today as ‘‘our home ground,’’ which
is to be for us an enabling and limiting locus of a distinctive form of life.
We should not overlook here the use of the term ‘‘living spaces’’ also by
Stan Rowe where it means the ‘‘vital surrounding systems which sustain
us’’ (1990, 45). That is quite different from my use since I understand our
living spaces to have historical and biographical and not just biologically
sustaining properties.
This living space (one’s home ground) is a common place not chosen,
not sought, where we find ourselves already dwelling. It has stability, it
endures, it supports, is a haven of values. The importance of understanding
one’s home ground is well expressed by Scott Russell Sanders,
Distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University:
For each home ground we need new maps, living maps, stories and poems, photographs
and paintings, essays and songs. We need to know where we are, so that we may dwell in
our place with a full heart.1
One’s living space is the most basic context of action, the place first in
importance in the lives of human beings. This place, one’s living space,
is the primary and common setting for the actions and experiences of the
members of a community. The distinguishing features of this, our primary
and most intimate contexted landscape, comprise the prototype for how
we order our experiential, intellective, and imaginary environments. The
most distinctive feature of our places, of our contemporary living spaces,
be is noted, is openness, and next is decentralization or polycentric
processes.
By way of summary and conclusion, let us briefly listen again to what
Ames and Hall had to say at the beginning of this paper about the
contextuality of particulars and persons, and then consider what we have
added to that in our explication of the meaning of contexts.
According to Ames and Hall, a particular affair or person ‘‘is a deter-
mining focus of the field that contextualizes it.’’ We can now say of this
contextualizing field that it is composed of affairs afforded significance in
terms of their meaning and fit in relation to the actions of an individual,
that is, by what they afford for the interactions of the individual and his
or her environment.
A particular person, they said, ‘‘is a realized perspective upon things
which at one and the same time centers the individual and focuses his or
her context.’’ We can now say that a context of action, a contexted
landscape, is ordered perspectivally in terms of relevance through the
individual’s centering attention upon a significant affair or affairs, oneself
and the affair(s) existing together at the center, and other affairs nearer
and farther from this center.
They said there is an appropriate direction for a particular person to
pursue ‘‘negotiated between its own agency and the flux of its context.’’
We can now say that these perspectivally ordered affairs within a land-
scape become connected in terms of one’s ‘plans,’ that is, individual and
commonly preferred patterns of acting connectable through anticipations
of one’s being able to do ‘‘thusly’’ followed by one’s doing next ‘‘so and
so’’ and so forth in the course one takes in one’s negotiations with one’s
environment. And being connectable in this way these landscapes of
significant affairs have become the contexts of our actions.
While Ames and Hall only relate particular persons to contexts, we
can now say that contextualization occurs primarily in community life.
The commonly preferred patterns of acting or the usages of a community
provide the basis for sharing common contexts of actions. The distinctive
kind of common life actualized in and through the organization of a
202 W. KIM ROGERS
NOTE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
203
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 203–217.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
204 NATALIA M. SMIRNOVA
the Natural Attitude’’. Part 1 bore the title ‘‘Preliminary Notes on the
Problem of Relevance’’. Although A. Schutz did not intend to publish
this separate portion of his study as significant in its own right (but only
as a part of a wider context), Prof. R. Zaner brought this piece of the
study, left in a very rough form, into linguistically acceptable shape. Thus,
Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, edited, annotated and with an
introduction of R. Zaner, successfully appeared in 1970. A few months
ago it became available to Russian-language readers. In the year 2004 it
was published together with the other selected papers and my concluding
remarks in the huge volume of the Russian edition of A. Schutz’s Selected
Papers.2 This Russian edition of the book bears a subtitle ‘‘The world
luminous by meaning’’ (which originates from M. Natanson’s work). As
the editor, I have divided the whole text into 6 parts: ‘‘Methodology of
the Social Sciences’’, ‘‘Phenomenology and the Social Sciences’’,
‘‘Reflections on the Problem of Relevance’’, ‘‘The Problems of Social
Reality’’, ‘‘Applied Theory’’ and ‘‘The Meaning Structure of the Social
World’’. Since then A. Schutz’s studies, including his Reflections on the
Problem of Relevance, became available not only to the narrow range of
professionals, but also to a wider Russian audience.
The growing interest in A. Schutz’s social philosophy in Russia origi-
nated from his first publications in Russian, which rapidly attracted sober
attention of the social theorists. His ‘‘Concept and Theory Formation in
the Social Sciences’’ appeared in Russian as early as 1962 (transl. by
S. Shorohova), ‘‘The Homecomer’’ (1997, transl. by N. Smirnova), ‘‘The
Stranger’’ (1998, transl. by Nikolaev), ‘‘Mozart and Philosophers’’ (2002,
transl. by N. Smirnova) which appeared (as can be clearly seen from the
dates) before the fundamental Russian edition of his 1050-paged Selected
Papers. Now let me briefly outline the context of the study.
Inspired by unceasing passion to understand what human being is, A.
Schutz refers to (and subsequently adhered to) the phenomenological
tradition in philosophy which takes its clues from E. Husserl’s transcen-
dental phenomenology. According to E. Husserl, philosophy is essentially
a strict science. Investigation of the deepest presuppositions of human
reason, he believes, should be the main thematic concern of transcendental
phenomenology. But in contrast to E. Husserl, who brackets (or suspends
of ) the natural attitude in the process of the so-called phenomenologically
transcendental reduction, A. Schutz, facing the problems of the social
world (rather then the problems of epistemology or the methodology of
pure science) makes the word as it is given in its natural sense the main
subject of his research.
SCHUTZ’S CONCEPTION OF RELEVANCES 205
interest in this or that way. There are an infinite number of reality strata,
each of them having its own particular style of existence, way of presenta-
tion and degree of attention to life. In other words, they are all real in
their own fashion. W. James calls them ‘‘sub-universes’’. These sub-uni-
verses embrace the meanings of physical things, scientific ideal types and
their relationships, religion, madness, the realm of dreams, fantasy and
so on. Living in one of them, we tend to obscure or even forget the
others, so there is no smooth traffic between the sub-worlds. And precisely
because of their relative autonomy and discrete existence E. Husserl
designates them as ‘‘the units of sense’’.5
W. James consciously restricted his analysis only to psychological
aspects of ‘‘multiple realities’’, investigating them in terms of beliefs and
disbeliefs (in his T he Fixation of Belief.) Nevertheless the father-founder
of phenomenology E. Husserl highly appreciated W. James’ idea of
multiple realities, because it paved the way to further investigations of
the structure of human consciousness. But in contrast to W. James’
approach, he frees them from psychological implications. E. Husserl tries
to contemplate the question not in terms of beliefs and disbeliefs, but
rather in a transcendentally phenomenological way, i.e. in terms of pure
consciousness structure. He uses it as a means for further elaboration of
the concept of the field of consciousness itself, i.e. relationship between
the theme and horizon, that is its thematic kernel and its surrounding
horizon as it is given at any moment of our inner time.
A. Schutz goes far beyond both W. James’ psychological approach
(‘‘orders of reality’’, ‘‘sub-universes’’) and even E. Husserl’s pure constitu-
tive phenomenology (‘‘sense-units’’). But following Husserlian tradition
to explore the ultimate presuppositions of each mental insight, he recog-
nizes it as one of the most important philosophical questions. He also
releases the concept ‘‘sub-universe’’ from its psychological implications
as well as bestows upon them the accent of reality by the name of ‘‘the
finite provinces of meaning’’. He prefers to speak about meanings rather
then sub-universes in order to stress that what he actually has in his mind
is not the ontological structure of the objects of outer space but rather
the meaningful structure of the social world. The latter is essentially
pluralistic, constituted by different kinds of human experiences. A. Schutz
ascribes each of them its particular cognitive style, which has its specific
degree of awakeness, tension of consciousness or attention to life, each of
them being the highest in the province of everyday life. There is no paved
way between the meaning provinces; the shift from one to another is
subjectively experienced as a shock or a leap. It is produced by the radical
SCHUTZ’S CONCEPTION OF RELEVANCES 207
change of the way in which each of them presents itself in inner time
consciousness. It was precisely that point of view he adhered to in On
Multiple Realities.
In his further consideration the problem of multiple realities A. Schutz
finds himself facing the following problems:
– cognitive borders of the finite provinces of meaning;
– interrelations among the different provinces;
– which of them can be considered as ‘‘paramount’’ reality?
All these questions he inherited from W. James. But here are some new
questions he raises:
– the type of constitutive activity which brings them about;
– the typical way in which they maintain themselves;
– what gives them the accent of reality or what makes them ‘‘real’’ at
any particular moment.
While the former three questions he scrutinizes in his daily life investiga-
tions, the latter turn out to be the subject of his Reflections on the Problem
of Relevance. It is this study which will be the focus of my further
reflections.
In his previous works A. Schutz concentrated his major attention upon
the ‘‘province of working’’, which he declared to be ‘‘the paramount
reality’’. Using E. Husserl’s terms, it is this particular realm of reality,
which becomes thematic for the whole study. Thus, the structurization of
multiple realities that is putting forward the world of working and ascrib-
ing it its privileged position among the others, has been substantiated by
the references to the basic structure of human consciousness. The study
on the world of working as governed by the system of relevance allows
him not only to shed important light on the essence of theme–horizon
relationship in general, but also on the structure of human actions in the
social world. These actions are supposed to have the center of space–
temporal continuum, namely, my actual ‘‘Here’’ and ‘‘Now’’, which com-
pose my field of actions. The latter appears hierarchically organized in
zones of actual, potential and restorable reach, the so-called ‘‘manipula-
tory sphere’’ being the center. Each zone has its own spatial and temporal
horizons and structures, typically conceived. These interrelated zones of
actual, potential and restorable experience form an unquestioned but
always questionable ‘‘world taken for granted’’. It may also be seen as a
cultural matrix of the world of working. Its initial presuppositions are:
‘‘I can do it again’’ as well as ‘‘And so forth and so on’’.
The second basic assumption of A. Schutz’s conception of relevance is
that at any moment I find myself in a biographically determined situation.
208 NATALIA M. SMIRNOVA
the superficial and the deeper) are simultaneously involved, the theme of
the activity of one of them being reciprocally the horizon of the other;
so the actualized theme receives the specific tinge from the other, which
remains the hidden ground of the former. A. Schutz illustrates the point
by a comparison to the structure of music. Imagine two independent
themes which are simultaneously going on in the flux of music. We may
pursue one of them, taking it as the main theme, and the other as the
subordinate one, or vice versa: one theme is leading the other which has
never been released from our grip. And our consciousness, A. Schutz
insists, is just the same. In the light of this study, it essentially acquires
contrapuntal structure, which manifests the artificial split of our personal-
ity. It also implies that theme, field, horizon and relevance are different
when viewed subjectively (i.e. from the subject’s point of view) and objec-
tively, that is from the observer’s point of view. Putting into play different
levels of our personality (different tensions of consciousness and modes
of attention to life, dimensions of time, degrees of anonymity and intimacy)
‘‘the contrapuntal articulation of the themes and horizons pertaining to
each of such levels (including finally the schizophrenic patterns of the
ego) are all expressions of the single basic phenomenon: the interplay of
relevance structures’’.7
Hence, it is just the system of relevance that turns out to be one of the
most significant of A. Schutz’s concepts in his highly sophisticated theory
of the life-world.
Now let me briefly outline the basic system of relevance, used in
Reflections. There are three basic kinds of relevance he described in
Reflections: topical, imposed/intrinsic and interpretative relevance.
Topical relevance seems to be the most important for the whole theory.
By virtue of this relevance something is constituted as problematic in the
unstructured field of unproblematic familiarity. It organizes the field into
theme and horizon and segregates the former from its unquestionable
background which is simply taken for granted. Even though topical
relevance is closely connected with the so-called ‘‘actual interest’’, they
must not be confused: while actual interest presupposes existence of the
problem, topical relevance constitutes the problem itself. As far as unfamil-
iar experiences are concerned, A. Schutz suggests that we should distin-
guish imposed relevance from intrinsic relevance. If we do not thematize
unfamiliar experience by means of the will (a voluntary act), we call this
kind of relevance ‘‘imposed relevance’’. For example, you find an unfamil-
iar object in the middle of your room. You have no intention to study it,
but the object attracts your attention by its very unfamiliarity. There are
SCHUTZ’S CONCEPTION OF RELEVANCES 211
mount project, ‘‘the because-of ’’ relevance deals with the motivation for
the establishment of the paramount project itself.
Motivational relevance may also be imposed or intrinsic. Choosing the
paramount project seems intrinsically motivationally relevant. It origi-
nates in voluntary act. All motivational relevances derived from the
paramount project are experienced as being imposed.
All the above-mentioned relevances are interconnected with one
another in many respects. Thus, the system of interpretational relevance
may be motivationally relevant for the building up of the new intrinsic
topically relevant systems, while my motivational relevances are nothing
but sedimentations of my previous experiences once topically or inter-
pretationally relevant. It is very important to understand, A. Schutz
suggests, how the system of interpretational relevance functionally
depends on the system of topical relevance. It is clear that there are no
interpretational relevances as such, but only interpretational relevances
referring to the given topic. They are experienced as taken together.
E. Husserl points out that, it is the act of reflection which brings the
performed activity into view: it is a necessarily artificial act, by means of
which the flux of experiences can be grasped as such. The same is true
for the systems of relevance. As A. Schutz maintains, in our mental
activities (or in a wider context ‘‘working’’ activity as well) we are directed
exclusively toward the theme of the field of consciousness, that is toward
the problem we are concerned with, the object of our interest or attention,
in short, toward what is topically relevant. Everything else is in the
margin, in the horizon; the motives of our actions are also in the margin
of the field, whether the motives are of the ‘‘in-order-to’’ type or ‘‘because-
of ’’ type. And implicit in the inner and outer horizons of the topic are
those elements which become interpretatively relevant to the ongoing
activity of our mind as regards the topically relevant thematic kernel.11
I may obviously turn to what is implicit in these horizons and bring such
elements into the thematic kernel. And this is very important for A.
Schutz’s conception of relevance (in contrast to Husserl’s): I may shift
my attentional focus without letting what is formerly topically relevant out
of my grip. If I do keep it in my grip, it continues to subsist as the main
topic in relation to which the formerly horizontal elements now brought
into the thematic kernel, are constituted as subtopics or subthemes having
manifold relations (foundedness, contiguity, modification and modaliza-
tion) to the main theme. On the other hand, it is the prevailing system
of motivational relevance (my ‘‘evoked interest’’), which may lead to
constitution of the new topical relevance: namely to investigate the atypi-
SCHUTZ’S CONCEPTION OF RELEVANCES 215
cal, the strange event, which interrupts the smooth running of the daily
life idealizations ‘‘And so forth, and so on’’ as well as ‘‘I can do it again’’.
If any counterproof invalidates the hitherto unquestioned course of experi-
ence, things cannot be taken for granted any longer. Finally, the newly
created topical relevance may be the origin and starting point for a set
of new motivational relevances: a formerly irrelevant topic may become
interesting and constitute a new topic or at least a subtopic. Though
unfamiliar and hitherto irrelevant to me, it becomes motivationally rele-
vant and worth investigating. In order to transform the horizontal impli-
cations of the main topic into subtopics, I must modify my system of
interpretational relevance. And the shift in the system of interpretational
relevance becomes a starting point for a set of new motivational or topical
relevances.
A. Schutz’s study of the interdependence of the three systems of rele-
vance clearly reveals that none of them can occupy a privileged position.
Furthermore, interrelationships among the types of relevance are not at
all chronological in the sense that one of them is ‘‘the first’’, and the other
– ‘‘the second’’ etc. All three types are obviously experienced as insepa-
rable, as an undivided unity, and their dissection into three types is the
result of an analysis of their constitutive origin. Any one of them may
become the starting point for bringing about changes in the other two.
Nevertheless, the distinction between the three may essentially contribute
to the various problems of social philosophy and epistemology.
A. Schutz faithfully believes, that:
– the theory of topical relevance will contribute to the concept of value
and our freedom in selecting the values by which we want to be guided
in our practical and theoretical life;
– the theory of interpretational relevance will throw fresh light on the
function and meaning of methodology and furnish the foundation of the
theory of rationalization, and especially of the problem of verification,
invalidation and falsification of propositions in relation to the empirical
facts; it will also contribute to the constitutive problems of typicality.
– the theory of motivational relevance will be helpful for the analysis of
problems relating to personality structure and especially for the theory
of intersubjective understanding.
A. Schutz himself did not obtain these results. But it seems very important
that the conception of relevances which he sophisticatedly developed can
not be viewed as complete and significant as such, but in its reference to
further problems. The author of Reflections himself clearly saw the obvi-
216 NATALIA M. SMIRNOVA
Institute of Philosophy
Russian Academy of Sciences
Moscow, Russia
NOTES
1 Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers. The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff. Vol. 1, 1962: The Problem
of Social Reality; Vol. 2, 1964: Studies in Social Theory; Vol. 3, 1966: Studies in
Phenomenological Philosophy.
SCHUTZ’S CONCEPTION OF RELEVANCES 217
DEMONSTRATING MOBILITY
1.
219
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 219–226.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
220 ANJANA BHATTACHARJEE
2.
Demonstrating Mobility
$ I take one end of this strip and twist it away from me so that I can
only see about half of the horizontal red line, with the other parts
facing away from me.
$ (Note that at this stage I may decide that I would like to start again
with a modified strip of paper as it may not be long enough, or is too
wide in proportion to itself, to be flexible enough to twist without
perhaps forcing the paper to tear).
$ Now, having twisted my strip, I maintain that twist, and start to bring
the two ends towards each other so that I am able to place one end
directly on top of the other.
$ I hold the ends together so that the red line is meeting itself by
facing itself.
$ I secure the join with a few staples.
$ I am now holding a mobius strip.
$ [Please now feel free to each take a single mobius from this box as an
aid to the remainder of this presentation].
$ Let’s consider for a moment the red line we have drawn.
$ Now, I invite you to take a pen, if you have one, and place it at the
join where the staples are.
$ Without lifting the pen off the surface of your mobius strip, please
proceed to draw a continuous new line along the centre of the two
edges that present themselves to you as you move the pen along
the strip.
$ Have a go – I’ll repeat this instruction.
$ ‘‘Without lifting the pen off the surface of your mobius strip, please
proceed to draw a continuous new line along the centre of the two
edges that present themselves to you as you move the pen along
the strip’’.
$ Stop when you have arrived back where you started drawing this
new line.
$ Please take a moment to consider how this completed new line com-
pares to the completed red line.
$ [Pause].
Now, having completed this exercise, we are armed with some form of
tangible tool to aid our intended analytical movement between the per-
haps subtly different perspectives and orientations that may come under
a possible phenomenology of Logos – and Logos of phenomenology.
In the interests of time, I will skip a detailed discussion of what we
have just here demonstrated, but if you would like to discuss this further,
222 ANJANA BHATTACHARJEE
Now, with our mobius in view, we may appreciate that at first glance,
and perhaps from some distance, there appears to be a space inside and
a space outside of our strip. If we were to plot some of these points on
a two-dimensional graph, we may find that we have what looks like a
closed loop becoming apparent. Joining the dots together with a line of
best fit, we may then decide that there is a space inside the loop and a
space outside the loop from which we can research the things of the
world that our two-dimensional dot-to-dot looping theorises. Further,
here could arise a divisioning between our perceived angles of approach
to this theoretical boundary that is dividing our perceived research
domain-space. Divisions such as micro and macro, subjective and objec-
tive, internal and external, psychological and social.
However, this does not quite shed light on possible divisions between
a Logos of phenomenology and a phenomenology of Logos.
So, we return again to our mobius in view. This time we add an extra
dimension in order to hold the mobius in 2+1 dimensions. Our physical
representation of the mobius can be held in the air to facilitate our
handling of its form and demonstrate that, actually, from this view, there
is no division between space inside and outside the loop. We can notice
DEMONSTRATING MOBILITY 223
that the loop has one continuous surface only. [For example, you can
try tracing this surface with the pad of a finger tip all the way around.]
Now, although each surface at any one moment may have opposing
approaches to it, the surface as a whole does not division the domain-
space of research approach. The dualities of our previous two-dimensional
approximation to our loop are thus appearing to dissolve.
In particular, with regards to this session on phenomenology and the
social sciences, we notice that the relationship between phenomenology
and ethnomethodology becomes apparent – one as a 1st person phenome-
nology the other as a 3rd person phenomenology of Logos. Ethno-
methodology here is described as a distinctly phenomenological approach
to the social sciences following Anderson, Sharrock and Hughes (1985).
Immersion in vivo
So, one more exercise in tracing our analysis therefore. Let’s imagine
what would happen if you were to place your hand-made mobius in some
water and wait for the paper to become translucent. Perhaps you would
notice some mixing of the red and the new line that you yourself drew.
We know that the line you drew went all the way along our surface in a
single loop, but it had previously appeared that the red line had only
spanned half the distance. Now, in immersion, we find that actually, the
red line had existed all the way around all along, it had only had appeared
to disappear. Having said this, however, we might note that both would
arguably be appearing as a rather different kind of a colour, with it’s own
inherent relationships.
In short, this immersion explicates the in vivo experience of an ‘‘inter-
pretive’’ researcher – the Lebenswelt pair of Husserl’s transcendental
phenomenological reduction and the epoche of the ethnomethodologist
at the surface of our interactional interface with the lifeworld.
drawn. That circle is ‘‘over there’’ – I would suggest that its finite boundary
over there is an ideal.
What do I mean?
Okay, now imagine that there is a circle in front of you within arms’
reach. Try tracing the boundary of this circle with your fingertip, but this
time, trace the outside of the boundary with the pad of your finger tip as
if feeling your way along its surface. Feel the boundary all of the way
around, observing the movement of your finger pad, your hand, your
wrist, and your arm.
Are you not, in actuality, tracing a mobius form? Does your movement
not involve a twist in an experientially embodied dimension in order to
accomplish this task? A twist in 2+1 dimensional space?
This is the difference between Husserl’s (1936: 1970) origins of geometry
and the mathematicization of our Logos. This 2+1 dimension as com-
pared to a two-dimensional depiction. It is in this extra in vivo dimension
– in this experiential sense – that both the Logos of phenomenology and
phenomenology of Logos can be recovered as Lebenswelt pairs.
Livingston (1986) in his detailed study of the ethnomethodological
foundations of mathematics, describes how the early Greeks were ‘‘both
amazed and perplexed by mathematical proofs. On the one hand, the
objects of geometry were made available and described, and their proper-
ties were established, through the use of drawn figures. Yet the Greeks
recognised that the geometric objects themselves had a curious, unexpli-
cated relationship to their depiction.’’
I hope the demonstrations we have stepped through today have gone
some way towards explicating this ‘‘unexplicated relationship’’ – that is,
the relationship between the Logos of phenomenology and the phenome-
nology of Logos.
3.
I re-read the paragraphs above. I find no words yet to say any more than
I had done that day, and yet the transcript had no doubt then been
supplemented with gesture and co-presence and the doing of phenomenol-
ogy, together, as a gathering of persons familiar with the said mode at
the time. Had this then achieved a successful demonstration? Some sort
of phenomenological ‘‘proof ’’? Some way of demonstrating the gestalt-
coherence of that which we were practicing (Gurwitsch, 1964)? And what
of your reading of it at this time? Is this a first time?
DEMONSTRATING MOBILITY 225
Brunel University
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTE
1 Herbert Speigelberg has been attributed with this phrase in H. Garfinkel, Studies in
Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1967), p. 38. Although I would
argue that the context of this phrase as used within ethnomethodological studies may differ
from Speigelberg’s actual intent, I have not been able to locate its original source. Here, the
‘‘quote’’ is used within the body of this demonstration by way of attempting to introduce an
explicit point of both possible departure and possible entry into perhaps taken-for-granted
dimensions of imagining as potential dimensions for exercising ‘‘interpretive’’ mobility.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
... multiple personality appears to challenge various familiar assumptions about the nature
of personhood. Most notably ... we tend to assume that a person has no more than one
mind, or that there is a one:one correlation between persons and bodies (Braude, 1995, p. 66).
227
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 227–245.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
228 AMY LOUISE MILLER
persons with DID (Putnam, Guroff, Silberman, and Barban, 1986; Kluft,
1987). Traditionally, theorists in this area have assumed that the over-
whelming nature of the trauma causes the psyche, which is in the brain,
to create a dissociative system of separate personalities.
Several studies have found a strong relationship between anomalous
experiences/beliefs and early traumas as well as dissociation or dissocia-
tive identity (Irwin, 1994; Pekala, Kumar, and Marcano, 1995; Ross, 1997;
Ross and Joshi, 1992). Michelle Bennet, after a review of the literature,
concluded that the emergence of DID and the prevalence of anomalous
experiences might be part of the same phenomenon. She states, ‘‘When
childhood or adult experiences of trauma lead to certain types of dissocia-
tive experiences, these biological states may open access to altered states
of consciousness in which paranormal events are experienced’’ (Bennet,
1999, p. 155).
The psychological awareness of dissociation in general and dissociative
identity in particular traces its roots back more than one hundred years
to the work of Pierre Janet (1859–1947). Freud, influenced by Janet,
‘‘... considered the core of pathology to be the internal impression of a
traumatic experience that, because of its unbearable nature, was sealed
off from the rest of the personality ...’’ (van der Kolk and van der Hart,
1989, p. 3). We later abandoned this position.
Janet delineated the syndrome that he called ‘hysteria’ which he saw
as an adaptation through narrowing of consciousness paired with dissoci-
ation in the face of memories related to frightening experiences. Bessel
van der Kolk comments that,
Janet believed that ... [This led to] the formation of new spheres of consciousness around
memories of intensely arousing experiences which [Janet] called ‘subconscious fixed ideas’
... the most extreme example of this is multiple personality disorder, where fixed ideas
develop into entirely separate identities (van der Hart & Friedman, 1989, p. 6).
influences, yield them their opportunity’’ (Taylor, 1984, pp. 86–87; 91–92).
It appears that James was recognizing that there might be a connection
between the mechanism of dissociative identity and the prevalence of
anomalous experiences, indicating an opening to an alternate reality.
Ruth Blizard, in reviewing the literature mentions two comprehensive
studies which demonstrate that disorganized attachment combined with
trauma has been found to be a statistically significant predictor of a
complex dissociative disorder in adulthood (Carlson, 1998; Ogawa, 1997,
as cited in Blizard, 2003). Both trauma and disrupted attachment in early
childhood point to a disruption in safety and predictability of the environ-
ment, leading to panic and systemic overload. Complexes of dissociated
characteristics coalesce in dissociated entities/ personalities. It is the pri-
mary characteristic of dissociative identity, the apparent multiplicity of
selves somehow attached to one body, which provides an intriguing
introduction to considerations of non-locality of self in this phenomenon.
Recently, the relationship between the ‘‘normal’’ developmental trajec-
tory of self and that which results in complex dissociative conditions is
being reviewed. Daniel Brown contrasts the integrative/continuity perspec-
tive with the multiplicity/discontinuity perspective. In the former case,
‘‘... conscious experience is relatively continuous, and ... the ordinary
sense of self is relatively unitary or cohesive ...’’ (Brown, 2003, p. 1). In
the case of the latter, ‘‘... conscious experience is relatively discontinuous,
and ... the ordinary sense of self is more a multiplicity of various discrete
self or ego states.’’ This view of consciousness as discontinuous allows for
the normalizing of dissociative identity, potentially reframing it as an
extreme case of the ‘ordinary’ arrangement of self. The notion of self as
multiple becomes more of a creative reality and less of an aberration.
Antonio Damasio comments that, ‘‘In some respects it is astonishing that
most of us have only one character’’ (Damasio, 1999, p. 225).
To underscore the distinct discontinuity between alter personalities,
there is a significant body of literature reporting changing physiological
indicators between separate alter personalities. Inter-alter physiological
differences suggest that a switch from one personality to another may
instigate a change all the way down to the cellular level.
In sum, current as well as classical views point to a number of factors
which could be construed as contributing to a non-local mechanism for
dissociative identity. Repetitive systemic overload accompanied by a nar-
rowing of focus, significant physiological changes, and the necessity of
eliminating traumatic material from conscious awareness could, in an
immature and discontinuous system of sub-personas/states of conscious-
230 AMY LOUISE MILLER
taking the first person perspective, will take ‘self ’ to mean whatever the
individual participants project its meaning to be.
The term ‘‘non-local’’ which I defined briefly above originated in the
field of physics As Amit Goswami notes, Einstein commented that, ‘‘The
assumption of locality – that all interactions between material objects are
mediated via local signals – is crucial to the materialistic view that objects
[including humans] exist essentially independent and separate from one
another’’ (Goswami, 1995, p. 46). Conversely, Goswami defines non-local-
ity as ‘‘communication or propagation of influence without local signals’’
(op. cit., p. 204). Braud, defines the term ‘non-local’ from a third person
perspective as, ‘‘human potentials or abilities beyond those that are
mediated by conventional sensori-motor processes or conventional ener-
getic and informational exchanges’’ (Anderson, Braud and Valle, 1996
p. 4).
Neither of the above definitions considers the specific case of self. They
are concerned with the other-than-local aspects of objects, energy, and
information. Self is looked upon (actually, implicated) to be local in two
ways. First, self is seen as local when it is embedded in a thoroughly local
understanding of reality, i.e., an understanding in which ‘mind’ emerges
from ‘brain.’ Second as an extension of the aforementioned local under-
standing, self is seen as local to the body, indissolubly linked to a material
entity. Any understanding of self as non-local will involve phenomena
which break down the boundaries of these premises of locality.
Paradoxically, upon closer examination, we find that the locality of self
is tenuous at best. Self as a concept has an indeterminate connection to
material existence. Self cannot be pointed to, i.e., objectified. It is ulti-
mately, in any system, subjective. The question of its locality has plenty
of leeway for interpretation from any perspective.
Christian De Quincey, when discussing non-local consciousness, sug-
gests that the proper term should be ‘nonlocated’ to indicate that con-
sciousness is, ‘‘... not located anywhere in space at all. It is nonspatial’’
(de Quincey, 1999, p. 30). De Quincey’s distinction underscores the prem-
ise of this research that self may be viewed as outside of the spatio-
temporal grid. The validity of de Quincey’s point notwithstanding, I will
stay with the term ‘non-local.’
METHODOLOGY
the unbuilding [sic] or deconstruction of the conceptually constructed world was an intrinsic
aspect of the approach ... The final phase of the method – the transcendental reduction –
was the sphere of pure consciousness in which Husserl’s transpersonal insights came to
fruition ... Consistent with many transpersonal mystical themes, Husserl ... distinguished
between the transcendental ego and the psychological ego (Hanna, 1993, p. 183).
... a switch to an attitude in which all that appears is seen and acknowledged as it appears,
in its own structure of appearing without tying it down immediately to the usual external
explanatory framework (of a physical world ...). (Hut, 1996, p. 11)
Hut comments that, for Husserl, the epoche was not just a ‘metaphorical
device,’ it was, ‘‘a deeply personal change in the way he related to life ...’’
(ibid.). Hut goes on to emphasize the transpersonal aspect of Husserl’s
experience:
... his [Husserl’s] description, in those rare passages where he tells us something about his
more personal engagement with the epoche is very much akin to that of a mystic trying to
find words to describe an experience that cannot be conveyed in words (ibid.).
Thus, we see that phenomenology is a method which leaves room for the
transpersonal and mystical ways of experiencing and understanding the
ego/self.
Phenomenological psychologist, Amedeo Giorgi, interviewed by
Christopher Aanstoos, discusses Husserl, transpersonal psychology, and
transcendental subjectivity of classical phenomenology. Giorgi comments
that, ‘‘there may be a way in which what the transpersonalists are pointing
to [is] the same thing that Husserl is pointing to ... our personal subject-
ivity can access a field of subjectivity’’ (Aanstoos, 1996, p. 11). He goes
on to delineate the transcendental reduction as, ‘intense receptivity,’ which
requires that we, ‘still all that ego stuff ’ (Aanstoos, 1996, p. 13). Giorgi
concludes that, ‘‘... if you could develop the reduction that would be one
way of exploring transcendental subjectivity’’ (loc. cit.). He describes
several levels of reduction, concluding with the deepest level, ‘‘... the
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF AS NON-LOCAL 235
Rolf von Eckartsberg comments that, Dasein: ... ‘‘bridges the subject-
object split,’’ a bridging which is necessary when examining the self (Von
Eckartsberg, 1998, p. 14).
The philosophy of existential phenomenology seems to provide the
foundation for an ideal set of premises leading to a methodology appro-
priate for exploring sense of self. Ronald Valle observes that,
‘‘Existentialism as the philosophy of being became intimately paired with
phenomenology as the philosophy of experience because it is our experi-
ence alone that serves as a means or way to inquire about the nature of
existence (i.e. what it means to be)’’ (Valle and Mohs, 1998, p. 96). Valle
notes that phenomenological methods in social science are the ‘‘manifest,
practical form of this inquiry’’ (ibid.).
Though the phenomenological method used to gather this data might
be thought to be ‘‘non-scientific,’’ Jenny Wade’s comment on this is
of note:
Traditional scientific methods are ill equipped, any prejudice aside, to understand Non-
Newtonian states. ... Phenomenology and other forms of qualitative experimental research
may provide better methodologies for studying levels of consciousness outside the
Newtonian range [i.e., non-local aspects of consciousness] (Wade, 1996, p. 269).
frame of the knower’’ (Bennet, 1999 p. 161). James Barrell comments that,
‘‘Phenomenological research aims to understand the meaningfulness of
human experience as it is actually lived’’ (Barrell, Aanstoos, Richards,
and Arons, 1987, p. 446).
One of the important aspects of the existential phenomenological
approach in the social sciences, as derived from classical phenomenology
is the concept of the pre-reflective, Valle explains that the purpose of such
research is, ‘‘... to articulate the underlying lived structure of any meaning-
ful experience on the level of conceptual awareness’’ (Valle and Mohs,
1998, p. 98). Further, he comments that, ‘‘... each individual’s life-world
emerges at the level of reflective awareness as meaning,’’ and that meaning
is the, ‘‘manifestation in conscious, reflective awareness of the underlying
prereflective structure of the particular experience being addressed’’ (ibid.).
He expands on this concept by noting that, ‘‘Reflective conceptual experi-
ence is ... a preconceptual, and, therefore, prelanguaged, foundational,
bodily knowing that exists ‘as lived’ before or prior to any cognitive
manifestation of this purely felt-sense’’ (Anderson et al., 1996, p. 24).
Of note is the resemblance to James’ concept of, ‘‘pure experience which
formed the foundation of radical empiricism and is summarized by Jason
Throop as follows:
According to James, in its most ‘pure’ state, ‘experience is prior to distinction between
subject and object ... no differentiation between ... self and world, since the identical ‘bit’
of pure experience once reflected upon functions as both the qualities of the objects in
experience and the various states of consciousness in which those qualities inhere (James
1996 [1912], pp. 7, 13, & 37 as cited in Throop, 2003, p. 229).
The current research project seeks to bring the meaning of the pre-
reflective into conscious awareness.
Ferrence Marton, the originator of the phenomenographic application
phenomenology to social science comments that, ‘‘a way of experiencing
something is an internal relationship between the experiencer and the
experienced’’ (Marton, 1997, p. 115). Marton comments that experiences,
‘‘being located neither in the subject nor in the world, being neither mind
nor matter. ... An experience is of its essence nondualistic’’ (op. cit., p. 122).
Thus, using phenomenographical type of approach to explore partici-
pant’s direct, non-dualistic, gestalt of the experience of the self is appro-
priate for the project at hand.
Braud, when exploring research methods for transpersonal studies,
identified the phenomenological approach as among the most qualitative
of approaches and placed it at the ‘‘ideographic’’ end of a posited contin-
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF AS NON-LOCAL 237
... these types of awareness are not really ‘‘experience’’ in the way we normally use the
word, nor are they the same as our prereflective sensibilities ... Transcendent awareness
seems somehow prior to this reflective-prereflective realm, presenting itself as more of a
space or ground from which our more common experience and felt-sense emerge ... which
appears to be inclusive of the intentional nature of mind but not of it (op. cit., p. 25).
Valle notes that this ‘‘ground’’ can be described as, ‘‘... a reality not of (or
in some way beyond) time, space and causality as we normally know
them’’ (op. cit., p. 26). Finally, Valle contends that, ‘‘This, for me, is the
bridge between existential/humanistic and transpersonal! transcendent
approaches in psychology ...’’ and suggests that phenomenological
research which addresses issues of this sort be called ‘‘transpersonal
phenomenological psychology’’ (ibid.). It is clear that an exploration of
non-local aspects of one’s sense of self falls within this area.
In conclusion, this methodology section has identified the importance
of a phenomenological approach for this project, tracing this approach
from its classical Husserlian roots through existential phenomenology
in its contemporary applications, to the, very current, transpersonal
phenomenological approach.
RESEARCH METHODS
I have called the first of these methods the Personal Construct Exercise.
The inspiration for this Exercise came from George Kelly’s Personal
Construct Theory (Kelly, 1955). As Valerie Stewart comments:
Kelly’s theory rests on the assumption that people are actively engaged in making sense of,
and extending, their experience. ... The personal constructs in Kelly’s theory refers to the
set of models, or hypotheses, or representations, which each person has made about their
world (Stewart, 2004).
SELECTED DATA
The body of data to be described herein is selected from the larger project
in which dissociative identity participants and long-time meditators
receive a protocol which combines exploratory questionnaires, semi-pro-
jective exercises and taped interview/discussion. Here we will focus almost
entirely the semi-projective exercises and ensuing discussions from two
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF AS NON-LOCAL 239
To me, it’s starting with self and moving through all those other things up to, in this
particular case, the top, which is God. In that cluster, I’ve included the whole concept of
eternity, spirit and consciousness because to me that’s where universal consciousness lies ...
Self [lower left] begins with a death from one reality into another ... The birth process is
a dying process ... this whole process is trying to get back here [upper right] ... Back to
God and the universal aspects of mind ... self is a starting point and the objective is to
move self from here to there [lower left to upper right], still be self, but be part of something
much, much bigger. To be part of something so interconnected that there is no separation
and yet there is a mind.., at the same time. Before implantation in the womb, there’s a
preexisting self and it’s here [upper right]. It’s a fight to get back there ...
Sammi comments about some remote viewing experiments she has been
doing (for amusement with a friend) with some success:
It was, like, how can your brain do that? I think it’s that part of you being in the universal
consciousness ... The mind has this capacity ... I think the mind goes beyond realms of
what most people think. I see the mind as not being this thing that’s just contained in your
head ... that it goes through this part of me that I know of as my inner wisdom. [He’s the
intermediary]
Here Sammi states unequivocally that she sees mind as expanded and
non-local. Her inner-guide figure, Edmund, connects her to non-local
realms.
Next, let us explore some narratives which reveal views about the
mechanism of DI. Data about the DI participant’s sense of the locality
of their own alter system is less abundant than in some other areas.
Participant’s varied widely in their ability to reflect in this area.
Trudy seemed to have the most un-conflicted sense of her dissociative
system being non-local in nature. She states that, [the trauma she survived
led her]:
... To live in a subconscious realm. To have selves that live there, not here ... They live in
a whole different reality ... They are embodied in an entirely different universe ... It’s not
here, it’s there. Then it was as real as this is to me now? [and] The sub-conscious reality
has nothing to do with any of this [material reality] ... It’s almost alien to it ... it connects
into the alternate realities ...
I got to witness my organic brain, looking into my own brain, to see this split ... to recognize
the self that literally left the body ... a strand of self that was born ... the original self, the
self that was born. When I integrated, I move myself back into my head.
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF SELF AS NON-LOCAL 243
BIBLIOGRAPHY
SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Almost any self-respecting existentialist refuses to call himself an existentialist. To say, ‘‘I
am an existentialist’’, is to say ‘‘I am one of that classification of people known as existential-
249
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 249–258.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
250 SIMON DU PLOCK
ists’’; whereas the existentialist wants to say, ‘‘I am myself – and I don’t like your effort to
fit me into your classification’’. (1968: 13)
So starting from this place I am not attempting to argue for one system
over another, or to espouse the merits of existential psychotherapy. All I
can do in good faith is use what I know up to now of philosophical
counselling to shed some light on my own way of working from an
existential-phenomenological perspective.
If I find useful things in the philosophical counselling approach I will
want to try to incorporate them into my current evolving way of being
with clients and maybe try to alert other existential psychotherapists to
these insights. I think that there needs to be two way traffic between
academics and practitioners in mental health as in other fields. Closed
communities are not advantageous for us or for our clients. It may be
that the existential psychotherapy approach can also inform philosophical
counselling. It probably is not possible to avoid boundary disputes, but
I do not really find them very interesting.
In my journey to date into the territory of philosophical counselling I
first read the papers by Shlomit C. Schuster and Ran Lahav which
appeared in the Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis which I
jointly edit. Over the past few months I have also discovered Perspectives
in Philosophical Counselling and the papers published there. When I first
suggested a paper for this conference the poem by the 1940s English poet
Herbert Reed came to mind, in which a conscript describes his growing
familiarity with his rifle. At that point I wanted to be able to fire the
philosophical counselling gun, but I was still familiarizing myself with it.
Like the blind man and the elephant I may have the tail of philosophical
counselling, thinking I have the trunk. I am sure philosophical counselling
is not a monolith (indeed the more I read, the wider the spectrum of
views represented by it become), though you may not be fortunate or
unfortunate enough to have 300 distinct approaches yet as is the case for
psychotherapy and counselling. To take a last bite with these zoological
metaphors, even if I have some ammunition I am relying on you to tell
me if I am shooting at paper tigers.
With these provisos, I found Ran Lahav’s paper ‘On the Possibility of
a Dialogue Between Philosophical Counselling and Existential
Psychotherapy’ particularly apposite, since it seemed to be addressing the
question uppermost in my mind – namely how each of these approaches
might inform and enrich the practice of the other. Initially I was more
stuck by the shared ground than by differences. Both emphasize the
CRITIQUE OF PHILOSOPHICAL COUNSELLING 251
gained a deeper self-understanding of the various freedoms that may be relevant to her life,
she felt more and more capable of dealing with her predicament. Eventually she decided to
preserve her married life in its previous form, while working on changing her own attitude
towards the meaning of freedom (1998: 143).
provide her with the social acceptance she was accustomed to. Worse,
what she thought of as her customary openness and friendliness made
her an object of derision for her housemates. What she thought of as her
generosity simply served to reinforce their perception of her as foreign,
wealthy and privileged. No meeting of real people had taken place, only
a confirmation of a stereotype on the side of her housemates and a sense
of being rejected and used on hers.
The distinction I want to highlight here, though, is around the concept
of education. Having discussed her situation she would, she said, ‘‘rise
above it’’. ‘‘And maybe also learn from it?’’ I ventured. She still clung to
the somewhat sedimented idea that it had almost been a ‘‘disaster’’ and
that she had nearly been a ‘‘victim’’. I sensed, though, that this uncomfort-
able experience was one which, whilst she might not fully realise it, she
had actively sought. She had chosen to place an advert for a house share
rather than live on campus, she had chosen the wording of this advert
and, in due course, had chosen to move into the house where she had
the experience she had recounted to me, even though her initial feelings
about her decision to move there had been mixed.
One way into this might be to go to the reason for her time in London.
She had said that she came to London to improve her education: what,
I asked her, did she understand by the word ‘education’? Posed this
question, she began immediately to talk about a process of certification,
a fairly obvious route with a number of hurdles along the way in the
shape of written examinations – a steady conveyor belt, in other words,
to a well-paid professional career. But this, I pointed out, was a conveyor
belt with bumps and jumps which were there for her to experience and
which were sometimes unpredictable and could not be planned for. So, I
asked, how about the idea of education as experience, what could she
learn from her experience, what could she choose to take from it?
Once her agency in events became clearer, Louise was able to take a
certain amount of pride in her adventurousness. She began to appreciate
that what she had been describing in wholly negative terms had, in fact,
constituted a tremendously important rite of passage for her from ‘depen-
dent child’ to capable ‘angry adult’. At the time she also saw that her
lack of care in making arrangements about accommodation had ‘‘set her
up’’ for this experience – she had thrown herself into an experience of
which she felt a lack, but had done so incautiously. In appreciating more
fully the reasons for events in which she had been an agent, the feelings
of depression which had accompanied her muddled thinking abated.
CRITIQUE OF PHILOSOPHICAL COUNSELLING 257
Regent’s College
L ondon, UK
BIBLIOGRAPHY
259
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 259–268.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
260 CAMILO SERRANO BÓNITTO
through knowledge, of course. And by that other one that proposes and
prescribes. But first of all, by that word which connects us in the verb
and in silence, which welcomes with surprise and with trust the word of
the Other, which becomes alive thanks to it in order to encounter it, in
what they have in common and in their differences. That word, always
the same and always changing.
That one which, sometimes because of its imprecision, and sometimes
because of its exactitude, generates spaces that connect us and contain
us. The word that is at the same time spring and reflection of an uncondi-
tional tolerance.
Thanks to this word, the spaces are constituted and spread out. And,
in turn, they guarantee the existence of the word as a meaning and as a
link, as the truth of the soul, of that originating soul of every human
thought, thus, as Logos.
Therefore, conceiving a relation in a great dialectic way between the
word and the human spaces generated in and through it, it is necessary
to describe briefly some elements inherent to the psychotherapeutic spaces
which may allow us to foretell a foundation and an atmosphere of hope
in such spaces.
Initially we must indicate that the psychotherapeutic spaces basically
represent universes in which two or more persons coincide, some suffering
to a greater or lesser extent, others with diverse resources to help them.
In other words, the described spaces constitute, essentially, spaces of
encounter.
Which elements typical of these spaces permit us to understand the
Encounter occurred as a phenomenon, and not as the corollary of some
philosophic, psychological or other kind of thesis? It is necessary to collect
at this point some of the multiple meanings within the word encounter.
The basis of our quotations corresponds to the group of meanings of
the Diccionario de Uso del Español (Moliner, p. 1109). We will mention
in this paper a literal translation of those terms which are pertinent for
the clarification or magnification of the required meaning of the word
encounter: the totality of the meanings can be consulted in the original
text.
The ‘‘action of encountering’’, or the encounter (ibid.), implies a coinci-
dence in the time and in the space of one or more objects or beings, even
if they are previously provided with vitality (subjects, animals, etc.) or if
they get such thanks precisely to the encounter.
The attributes of these objects permit us to compare them and to
differentiate them simultaneously, in variable proportions, in one or sev-
LOGOS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY 261
the world beyond the immediate contact that establishes the expectation
between the future and the self (Minkowski, pp. 87 ff.). This precept is
valid both for our contact with the environment and for the contact with
our own inner world.
Then, in every psychotherapeutic relationship the horizons of introspec-
tion and extroversion of the therapist and the patient become wider,
gaining intensity. Thus, the future that moves towards the present favors
the creation of an individual space in its contact with the future, which,
on the other hand, develops itself from the distance. In the psychothera-
peutic field this confidence becomes alive in an atmosphere of unpredict-
able acceptation that presupposes an asymmetric reciprocity to come –
in order to originate an Encounter.
The atmosphere described here, conceived as the support of the
Encounter, irradiation of the originating Hope, allows us to understand
why the pathic topos is established as a communion of feeling and moving
ourselves. This esthesiologic movement is the first step in every Encounter,
a step without which there cannot be a possible development of any
psychotherapeutic project: to be touched in order to touch the ‘‘world
of living’’.
Up to this point we have described how Hope represents the basis of
the inter-subjective world, generating the appropriate atmosphere for the
right correspondence between the power of the suffering-being and the
power of the therapeutic-being.
Also supported on the primordial tonality and on the rhythm, Hope
is the precursor phenomenon of a horizon without a possibility previously
established. Gadamer highlights this fact, referring to Heraclitus’ thinking.
Indeed, fragment 18 teaches us that if we don’t expect, we will not find
the unexpected either (Gadamer, p. 67).
The instant in which this horizon bursts into our life, generates, on the
one hand, a rupture regarding our possible projections previously estab-
lished and regarding what could have happened to us in a universe
already configured; and on the other hand, an opening from Nothingness
to the unpredictable. This receptivity to the advent which transforms us
through the Encounter, is what Henri Maldiney understands as transpassi-
bility (Bouderlique, pp. 56 ff.), transpassibility that implicates an atmo-
sphere of hopeful revelation in our therapeutic work; the dynamism that
is generated in our projected self transformation, which, thanks to it,
constitutes the transpossibility for this same author (ibid.).
To encounter the suffering Other is to be in the presence of that Other
that cannot be reduced to the form of psychotherapeutic projects pre-
266 CAMILO SERRANO BÓNITTO
viously established. The Other, that ‘‘face of the Other’’ as Levinas knows
it, calls us from its uniqueness, to the alterity and to its extreme vulnerabil-
ity, awaking our consciousness (Levinas, pp. 201 ff.).
As a matter of fact, the Encounter as co-advent of two beings, generates
a crisis of ‘‘feeling oneself united with the world’’. The previous union of
the therapeutic-being and of the suffering-being with their worlds, has a
transformation at a pathic level, thanks to the irruption of the Encounter.
And this transformation permits the integration of the event in order to
solve the crisis: to touch the world of living in order to be touched.
In the psychotherapeutic field, the natural and progressive development
of the transpossibility determines our always unfinished assignation as
psychiatrists or as psychologists. Assignation given by life itself, of course,
and the invaluable importance of which is dignified by our deep wish to
be therapists.
In this way, the Heraclitean sentence cannot be clearly understood if
we do not add to the sudden presence of clarity, that other presence,
implicit, of the opacity which tends to devour that which is fulgurant, as
soon as it begins to grow. As a matter of fact, feeling and moving ourselves
requires the capacity to partially separate what is immediately accessible
to us, thus opening a wider world, or more precisely, a deeper spatial–
temporal solidarity. In this way, the transpassibility and the transpossi-
bility permit us to remember that the psychotherapeutic Encounter, like
a thunderbolt, surprises us and makes us tremble thanks to the clarity of
its sparkle and to the commotion inferred from its opacity. Phenomenon
and guignomenon. L ogos in movement.
Paul Celan, ‘‘poet of hope’’, like very few others has been able to crystallize
the whole meaning of the words contained in a poem or in a phrase,
invites us to observe the importance of the opacity as a constitutive
atmosphere of the spreading out of Hope.
Let’s recall once again that the truly representative aspect of the atmo-
sphere of every psychotherapeutic relationship is what unites us and
contains us simultaneously. We must not forget that some aspects of this
opacity typical of the phenomena of Encounter and Hope in the psycho-
therapeutic spaces such as simultaneity, familiarity, reciprocity, asymme-
try, uniqueness and many others, clearly establish that the universe always
intuitively and sensibly, many times ineffably, unites and contains the
therapeutic-being and the suffering-being. The opacity establishes the den-
LOGOS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY 267
NOTES
1 Heraclitus. Quoted in: Early Greek Philosophy. London: John Burnet, 1920.
2 Bremen Prize of German Literature Discourse. Quoted in: J. Felstiner, Paul Celan: Poet,
Survivor, Jew. Yale University, 1995.
268 CAMILO SERRANO BÓNITTO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PREFACE
I present this essay for you to criticise and debate within the notion of
being too bold rather than too timid. For it is a well-known facet of Irish
society that if one is too daring and bold such persons may be cut above
the knee to bring them ‘back to size’. I firmly believe that it is better to
dare to rock the conventional and accepted, by questioning the difficulties
of our time that seem unsolvable – for the betterment, in this context, of
those human beings that are entrusted to our care.
SUMMARY
Four hundred and fifty million people suffer from a mental or behavioral
disorder, yet only a small minority of them receive even the most basic
treatment according to the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2001).
1,000,000 people die as a result of the act of suicide each year, and every
year across the world (Goldsmith et al., 2003). This problem permeates
all aspects and levels of our world civilizations despite the increased
interconnectedness of our peoples and the evolution of mans’ knowledge
and abilities over the last century. Such evidence directs a number of key
phenomenological questions within the seventh moment. Within the quest
of humanity to be, how do humans survive, exist and be within a mental
or behavioural disorder? Within the act of looking outwards to the
modern world for possible answers and explanations, that very global
world seeps inwards and captures our being. But within that duality,
interpretation and understanding, the evidence suggests that many
humans find aspects to that answer that may indicate an apparent mean-
ingless being. This question prompts the phenomenological question,
What is the nature and meaning of mental health and mental distress in
the world of today? And I ask whether philosophers have abandoned
this search to the detriment of humanity and therein neglected to question
the boundaries and limits of the actuality and potentiality of being?
Answering these questions is the key vocation and responsibility of philos-
269
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 269–287.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
270 JARLATH FINTAN McKENNA
INTRODUCTION
are associated with mental illness. However, the data from China indicates
that less than half of the suicides have such a correlation. Furthermore,
in China more women than men carry out the act of suicide. The evidence
also suggests that within Eastern European countries, the suicide rate is
four to six times higher than in the United States. Hungarians sadly hold
the distinction of having the highest rate of suicide, however the rate in
some of the former Soviet Union states remains unclear (Goldsmith et al.,
2003). This foreground of evidence uncovers a reality that demands
phenomenological examination.
Many worldviews and orientations colour and distil the perspectives
of the human sciences, the aesthetic, the ethical and the cognitive. It is
acknowledged that each of these perspectives provides further and alterna-
tive arguments to the meaningfulness of mental health in being. However,
for the purposes of this paper the central focus of examination will explore
the possible relationships between the ontological and teleological poten-
tiality and actuality of mental health and distress in being.
MEANINGFULNESS
bekos), being in the sense of being true (on hos alethes), non-being in the
way of falseness (me on hos pseudos) being of the categories and potential
and actual being (dynamei kai energeia). The allusions to being seek to
understand the determination of being. Aristotle in Metaphysics
IV.2.1003b6 states
one thing is said to be because it is substance, another because it is an attribute of a
substance, still another because it is a process toward substance, or privation of substantial
forms or quality of substance, or because it produces or generates substance or that which
is predicated of substance, or because it is negation of such a thing or of substance itself.
Hence for this reason it is argued that non-being is. Within the Lebenswelt
of today, world and life interact in a way that leaves many humans in a
place of mental distress and increasingly in the place of ‘‘non-being within
being’’. Non-being in this context does not refer to falseness as suggested
by Aristotle (Brentano, 1975) but an alternative interpretation of place
and substance where being and non-being co-exist more frequently, the
ultimate result, non-existence in the world ‘‘another being accidentally
co-exists with it in the same subject’’ (p. 14). Brentano (1975) also com-
ments that truth is found in affirmative judgements and falsity in the
negative. It is the case that mental health is judged by humans in society
as the affirmative and mental distress within negative connotations and
judgements. However, is this appropriate within the nature (Wesen) of
things?
Despite the many advances of science relating to mankind and the
uncovering of our microscopic world, humans have also begun to re-
discover and be reawakened to the true realities, meanings and natures
of mental distress created by man. In terms of our global reality, humans
increasingly encounter daily the sense of true being in terms of war, global
terror, oppression, famine, natural disaster and disease all of which result
in mental distress for those civilisations. I contend that these macro
occurrences confuse and hide the micro, the new silent holocaust of the
seventh moment wherein humans live and construct a meaningless world
in terms of their being. Many monumental atrocities of being are created
and demonstrated through the deliverance of man’s means upon man,
the genocide in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, the
attack upon the World Trade Centre, The Afghanistan war, The Iraq war
as examples. However, none of these examples are new departures for
man, since the history of human civilisation is dotted with similar exam-
ples of greater proportions. Therefore, in the phenomenological, what is
the significance of the ‘‘globality of being’’ and how does this concept
MENTAL HEALTH AND MEANINGLESSNESS 275
The concept of mental health may be traced back to early Greek civilisa-
tion. Since that period, the empirical, theoretical and philosophical litera-
tures regarding the concept of mental health have expanded in a variety
of directions in the quest to understand its meaning (Jahoda, 1958; Trent,
1992; McDonald and O’Hara, 1998) and its relationship with the concepts
psychological wellbeing (Bradburn, 1969; Cherlin and Reeder, 1975; Brant
and Veroff, 1982; Diener, 1984; Ryff, 1989, 1995), positive mental health
(Jahoda, 1958; Szasz, 1961; Bradburn, 1969; Beiser, 1974), positive psycho-
logical functioning (Jung, 1933; Erikson, 1959; Allport, 1961; Rogers,
1961; Buhler and Massarik, 1968; Maslow, 1968), subjective wellbeing
(Gurin et al., 1960; Neugarten, Havighurst, and Tobin, 1961; Cantril,
1965; Wilson, 1967; Bradburn, 1969; Wood, Wylie, and Sheafor, 1969;
Lawton, 1975; Morris and Sherwood, 1975; Andrews and Withey, 1976;
Campbell, Converse, and Rodgers, 1976; Larsen, 1978; Underwood and
Froming, 1980; Kammann and Flet, 1983; Diener and Lucas, 2000) and
more recently happiness (Myers and Diener, 1995; Argyle, 1997; Myers
and Diener, 1997; Lewis and Glennerster, 2000).
Phenomenology’s quest, similar to the central thread of questioning in
health sciences, asks, what of the attitudes of the individual toward himself
and community? What is the degree to which a person realizes his
potentialities through action? What of the functionality of the individual’s
persona? What level of independence of social influences has the human
today? How does the human interpret and seek meaning in the world
around him (Jahoda, 1958)? And can humans take life as it comes and
master it in a way that allows potentiality rather than actuality, resulting
in mental health, mental distress or non-being within our realities.
Humans exist daily in the world to meet the potential of their being
rather than the actuality of their being. What are the phenomena that
the intention of mental health and mental distress are accidental to each
other? Brentano (1975) indicates that in terms of ‘accidental being’ ‘‘the
two do not necessarily belong together; one property is not a consequence
of the other and the two do not stem from a common cause; the one has
the other kata symbebekos’’ (p. 8). However, within the mode of existence
for the human, each state may belong to the person and not as argued
276 JARLATH FINTAN McKENNA
by Brentano (1975) that ‘‘to say that one thing is another means the same
as that the second thing accidentally belongs to the first’’ (p. 9).
MENTAL WELLBEING
demonstrate the conceptual and methodological importance of studying the affective compo-
nents of wellbeing separately and as they interact, rather than assuming that wellbeing can
and should be considered as an unidimensional, global construct (p. 320).
these findings are the result of a six year longitudinal study (Beiser, 1974,
p. 1326).
WELLBEING
Szasz, 1961; Bradburn, 1969; Beiser, 1974). Ryff (1989) in her critique of
these theoretical positions presents five key points for consideration: (1)
these perspectives have little empirical underpinning due to an absence
of valid, reliable and credible assessment tools; (2) the criteria of wellbeing
generated by these positions are diverse and extensive; (3) there is no
clear criteria which illustrate the features of positive psychological func-
tioning; (4) the literature is ‘‘value laden’’ in how people should perform
if they have positive psychological functioning; (5) many of the above
theorists have deliberated over similar features of the same phenomenon.
Ryff (1989, 1995) argues that much of the literature up until this point is
based upon formulations of the concept wellbeing, with little theoretical
or empirical exploration of its links to positive functioning. Ryff (1989)
presents a new dimension where she attempts to consolidate a number
of alternative theoretical positions and explores the relationships between
indicators of ‘‘wellbeing’’ and new links to ‘‘positive functioning’’ from
previous empirical research in this area. The major aim of Ryff ’s (1989)
research was to provide operational definitions and measures of the
following attributes: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, auton-
omy, environmental mastery, purpose in life and personal growth. This
approach integrated the theoretical domains of mental health, clinical
and life span as ‘‘multiple converging aspects of positive psychological
functioning.’’ Ryff (1989) states that:
The empirical challenge therefore, is to operationalize these theory guided dimensions so
that they may be examined vis-à-vis the reigning indexes of positive functioning. Such
comparisons will clarify whether the alternative approach affords criteria of psychological
wellbeing that are theoretically and empirically distinct from existing formulations (p. 1071).
Ryff (1989) comments that the educational levels of the respondents were
high. Regarding health ratings the older respondents had significantly
lower self-rating scales than the middle or younger groups and the finan-
cial state of the majority of subjects was within the range good–
excellent.
Regarding sex differences, women rated their financial position more
negatively than men; most of the younger sample were single; the majority
of the middle-aged sample were married; and half of the older group were
married. One third of the older group were widowed; and regarding
religion, most of the sample were Catholic in belief.
Ryff (1989) constructed new measurement scales to reflect previous
tools and the theoretical literature and administered the new instrument
alongside other previously used scales to measure psychological wellbeing.
MENTAL HEALTH AND MEANINGLESSNESS 279
investigate the conditions under which particular ideals of wellbeing are obstructed or
realised and probe the long term consequences (individual and societal) of following one
rather than another conception of positive psychological functioning (p. 1080).
Table 1
Jahoda (1958) deals with the problematic area of ‘‘values’’ as her final
question. Values provide another level of analysis to each of these cate-
gories especially when ‘‘one calls these psychological phenomena ‘mental
health’ ’’ (p. 76). Jahoda (1958) suggests that empirical indicators to mea-
sure mental health require development. However, such a method (quanti-
tative approaches) may be fundamentally flawed as a scientific method
to fully understand mental health. Jahoda (1958) also argues that whereas
there are many interpretations of physical health the concept mental
health may be interpreted from a number of alternative viewpoints.
Hartmann (1951) cited by Jahoda (1958) states: ‘‘theoretical standards of
health are usually too narrow insofar as they underestimate the great
diversity of types which in practice pass as healthy.’’
Does this type of research finding enable us to clarify the meaningful-
ness of mental distress? The philosophical schema of the Trialectic is
tentatively presented as a new paradigm for viewing the relationships
between potentiality, actuality, mental wellbeing and mental distress,
through the ontological and the teleological.
THE TRIALECTIC
the deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain
the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society,
against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of
modern life (p. 324).
Hegel (1990) argues that in the beginning, pure being constitutes pure
thought and immediacy, hence ‘‘the absolute is being’’ or ‘‘absolute
indifference’’ (p. 69). This, Hegel (1990) argues, emerges through a substra-
tum. Brentano (1975) argues that Aristotle suggests that ‘actual being (on
energeia) is either pure form or is actualised by form’ (p. 27). There are
close similarities in the explanations by both authors to this form of pure
being. Alternatively, Brentano (1975) argues that being may be ‘in various
ways’ (p. 13), and there are similarities between the ideas of substratum
and categories as presented by Brentano. I argue that each of the compo-
nents of the Trialectic exist within the curvature of the same plane of
being and are not substrata or alternative categories, but one (see Figure
1). The Trialectic is that position where the ‘I’ begins and the ‘Thou’
confronts, the thou as ‘other’ and the ‘world.’ The schemata of the
Trialectic rejects the assumption made by Hegel (1990) that ‘‘God is the
sum total of all realities ... and that God is the being in all existence’’
Figure 1.
MENTAL HEALTH AND MEANINGLESSNESS 283
CONCLUSION
This paper examined the possible nature and meaning of mental health
and mental distress in the world of today. Analysis of ‘being’, examining
how the world of the seventh moment impacts upon ‘being’ as interpreta-
tion of meaning, becomes a greater quest in our global world. This quest
also brings with it the opportunity for misunderstanding and the existence
of meaninglessness. An examination of these questions through phenome-
nological methods by returning to the roots of being, questions Hegel’s
(1990) theory of being through the convoluted pathway of paradigm
change (Meleis, 1997) and presents an alternative ontological and teleo-
logical schema, the Trialectic. The concept and experience of meaningless-
ness exists for many humans in our modern world in opposition to that
of meaningfulness, as does the increasing rate of mental distress. It is
contended that the importance of ‘the meaningfulness of mental health
as being’ is now one of the key philosophical questions for an understand-
ing within the seventh moment, as global interconnectiveness opens up a
new world of apparent meaningless being. Philosophers and health science
professionals, in particular mental health practitioners, must question the
possible implications of this dimension for human care through the rela-
tionships between clinical practice, theory and research.
NOTE
I wish to acknowledge the advice of my mentor Dr. Oliver D’Alton Slevin, Senior Lecturer
in Nursing at the University of Ulster in the development of this paper.
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Andrews, F. M. and Withey, S. B. Social Indicators of Well-being: America’s Perception of L ife
Quality. New York: Plenum Press, 1976.
Argyle, M. ‘‘Is happiness a cause for health?’’ Psychology and Health, 12(6) (1997): 769–781.
Beiser, M. ‘‘Components and correlates of mental well-being.’’ Journal of Health and Social
Behaviour, 15 (1974): 320–327.
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Underwood, B. and Froming, W. J. ‘‘The mood survey: a personality measure of happy and
sad moods.’’ Journal of Personality Assessment, 44 (1980): 404–414.
Wilson, W. ‘‘Correlates of avowed happiness.’’ Psychological Bulletin, 67 (1967): 294–306.
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OLGA LOUCHAKOVA
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© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
290 OLGA LOUCHAKOVA
are distinguished only for the sake of analysis. This unity of phenomenal
and pure awareness is implicit in consciousness.
On the contrary, direct intuition is not within this constancy of con-
sciousness. It applies selectively to the particular meanings or activities
of consciousness. It is intentional, as a direct intuition of something. The
common denominator of all instances of direct intuition is that it makes
the noetic activity of consciousness transparent to itself. People differ in
regard to direct intuition, i.e. in their awareness of the particular noesis.
The rise of direct intuition manifests in widening of internal vistas and
deepening of internal landscapes, in the emergence of foundational under-
standings, in the ability to see directly the essential structures and activities
of consciousness. While awareness that is grasping its own phenomenal
contents is always an ongoing background of phenomena in man’s natural
attitude, direct intuition, as the conscious perception of these activities,
presupposes reduction. It would be true to say that no one knows exactly
what internal process brought to life direct intuition such as in the genius
of Husserl. One can only speculate whether it happened in an instance,
or developed over the course of time. However, in spiritual traditions and
texts such as early Christian Philokalia, there is evidence that people can
arrive at ‘‘seeing’’ the interior workings of consciousness via a gradual
training of the mind.
‘‘Seeing’’ the interior operations and contents of consciousness is pro-
foundly transforming to all significant aspects of a person (Louchakova,
2004a). For example, it affects the ways people die. Schmitz-Perrin in his
study of theological influences on Husserl’s thought, indicates that during
the last hours of his life, Husserl stated: ‘‘God has welcomed me graciously
and has allowed me to die ... God is good, yes, God is good, but really
ununderstandable, it is a very hard time now for us ... I want him to be
with me. But I do not feel that He is close to me ... Pray for me’’ (as
quoted in Schmitz-Perrin, 1996, p. 488, footnotes 29 and 30). Later, the
minutes before he died, he said: ‘‘I have seen something wonderful. Hurry
up, and write!’’ But when the nurse came back, he had already passed
away. What did Edmund Husserl ‘‘see’’, and what did he want to describe
in the last moment when his speech still obeyed his self-transparent
consciousness? Evidently, this last ‘‘seeing’’ switched his mood from the
prior angst to joy.
Theophanis the Monk, the Hesychast ascetic of the 8th century, indi-
rectly points to the connection between the rise of direct intuition of the
structures of the self through Prayer of the heart and the removal of the
fear of death. Theophanis says that this is precisely the fear of death that
292 OLGA LOUCHAKOVA
motivates people to practice the Prayer of the Heart. This esoteric practice
comprises complicated mental exercises, leading to the complete restruc-
turing of the intentional consciousness towards the state that the early
Desert Fathers knew as Union, Theosis (Chirban, 1986; Theophanis the
Monk, 1984). Apophegmata leave us exalted descriptions of the internal
steps in the Prayer of the Heart, opening direct intuition by which
contemplatives will ‘‘see God’’ (St. Hesychios the Priest, 1979; Theophanis
the Monk, 1984).
Prayer of the Heart was transmitted from the early Desert Fathers
to Byzantine monks, and was preserved until our days by Russian,
Romanian and Greek hermits and pilgrims. Separate contemplatives
practice this Prayer in England, the United States and France. The
practice is traditionally ascribed to Hesychasm, the esoteric tradition of
early Christianity, later absorbed by the Orthodox Church. In
Catholicism, it seems to be an individual enterprise of particular monks.
The history of Hesychasm contains many disputes concerning the safety
and validity of this practice (Pelikan, 1974). As a rule, Prayer of the
Heart is considered among the spiritual exercises that are esoteric, com-
plex, and need caution. For the dedicated practitioner, over years Prayer
of the Heart turns into a journey of profound inner transformation,
affecting all the levels of the self – from perception, to character structure,
to the affective sphere and foundational identity (Louchakova and
Warner, 2003; T he Way of a Pilgrim, 1952; Ware, 1974).
Prayer of the Heart opens the interior structure-contents of the self
(Ware, 1974). This form of internal contemplation is not unique to
Christianity, but is common to all wisdom traditions that posit the
ontological value of personhood. Corresponding forms of contemplative
worshipful self-enquiry exist in Islam (as dhikr of Divine names), in
Shakta-Vedanta and Advaita Vedanta (as bodily forms of atma-vichara,
or self-enquiry). In Christianity, the Prayer of the Heart takes the form
of the Jesus Prayer, and is described largely in the collections of
Apophthegmata. Indications to the various form of the Prayer of the
Heart can be traced through the history of all religions of the
Mediterranean.
Formally, Prayer of the Heart consists of an uninterrupted repetition
of the name of the deity paced with the breath, and accompanied by
focusing attention on the sense of self in the chest. As practice matures
ONTOPOIESIS IN THE PRAYER OF THE HEART 293
over the years, there are shifts of interior states such as a) progression
from the verbal prayer to the internal silent prayer, b) movement of the
focus of the internal prayer from the head to the chest, c) progression
from the volitional repetition of the name to the state where the name is
spontaneously emerging from within the very being of the practitioner, –
as Kallistos Ware (1974) says, God prays to Himself, d) dissolution of
the name into wordless prayer of sustained presence, e) degrees of Union
(Dionisius the Areopagite, 1965). Within these roughly defined steps, this
is a structured phenomenological introspection into the human person.
Introspection happens as the deepening of the reversed flow of attention
via the embodied sense of self, taken back to its phenomenological origins
in pure subjectivity. A series of spontaneously rising reductions leads to
explication of the essential structures of the self.
The esoteric, interior part of practice consist of these spontaneously
rising reductions. Eventually, attention is reduced into the focus in
Spiritual Heart, a psychospiritual center of embodied consciousness in
the interior space of the chest (Louchakova and Warner, 2003; Spidlı́k,
1986). The Spiritual Heart is generally associated with the mystical experi-
ence of I–Thou, and transcendence of the individual I, followed by Union.
In this process, the hidden and latent content of the psyche becomes
available to awareness. This may include the traces of past trauma, early
forms of psychological self and adaptive mechanisms. The difficulties of
facing the content of subconscious and unconscious make the Prayer into
a psychologically challenging process. Due to this transformative
encounter with the psyche, Prayer of the Heart is considered as being
among the spiritual disciplines that are difficult to practice (T he Way of
a Pilgrim, 1952; Ware, 1974).
In our study of the effects of spiritual practices (Louchakova, 2004b)
Prayer of the Heart stands out for its capacity to advance direct intuition.
Consequently, in psychology Prayer of the Heart and similar practices
can serve as models for studying and articulating direct intuition, the
essential structures of consciousness co-emerging with it, and the overall
psychological effects of this process. There is no full description of the
practice of the Prayer available in known literature, and it is a part of
the oral tradition. To learn this method one needs a living teacher (T he
Way of a Pilgrim, 1952). Mastering the Prayer takes many years. To
capture the internal processes happening in the practice of the Prayer,
the author phenomenologically analyzed accounts of people who prac-
ticed Prayer of the Heart, which allowed describing the longitudinal
maturing of the practice of the Prayer of the Heart, and explicating the
294 OLGA LOUCHAKOVA
Hesychast St. Simeon the New Theologian for the practice of the Prayer
say, ‘‘Search inside yourself with your intellect so as to find the place of
the heart ...’’ (St. Simeon the New T heologian, 1995, p. 73).
More precisely, the egological experience which rises in fixing attention
on the sense of self on the right side of the chest contains the blend of
fields of meaning such as ‘‘I am’’, ‘‘I am the person, the self ’’, ‘‘I am the
body’’ and the narrative connotations of one’s history. Experience also
involves sensing the specific tactility of ‘‘personhood’’, a sort of warm
effulgence of personal sentiency, which can be associated with affect,
interpretation, image and thought. St. Simeon the New Theologian
possibly refers to this experience as finding ‘‘the place where all the powers
of the soul reside’’ (St. Simeon the New T heologian, 1995, p. 73), while the
Indian saint Sri Ramana Maharshi calls it aham-sphurana (Sanskrit), the
radiance of the ‘‘I’’.
This thought/sense experience of personhood can be navigated inwards
to its phenomenological origins. Ibn al’-Arabi, the Andalusian philosopher
of the XII century, calls the current of this body-related self-awareness
back to its source ‘‘the river of Jesus’’. The practitioner locates the Divine
Name, paced with breath, within flow of this reversed intentionality. The
current is spatially represented in the introspective space inside the chest,
and goes back to the subtle center of the embodied awareness called the
Spiritual Heart. The Spiritual Heart is the spatial bodily correspondent
to the innermost core of both self-sense and cognitive self (Ibn al-Arabi,
1978). It is known in Hesychasm as a junction of self-transcendence
(Spidlı́k, 1986), where the individual I–Thou eternally falls into and
emerges from the I–I, the Union.
As the concentration deepens, the flow of intentionality attempting to
grasp its own origin, effortful initially, becomes spontaneous, as though
it were ‘‘pulled’’ from within. In Indian Tantra, the power providing the
possibility of the reverse flow of awareness is personified as Goddess
Kundalini. Simultaneously with being viewed as a power of awareness to
grasp its origins, Kundalini is viewed as an evolutionary power of con-
sciousness, bringing to life the multiplicity of phenomena (Louchakova,
2004c). This keen conclusion regarding the double agency of Kundalini
captures the phenomenological observation that in deep meditation the
full collapse of awareness onto itself is preceded by the increase of the
internal flow of phenomena. In this simultaneity, the inward return of
awareness to its source and the outward deployment of the latent content
of consciousness, are in fact two sides of one process. As will be shown
298 OLGA LOUCHAKOVA
... will find there darkness and an impenetrable density. Later ... you will find, as though
miraculously, an unceasing joy. For as soon as intellect attains the place of the heart, at
once [notice the characteristic suddenness of this transition – the interior space is quantum
structured] it sees things of which it previously knew nothing. It sees the open space within
the heart and it beholds it entirely luminous and full of discrimination. From then on, from
whatever side a distractive thought may appear, before it has come to a completion and
assumed a form, the intellect immediately drives it away and destroys it with the invocation
of Jesus Christ ... the rest you will learn for yourself (St. Simeon, 1995, p. 73).
These experiences, like beads, are ‘‘sitting on’’ the thread of central cogni-
tion, which is the reverse flow of the sense of personhood. This is an
essential structure as explicated by Theophanis. Remarkably, the same
structure emerges over a period of several decades, as well as within a
single set of introspection. The self-initiated practitioners, who never
received instructions, also arrive at this internal order due to the actualiza-
tion of direct intuition. Indeed, the latter remains the ‘‘gift of the gods’’
(Tymieniechka, 2002, p. 8). The explication of this structure happens
repeatedly in self-enquiry focus groups, and groups that practice the
Prayer of the Heart. In a single act of introspection, these are states, and
over decades of practice, these are stations. It is a stable phenomenon,
pertinent to the internal architecture of self-awareness in the Spiritual
Heart. The analogous structures are reported in phenomenological philos-
ophy of Shakta-Vedanta as ‘‘coverings of the Self ’’ (Siddharameshwar,
1998). The invariability of this structure points to the ontological nature
of it. When the introspective process constructs this experience, then the
construction invariably resolves into the hierarchies of being.
The layers are discretely perceived by the practitioner as ontologically
‘‘prior’’ and ‘‘posterior’’. The innermost layers of this interior architecture
of self-awareness carry the sense of deep intimacy, immediacy and pri-
macy. They also carry the sense of deeper authenticity and independence
than the outer layers. The outer layers are experienced as more ‘‘inert’’,
and less ‘‘real’’ than the inner. Spatiality and layers (spheres, domains)
then are the primary structural principles of the self, pervasive to the
whole internal organization. The components of the self are organized in
the ‘‘internal space’’ of introspection as layers around the central experi-
ence of the ‘‘I am’’ – consciousness. ‘‘I am’’ in association with sensations,
emotions and feelings, images, verbal thoughts, deeper non-verbal under-
standings, mental states such as torpor or confusion, and ‘‘nothing’’, forms
the easily identifiable phenomenological clusters within the egological
experience.
The interior switching of the direct intuition from layer to layer is
discrete, quantum. In that, two aspects can be distinguished – spontaneous
reduction by perception (structure) versus reduction by image/meaning
(contents). Both become actualized in the Prayer of the Heart, and com-
302 OLGA LOUCHAKOVA
plement each other; however, they open up two different vistas in regards
to the ontopoiesis and Union.
Reduction by perception, bouncing back to the subjectivity of pure
awareness against the observed objects, leads one to regress into the I
abstracted from the world, spatial forms and temporal flow. There is
nothing concrete left, except for pure sentiency, slightly conditioned by
the ‘‘I’’-thought. The negation, leading to this absorption, happens in the
context of the natural attitude (Bello, 2002). The thought moves on the
level of the pregiven world rather than within the area prescribed by
Prayer of the Heart. This process allows the insights into simultaneity
and sameness of awareness and being, and can show that selfhood extends
beyond the existence of the body. However, the mere reduction into the
subject does not open the fullness of ontopoiesis or the understanding of
Union. This is the existential ‘‘cul-de-sac’’ – the practitioner will either
finish in the ‘‘nothing’’ or will be caught in the process of infinite
regression.
The unceasing repetition of the Name, recommended in the process of
Prayer, initiates a reduction by meaning. The focusing on the Name
neutralizes the ‘‘horizontal’’ (Tymieniecka, 2002) networks of conscious-
ness, and brackets the assumptions of multiplicity of existences implicit
to ordinary thinking. This continuous bracketing, accompanied by the
affective flow in the direction of inwardness and intimacy with the
unknown Other, intends on the origins of things. The essential ethical
moment in this ascent consists in ‘‘giving greetings’’. In Prayer of the
Heart, greetings are implicit to the repetition of the name. Instructions
to meditation on the self in both Ibn al’-Arabi’s (1978) written teaching,
and in the oral tradition of Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta that the author
was exposed to, suggest that one should pause and give internal greetings.
This engagement with the unknown Other is a pivotal moment. In giving
greetings, consciousness, fluctuating into and out of self-absorption, opens
into the direct intuition of limitless presence. The affect of love loses its
vector and instead becomes a continuum, a field.
In this epiphany of the I–Thou, the shift of identification happens. The
otherness disappears, and the former Other becomes the only One that
Is. Awareness/am-ness drops the qualifier of the individual I, and is
recognized as the attribute of the previously unknown Other. This shift
ends the egological experience. The incoming experience can be described
as ‘‘I am not, but He is, and in that somehow I am’’ (Sri Ranjit Maharaj,
personal communication, Encinitas, California, 1997). The transition from
the ego to the larger Self, also known as Union, happens not by reduction
ONTOPOIESIS IN THE PRAYER OF THE HEART 303
world networks, and supporting the ancient alchemical dictum ‘‘as above,
so below’’.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sri Siddharameshwar Maharaj, Amrutlaya. T he stateless state (Mumbai, India: Sri Sadguru
Siddharameshwar Adhyatma Kendra, 1998).
St. Hesychios the Priest, ‘‘On Watchfullness and Holiness: Written for Theodulos,’’ in T he
Philokalia, 4 vols., G. E. H. Palmer, P. Sherrard, and K. Ware (trans. and ed.) (Boston:
Faber and Faber, 1979), Vol. I, pp. 162–198.
St. Simeon the New Theologian, ‘‘The Three Methods of Prayer,’’ in T he Philokalia, 4 vols.,
G. E. H. Palmer, P. Sherrard, and K. Ware (trans. and ed.) (Boston: Faber & Faber, 1995),
Vol. IV, pp. 67–78.
Anonymous, ‘‘T he Way of a Pilgrim’’, in A Classic of the Spiritual L ife. T he Way of a Pilgrim
and T he Pilgrim Continues His Way, R. M. French (trans.), 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Harper
and Row, 1952), pp. 1–119.
Theophanis The Monk, ‘‘The Ladder of Divine Graces,’’ in T he Philokalia, 4 vols. G. E. H.
Palmer, P. Sherrard, and K. Ware (trans. and ed.) (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1984),
Vol. 3, p. 67.
Tymieniecka, A.-T. ‘‘Introduction: Phenomenology as the Inspirational Force of our Times,’’
in Phenomenology World-wide: Foundations – Expanding Dynamics – L ife Engagements. A
Guide for Research and Study, A.-T. Tymieniecka (ed.) (Boston: Kluwer, 2002), pp. 1–11.
Walbridge, J. T he L eaven of the Ancients. Suhrawardi and the Heritage of the Greeks (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2002).
Ware, K. T he Power of the Name: T he Jesus Prayer in Orthodox Spirituality (Fairacres,
Oxford: SLG Press, 1974).
Yazdi, M. H. T he Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by Presence
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).
EVA SYR̆IS̆T̆OVÁ
Aus dem Schlaf weckte mich ein lautes, schreckliches Lachen. Es war in
ihm etwas unmenschliches – niemals vorher – bis zu meinem noch nicht
vollendeten neunten Lebensjahr – habe ich etwas ähnliches nicht gehört.
Kaum dämmerte es. Ich lief an offenes Fenster meiner Kinderstube zu,
ganz verworren von der Frechheit dieses unübertäubten Lachens, welches
mich von allen Seiten überfiel, um festzustellen, woher es eigentlich
kommt. Es kam von allen Seiten, oder von Nirgends – es war überall
anwesend.
Es fiel mich die Angst über und zugleich ein Protestgefühl. Wie könnte
jemand so laut und grob lachen? Dieses Lachen erschrak und folterte
und drosselte meine Kehle, hängte sich überall fast spöttisch und grauen-
haft über alles umher: es war unmöglich ihm zu entweichen, ihn nicht zu
hören, seinem Gewalt und Ansturm sich zu wehren. Schreckliches, allgeg-
enwärtiges Lachen kam dabei von weiter Ferne oder Tiefe, es schallte
mehr und mehr und entsprang in wilden Kaskaden weit hinter den
Grenzen unseres schönen Gartens, die morgens immer mit sanfter Stille
gesättigt war. Voll von schwarzroten Rosen, blühenden Sträuchen und
Bäumen gehörte er unteilbar zu meinem Heime.
Das reissende Lachen bohrte mich wie ein Marterwerkzeug durch. Ich
fühlte dabei seine Gleichgültigkeit und Leere. Ich konnte mich nicht des
allverzehrenden Lärmes los werden. Er schluckte mich und würgte wie
eine Lawine. Dabei fühlte ich mich wie gesperrt und gelähmt in eine
wehrlose Regungslosigkeit in meiner Einsamkeit und tiefer Angst. Ich
war nicht im Stande ein Wort zu sagen, wenn ich es auch so viel brauchte
und wollte das unbarmherzige Lachen zu Schweigen bringen.
‘‘Bitte sehr, schreien Sie nicht so viel, nur einen Augenblick, hören Sie
auf. Hören Sie mit dem schrecklichen Lachen, Sie erweckten doch meinen
kleinen, kranken Bruder!’’ Er hatte sicher wieder eine schwere Nacht-
dachte ich- er möchte vielleicht auf eine Weile von Erschöppfung und
Müdigkeit einschlalfen. Er kämpft ja Tag und Nacht nur um die
Möglichkeit ein Atem zu holen. Er kann nicht schlafen, er stützt sich
halbsitzend im Bette an seinen Vater, durch Ersticken und Hustenanfälle
gefoltert.
313
A.-T . T ymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana XCI, 313–317.
© 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands.
314 EVA SYR̆IS̆T̆OVÁ
Zum letztenmal sah ich meinen Bruder, wenn er aus dem Krankenhaus
heimkehrte: sie trugen ihn auf der Tragbare in das Zimmer im Erdgeschoss
unseres Elternhauses. Weisse Hände auf der weissen Decke, weisses, zartes
Gesicht eines Kindes, eines Engels. Weiss am Weiss. Wie im Traumbild.
Nur die Augen, noch wirkliche, dunkle, prächtige, beredsame im Leiden
– mehr denn je. Zarte, fast kaum bemerkbare Linie der schweigenden
weissen Lippen. Ich konnte ihn noch an die Stirn küssen. Dann durfte
ich ihn nicht mehr besuchen. Miliartuberculosis – hiess die Diagnose. Oft
wartete ich vor dem Zimmer meines Bruders. Ich hatte keine Angst vor
der Infektion. Ich dachte nicht daran. Den Eltern wollte ich aber keine
weiteren Sorgen zufügen.
Wenn ich eines Abends an der Türschwelle sass, hörte ich, wie mein
dreizehnjähriger Bruder meinem Vater abgebrochen sagt: ‘‘Papi, bitte,
lass mich nicht sterben, ich habe doch noch nicht gelebt!’’
Die Tränen sprangen mir hervor. Fieberhaft überlegte ich, was dem
allmächtigen Gott, von dem mir damals in der Kindheit erzählten, anzu-
bieten, um meinen Bruder zu retten. ‘‘Mein Gott’’, sagte ich dringend,’’
du weisst gut, dass es mir an meinem Leben nicht zuviel liegt. Bitte, nimm
mich statt meines Bruders. Hörst du, mein Gott, er sehnt sich so viel
nach dem Leben. Erfülle ihm diesen Wunsch, bitte, nimm sich mein Leben
als Geschenk statt des seinen. Du weisst doch, dass ich die Wahrheit sage,
dass er glücklich sein wird und mich wirst du damit nicht verletzen. Ich
bin gesund, ich werde nur im Paradies meines lieben Gartens einschlafen.
Keine Sorge ... Ich Werde nicht leiden. Ich nehme mit mir mein bisheriges
Glück, welches du mir gegeben hast. Im Falle, dass ich verbleibe, werde
ich nie Ruhe finden.
Täglich wiederholte ich meine Bitte. Ich wartete entspannt eine
Verbesserung des Gesundheitszustandes meines Bruders.
* * *
‘‘Ich muss hinablaufen’’ – sagte ich zu mir – ‘‘an der Tür warten –
vielleicht werde ich die Stimme des Bruders hören, mag sein, dass er mich
wieder rufe. Nein, heute darf mich nichts zurückhalten! Mein Gott, wende
doch von meinem Bruder mingestens das rücksichtslose Lachen ab, bitte,
er soll es nicht hören; er leidet so viel, du hast sicher auch gehört, wie er
um Hilf ’e flehet!’’
Ich lief zu dem Zimmer meines Bruders. Da hielt mich etwas an. Als
ob ich versteinerte. Und wieder schallte das Lachen. Ich fühlte aber, als
ob es auf seinem Gipfel zersprang. Als ob ein Riss in ihm entstünde, eine
unübertretende Pause. Auf einmal innerhalb des unbarmherzigen, allgeg-
enwärtigen Lachens tauchte etwas für mich tief verständliches. Ich hörte
gespannt zu. Aus seinem Massiv stiegen leise menschliche Worte, nahe,
mitfühlende, barmherzige. Sie hatten keine Gestalt, aber sprachen sie zu
mir. Es war das Weinen der wehrlosen menschlichen Liebe, die das Kind
vor dem unbegreiflichen Leid und schmerlichen Sterben nicht retten
konnte: das Weinen meiner Mutter, welches das unmenschliche absolute
Lachen betäubte.
An diesem Morgen, wenn mich auf einmal das laute Lachen erweckte,
mein Bruder starb.
‘‘Höre, mein Gott, hörst du mich? Wo bist du?’’ – rief ich. Zum erstenmal
stand ich vor einer so lebendigen Wirklichkeit des Todes des geliebten
Menschen.‘‘Wo bist du, Gott, wenn ich deiner so viel brauche?’’
Ich fühlte, dass meine Kräfte nicht genügen, dass meine Bitten nicht
erhört bleiben, dass mein angebotenes Geschenk für die Rettung meines
Bruders nicht angenommen wurde. Ich konnte das nicht begreifen, ich
konnte auch nicht verstehen, dass hier etwas für immer zerbrach.
‘‘Zu wem soll jetzt, mein Gott, mein kleiner Bruder gehen? Welche
Arme bietest du ihm an? Bist du so fern, Allgegenwärtiger, dass du mich
nicht hören könntest? Bist du vielleicht auch todeskrank und wirst ster-
ben, oder bist du mit seinem Tode auch gestorben? Und wenn du, Gott,
auferstehen wirst und geheilt wirst, könntest du auch ihm wiederbeleben
und heilen? Werden alle Wunden, alle Kinderleiden in dir geheilt? Begreifst
du einmal alle Verzweiflungen und Sehnsucht der Menschenseele? Ist das
nicht auch deine Verzweiflung, deine Hoffnung, deine Sehnsucht? Welchen
Trost wirst du meiner Mutter geben, der die Krankheit den Sohn zum
Tode gemartert hat? Welchen Schutz würdest du den Unschludigen in
unerträglichen und unbegreiflichen Schmerzen leisten? Mein Gott, du
wohnst doch in uns, in uns bist du geboren, in uns lebst du und stirbst.
Mit uns leidest du doch auch. Warum bist du jetzt nicht mit mir? Wo
bist du? Du lebst in uns eingewohnt, doch auch in unserem Sterben und
316 EVA SYR̆IS̆T̆OVÁ
Ich kann nicht las entsetzliche Lachen vergessen, welches mich von
vielen Jahren aus dem Schlaf erweckte – das Lachen der absoluten Macht,
welche teilnahmslos vorbeigeht und verschlingt das Schicksal des
Menschen.
Mundloses Lachen, welches kein Dialog gestattet. Allmächtiges Lachen
der absoluten Wahrheit mit unendlich vielen Gesichter, zugleich ges-
ichtslos. Leer und gleichzeitig voll. Alles vereinigend In-Sich und Ausser-
Sich. Stets anwesend und abwesend. Die Wahrheit, die immer in die Zeit
eintritt und lebt vom Tode. Sie lauft unendlich in einem Punkt vorn und
zugleich zurück. Unaussprechlich und unansprechlich, sie täuscht uns in
allen Sprachen, die auftauchen und wieder zurückkehren in das keimvolle
Nichts des ewigen Schweigens. Die absolute Wahrheit, mächtig, aber
entgleist durch die Krankheit der menschlichen Unerfüllung,
Vergänglichkeit und das ewige Suchen. Wahnsinnige Wahrheit, die im
inneren Exil der menschlichen Angst und im blinden Tappen der Freibeit
beruht, und ohne diesen ihren eigenen Sinn und Spiegel verliert.
Das absolute Lachen, das mich vor Jahren enweckte und betäubte an
der Kante eines schmerzlichen Todes, war offensichtlich der Schöpfer und
zugleich Opfer seines eigenen Szenarium.
DAS LACHEN ALS DIE KEHRSEITE DER EXISTENZIELLEN NOT 317
Damals, zum erstenmal in der Kindheit begriff ich ganz klar, dass ich
nichts anderes tun kann – wenn ich weiter leben soll und das Vertrauen
in den Sinn meines eigenen Weges nicht verlieren – als in Grenzen meiner
Möglichkeiten das Menschenleiden zu mildern. In der menschlichen
Solidarität, teilnahmsvollen Miteinander-Sein suchte ich die Antwort auf
die philosophischen Fragen, so dringend geöffneten, in der vorzeitigen
Konfrontation mit Menschenleid und Sterben. Ich suchte eine Antwort
auf das unbegreifliches Lachen der absoluten Macht, welche den Namen
den höchsten Wahrbeit trägt.
Mit Erstaunen stehe ich vor der Genialität des Universum und seiner
Ordnung, welche aber tief verletzt und offen bleibt durch das Irren und
die immanente Transzendenz der menschlichen Freiheit.
Die Philosophie ist für mich ein inneres Imperativ sich an dem
Menschenschicksal teilnehmen und die Wege aus seiner geistigen und
physischen Not finden. Sie ist für mich die innerste Möglichkeit, wie sich
gegen Uebel, Menschenunglück und Katastrophen wehren.2
Charles University
Prague
ANMERKUNGEN
1 R. M. Rilke: Werke in zwei Bänden, Bd.1.S 93,94, Insel Verlag, Lepzig, 1958.
2 Dieser Artikel knüpft an die vorhergehende Publikationen des Autors:
E. Syr̆is̆t̆ová: Die gespaltene Zeit, Osveta, Martin, 1988.
E. Syr̆is̆t̆ová: Der Mensch in der kritischen Lebenssituationen, Karolinum, Prague, 1994.
E. Syr̆is̆t̆ová: Die imaginäre Welt, MF, Prague, 1973.
E. Syr̆is̆t̆ová: Die kreative Explosion der Träume in den Grenzsituationen des Lebens, Profil,
nr. 24, Bratislava, 1992.
INDEX OF NAMES
319
320 INDEX OF NAMES
PHENOMENOLOGY WORLD-WIDE
T heme
LOGOS OF PHENOMENOLOGY
AND PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE LOGOS
Historical Research; Great Phenomenological Issues;
Present Day Developments
The Congress begins at 4:00 p.m., Sunday, August 15, 2004, with an
Opening Reception and Registration on site, in the Cloister Garden, near
the Cloister, which is located behind the College Hall.
Registration on site will continue at 8:30 a.m. on Monday, August 16, in
the Auditorium.
Plenary sessions will run from 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 PM. Lunch will run
from 1:00 p.m. until 2:30 p.m.. The afternoon sessions will run from
2:30 p.m. until 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. (with a coffee break in the afternoon).
Coffee may be taken in your room or in the King’s Arms (a pub).
325
326 APPENDIX
PROGRAM
Monday, August 16
8:30 a.m. The Auditorium, Registration
PLENARY SESSION I
Chair: Grahame Lock, Oxford University, Great Britain
PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE HERMENEUTIC OF
TRADITIONS
Mafalda Blanc, Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon,
Portugal
ONTOLOGICAL INTENTIONS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM
Anatoly Zotov, Russia
SCIENCE IN MIND. EXPLORING THE LANGUAGE OF THE
LOGOS
Leo Zonneveld, The Netherlands
HEIDEGGER’S TAUTOLOGICAL THINKING AND THE
QUESTION CONCERNING THE END OF PHILOSOPHY
Tze-wan Kwan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Monday, August 16
2:30 p.m., The Auditorium
SESSION I:
PHENOMENOLOGY OF HISTORY
Organized and Presided by:
Mark E. Blum, University of Louisville, United States
PHENOMENOLOGICAL HISTORY AND
PHENOMENOLOGICAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
Mark E. Blum, University of Louisville, United States
APPENDIX 327
‘‘PHENOMENOLOGICAL HISTORY:
A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION’’
W ith the following participants:
Mark E. Blum, University of Louisville, United States
Kathleen Haney, University of Houston, United States
Filiz Peach, City University, Great Britain
Osborne Wiggins, University of Louisville, United States
Monday, August 16
2:30 p.m., Staircase 1 – Room 3
SESSION II:
FREEDOM, NECESSITY AND SELF-DETERMINATION
Chair: Maija Kule, University of Latvia, Latvia
Monday, August 16
2:30 p.m., Staircase 2 – Room 2
SESSION III:
LIVING TOGETHER IN THE PSYCHIATRIC PERSPECTIVE
Presided by: Simon Du Plock, Regents College, Great Britain
PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY
Simon Du Plock, Regents College, Great Britain
LOGOS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: PHENOMENON OF
ENCOUNTER AND HOPE IN THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC
RELATIONSHIP
Camilo Serrano Bonitto, Latinoamerican Circle of Phenomenology,
Colombia
THE MEANINGFULNESS OF MENTAL HEALTH AS BEING
WITHIN A WORLD OF APPARENT MEANINGLESS BEING
Jarlath McKenna, Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland
FUNCTION AND MEANING OF DESIRE IN DEPTH-
PSYCHOLOGY
Mina Sehdev, Italy
Monday, August 16
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 1
SESSION IV:
PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE HUMAN AND
SOCIAL SCIENCES
Organized and Presided by:
Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University, United States
TOWARD A CULTURAL PHENOMENOLOGY
Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University, United States
A SCHUTZ’S CONCEPTION OF RELEVANCE AND ITS
INFLUENCE ON SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
Natalia Smirnova, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
DEMONSTRATING MOBILITY
Anjana Bhattacharjee, Brunel University, Great Britain
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Tuesday, August 17
8:30 a.m., The Auditorium, Registration
9:00 a.m., The Auditorium
PLENARY SESSION II: CROSSING BRIDGES
Chair: Angela Ales Bello, Lateran University, Italy
SOME COMMENTS ON ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND
PHENOMENOLOGY
Grahame Lock, Oxford University, Great Britain
330 APPENDIX
Tuesday, August 17
2:30 p.m., The Auditorium
SESSION V:
PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION
Presided by:
Thomas Ryba, Notre Dame University, United States
BEFORE THE GENESIS: LEVINAS, MARION AND
TYMIENIECKA ON CONSTITUTION, GIVENNESS AND
TRANSCENDENCE
Thomas Ryba, St. Thomas Aquinas Center at Purdue, United States
MATER-NATALITY: AUGUSTINE, ARENDT, AND LEVINAS
Ann Astell, Purdue University, United States
LEVINAS AND THE NIGHT OF PHENOMENOLOGY
Sandor Goodhart, St. Thomas Aquinas Center at Purdue, United
States
THE POTENTIALITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF
PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION, WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO ISLAM
Aziz Esmail, Institute of Ismaili Studies, Great Britain
APPENDIX 331
Tuesday, August 17
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 2
SESSION VI:
PHENOMENOLOGICAL ORCHESTRATION OF THE ARTS
Presided by: Mao Chen, Skidmore College, United States
PHENOMENOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE WORK
OF ART: R. INGARDEN, M. DUFFREN, P. RICOEUR
Elga Freiberga, University of Latvia, Latvia
NATURAL BEAUTY AND LANDSCAPE PAINTING
David Brubaker, University of New Haven, United States
TOWARDS PHENOMENOLOGY OF NATURAL –
ARCHITECTURAL MEMORIAL
Ljudmila Molodkina, State University of Land Use Planning, Russia
PATINA – ATMOSPHERE – AROMA, TOWARDS AN
AESTHETICS OF FINE DIFFERENCES
Madalina Diaconu, Academy of Fine Arts, Austria
Tuesday, August 17
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 3
SESSION VII:
‘‘THE MOST DIFFICULT POINT’’: ‘‘THE BOND BETWEEN THE
FLESH AND THE IDEA’’ IN MERLEAU-PONTY’S LAST
THOUGHT
Organized and presided by:
Mauro Carbone, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy
LET IT BE
Mauro Carbone, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy
THE INVISIBLE AND THE FLESH. QUESTIONING CHIASM.
Patrick Burke, Seattle University, United States
MERLEAU-PONTY ON THE RELATION BETWEEN LOGOS
PROPHORIKOS AND LOGOS ENDIATHETOS
Wayne Froman, George Mason University, United States
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Tuesday, August 17
2:30 p.m., Staircase 1 – Room 3
ROUNDTABLE ON A-T. TYMIENIECKA’S PHENOMENOLOGY
OF LIFE
Presided by: Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University, United States
THE LOGOS OF LIFE AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
Agnes B. Curry, Saint Joseph College, United States
Lawrence Kimmel, Trinity University, United States
APPENDIX 333
ECOLOGY
Zaiga Ikere, Daugavpils Pedagogical University, Latvia
HUMAN CONDITION-IN-THE-UNITY-OF-EVERYTHING-ALIVE
AS A NEW CONCEPTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Mieczyslaw Pawel Migon, Gdansk, Poland
THE MEASURE
Carmen Cozma, University ‘‘Al.I.Cuza’’, Romania
THE NEW CRITIQUE OF REASON
Nancy Mardas, Saint Joseph College, United States
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Tuesday, August 17
2:30 p.m., Staircase 2 – Room 2
SESSION VIII:
DISCLOSURE AND DIFFERENTIATION:
THE GENESIS OF BEAUVOIR’S PHENOMENOLOGICAL VOICE
Presided by:
Laura Hengehold, Case Western Reserve University, United States,
and Shoichi Matsuba, Kobe City College of Nursing, Japan
BEAUVOIRIAN EXISTENTIALISM: AN ETHIC OF
INDIVIDUALISM OR INDIVIDUATION?
Laura Hengehold, Case Western Reserve University, United States
BEAUVOIR’S CONCEPT OF DISCLOSURE: ORIGINS AND
INFLUENCES
Kristana Arp, Long Island University, United States
THE ORIGINS OF BEAUVOIR’S PHENOMENOLOGICAL
METHOD
Edward Fullbrook, Case Western Reserve University, United States
334 APPENDIX
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Wednesday, August 18
8:30 a.m., The Auditorium, Registration
9:00 a.m., The Auditorium
PLENARY SESSION III:
LIFE IN NUMEROUS PERSPECTIVES
Presided by: Kadria Ismail, Ein-Shams University, Egypt
THE LANGUAGE OF OUR LIVING BODY
Angela Ales Bello, Lateran University, Italy
PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF THE NEW EVOLUTIONISTIC
PARADIGMS
Roberto Verolini, Italy, and Fabio Petrelli, Universita degli Studi de
Camerino, Italy
HUMAN BEING IN BEINGNESS: ANNA-TERESA
TYMIENIECKA’S VISION
Zaiga Ikere, Daugavpils Pedagogical University, Latvia
WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE EMBODIED, NATURALIZING
BODILY SELF-AWARENESS
Peter Reynaert, University of Antwerp, Belgium
SENSIBLE MODELS IN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Arthur Piper, University of Nottingham, Great Britain
Wednesday, August 18
2:30 p.m., The Auditorium
SYMPOSIUM
Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology in Dialogue
Around the Perennial Issue: MICROCOSM AND MACROCOSM
Organized and Presided by:
Nader El-Bizri, University of Cambridge, Great Britain
BEING AND NECESSITY: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL
APPENDIX 335
Wednesday, August 18
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 1
SESSION IX:
CLASSIC PROBLEMS OF PHENOMENOLOGY IN THEIR
TRANSFORMATION
Presided by: Carmen Cozma, University ‘‘Al.I.Cuza’’, Romania
THE FORMAL THEORY OF EVERYTHING: HUSSERL’S
THEORY OF MANIFOLDS
Nikolay Milkov, Universität Bielefeld, Germany
336 APPENDIX
Wednesday, August 18
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 2
ROUNDTABLE:
EPOCHÈ AND REDUCTION TODAY
Organized and Presided by:
Michael Staudigl, Institute for Human Sciences, Austria
INTRODUCTION: EPOCHÈ AND REDUCTION AFTER
HUSSERL
Michael Staudigl, Institute for Human Sciences, Austria
CONCEPTION OF TIME IN HUSSERL’S SOCIAL WORLDS –
MODERN PERSPECTIVE OF ‘‘METAXU’’
Cezary J. Olbromski, University Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej, Poland
ON SCHUTZ CONCERNING THE TRANSCENDENTAL
REDUCTION
Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University, United States
GENERAL DISCUSSION
Wednesday, August 18
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 3
SESSION X:
TIME, ALTERITY, AND SUBJECTIVITY: REFLECTIONS ON
THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY OF
EMMANUEL LEVINAS
Organized and Presided by:
Richard Sugarman, University of Vermont, United States
GENERAL DISCUSSION
338 APPENDIX
Wednesday, August 18
2:30 p.m., Staircase 1 – Room 3
SESSION XI:
Chair:
Francesco Totaro, University Degli Studi di Macerata, Italy
and Ignacy Fiut, Krakow, Poland
LES FIGURES DE L’INTERSUBJECTIVITÉ CHEZ HUSSERL
Maria Manuela Brito Martins, Universidade do Porto, Portugal
ESSENTIAL INDIVIDUALITY: ON THE NATURE OF A PERSON
Roberta de Monticelli, University of Geneva, Switzerland
EGO-MAKING PRINCIPLE IN CLASSICAL INDIAN
METAPHYSICS AND COSMOLOGY
Marzenna Jakubczak, Pedagogical University of Krakow, Poland
Wednesday, August 18
2:30 p.m., Staircase 2 – Room 2
SESSION XII:
TIME, CONSCIOUSNESS AND HISTORICITY
Presided by: Kathleen Haney, University of Houston, United States
THE PRINCIPLE OF HISTORICITY IN THE
PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE
Maija Kule, University of Latvia, Latvia
TIME AND HISTORY IN P. RICOEUR’S THOUGHT
Marı́a Avelina Cecilia Lafuente, University of Seville, Spain
APPENDIX 339
Thursday, August 19
9:00 a.m., The Auditorium
PLENARY SESSION IV:
THE LIVING SPACE
Presided by: Jorge Garcia-Gomez, Southampton College, United States
LIVING SPACES: THE LANDSCAPES OF HUMAN LIFE
W. Kim Rogers, East State Tennessee State University, United States
DISCUSSION ON THE NOTIONS OF ‘‘LIFE’’ AND
‘‘EXISTENTIA’’ IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS OF
HEIDEGGER AND MERLEAU-PONTY
Maria Golebiewska, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
VARIATIONS OF THE SENSIBLE, TRUTH OF IDEAS AND IDEA
OF PHILOSOPHY MOVING FROM THE LATER MERLEAU-
PONTY
Mauro Carbone, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE OF ANNA-TERESA
TYMIENIECKA IN RELATION TO HER ANTHROPOLOGICAL
CONCEPTION
Mieczyslaw Pawel Migon, Gdansk, Poland
PHENOMENOLOGY AND ECOPHILOSOPHY
Ignacy Fiut, Krakow, Poland
340 APPENDIX
Thursday, August 19
2:30 p.m., The Auditorium
Roundtable (and lectures)
GREAT CLASSICAL QUESTIONS REVISITED
Presided by: Andreas Brenner, University of Basel, Switzerland
STRUCTURE AND THE CRITIQUE OF EVIDENCE
Helena De Preester, Ghent University, Belgium, and Gertrudis Van de
Vijver, Ghent University, Belgium
DESCARTES AND ORTEGA ON THE FATE OF INDUBITABLE
KNOWLEDGE
Jorge Garcia-Gomez, Southampton College, United States
Thursday, August 19
2:30 p.m., Staircase 1 – Room 3
SESSION XIII:
Presided by: Carmen Balzer, Universidad Católica Argentina, Argentina
PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHODOLOGOS IN
CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
Rimma Kurenkova, Vladimir Pedagogical Institute, Russia
Y. A. Plekhanov, Vladimir Pedagogical Institute, Russia
Elena Rogacheva, Vladimir Pedagogical Institute, Russia
APPENDIX 341
Thursday, August 19
2:30 p.m., Staircase 2 – Room 2
SESSION XIV:
PHENOMENOLOGY AND LITERATURE
Presided by:
Jadwiga Smith, Bridgewater State College, United States
Thursday, August 19
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 1
Presentation of our ‘‘Encyclopedia of Learning’’:
PHENOMENOLOGY WORLD-WIDE
Foundations – Expanding dynamics – Life-engagements
A Guide for Research and Study
Robert D. Sweeney, John Carroll University, United States
Jadwiga Smith, Bridgewater State College, United States
Kathleen Haney, University of Houston, United States
Thursday, August 19
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 2
SESSION XV:
Presided by:
Robert D. Sweeney, John Carroll University, United States
UNDERSTANDING OF CULTURE IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY
OF LIFE
Rihards Kulis, University of Latvia, Latvia
LIFE WORLD BETWEEN SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL
EXPERIENCE: ON ‘‘EUROPEAN CRISIS’’
Andrina Tonkli Komel, Slovenia
TIME, SPACE AND BEING IN THE WORLD THROUGH THE
LIFE COURSE
Judith A. Glonek, Somerton, Australia
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL
CONCEPTION IN THE WORKS OF A-T. TYMIENIECKA WITH
SOME ISSUES OF CONTEMPORARY GEORGIAN
PHENOMENOLOGY
Mamuka G. Dolidze, Institute of Philosophy, Tblisi, Georgia
APPENDIX 343
Friday, August 20
9:00 a.m., The Auditorium
PLENARY SESSION V:
WORLD OF LIFE, CULTURE, COMMUNICATION
Presided by:
Tze-wan Kwan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
IMAGINARY WORLD AND WORLD OF LIFE. MASS
COMMUNICATION AS NEW ‘‘IDEENKLEID’’ AND
IMPLICATIONS OF SENSE
Francesco Totaro, University Degli Studi di Macerata, Italy
THE INTERFACING OF LANGUAGE AND WORLD
Erkut Sezgin, İstanbul Kültür Üniversitese (İ.K.Ü.) & İstanbul Teknik
Üniversitesi, Turkey
LES DEPENDANCES INTER-SUBJECTIVES OU LE LANGUAGE
ET LA COMMUNICATION JOUENT UN ROLE IMPORTANT
Jozef Sivák, Filozoficky Ustav Sav, Slovakia
LIFEWORLD: MEANING OF SIGNS AND COMMUNICATION
Ella Buceniece, University of Latvia, Latvia
PHENOMENOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS OF
INTERMEDIACY AND THE CONSTITUTION OF
INTERCULTURAL SENSE
Dean Komel, Slovenia
ARENDT’S REVISION OF PRAXIS: ON PLURALITY AND
NARRATIVE EXPERIENCE
William D. Melaney, American University in Cairo, Egypt
344 APPENDIX
Friday, August 20
2:30 p.m., The Auditorium
SESSION XVI:
PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AS A NEW EXCAVATION
INTO THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL FIELD
Presided by:
Angela Ales Bello, Lateran University, Italy
Friday, August 20
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 3
SESSION XVII:
THE MORAL SENSE OF LIFE
Presided by:
Marı́a Avelina Cecilia Lafuente, University of Seville, Spain
MORAL ASPECTS OF LIFE
Tadeusz Czarnik, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Poland
THE PRINCIPLE OF GRATEFULNESS: THE
PHENOMENOLOGY OF GIVING AS THE CONSCIOUSNESS
OF ONE’S OWN IDENTITY AGAINST A BACKGROUND OF
GLOBALIZATION
Shannon Driscoll, Pontifical Georgian University, Rome, Italy
THE CREATIONISM OF LEONARDO COIMBRA AND THE
SAUDADE AS A MORAL GIFT
Maria Teresa de Noronha, Universidade Aberta, Portugal
Friday, August 20
2:30 p.m., Staircase 1 – Room 3
SESSION XVIII:
EXPERIENCE AND LOGOS IN FINE ARTS
Presided by:
Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Siena College, United States
346 APPENDIX
Friday, August 20
2:30 p.m., Staircase 2 – Room 2
SESSION XIX:
PHENOMENOLOGY IN THE DIALOGUE WITH THE SCIENCES
Presided by: Leszek Pyra, Poland
‘‘OBJECTIVE SCIENCE’’ IN HUSSERLIAN LIFE-WORLD
PHENOMENOLOGY
Aria Omrani, Isfahan, Iran
APPENDIX 347
Friday, August 20
2:30 p.m., Staircase 9 – Room 1
SESSION XX:
HEIDEGGERIAN PHENOMENOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY
ISSUES IN ANGLO-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY
Organized and Presided by:
Mark Wrathall, Brigham Young University, United States
HEIDEGGER ON LANGUAGE AND ESSENCES
Mark Wrathall, Brigham Young University, United States
HEIDEGGER’S PERFECTIONIST PHILOSOPHY OF
EDUCATION, OR: BILDUNG IN BEING AND T IME
Iain Thomson, University of New Mexico, United States
348 APPENDIX
7:00 p.m., Friday, August 20: Farewell dinner at Wadham College, tickets
to be ordered at registration (18.50 pounds).
Organization Committee:
Keith Ansell-Pearson, Gary Banham, Ullrich Haase, Matthew Landrus,
Grahame Lock (Great Britain); William Smith, Chair.
Program Director:
Professor Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, World Institute for Advanced
Phenomenological Research and Learning, Hanover, NH, USA.
Assisted by: Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University, United States;
Tadeusz Czarnik, Jagiellonian University, Poland
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