Bollettino Filosofico

Tracce agostiniane negli scritti di Husserl

Angela Ales Bello — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:10:58 +0000

The aim of my paper is to examine the presence of certain philosophical arguments of Augustine of Hippo in Husserlian phenomenology. This investigation is made possible by the citation of Augustine’s famous saying, “noli foras te ire, in interiore homine habitat veritas”, in three of Husserl's works concerning the transcendental reduction, the theme of time, and ethical-religious questions. In addition to these three fundamental aspects of phenomenological analysis, one must also consider philosophical anthropology and the relationship between the Divine and the human being. There are numerous traces of Augustine in Husserl’s analyses: some are explicitly referenced, while others can be uncovered through a comparative study of the two thinkers’ works. The connection with Augustine is therefore particularly significant in relation to theories of knowledge, anthropology, and Husserl’s unique “metaphysics”.

Keywords: Ethical-Religious Questions, Interiority, Time, Transcendental Reduction, Truth

Giudizio e realtà. Dalla kantiana Confutazione dell’idealismo alla fenomenologia trascendentale

Andrea Altobrando — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Why did Husserl never offer a “Refutation of Idealism”? The theoretical confrontation with Kant’s transcendental philosophy is certainly one, and one of the few, that seriously and repeatedly engaged Husserl throughout his philosophical career. Moreover, at least since the first volume of the “Ideas”, Husserl has again and again had to confront accusations of solipsism, subjectivism, and idealism. Would it not, therefore, have been natural to take up the Kantian lesson precisely in this regard, to possibly correct or modify it according to the phenomenological viewpoint?

In this contribution I try to show the reasons why Husserlian transcendental phenomenology would not, in fact, need a refutation of idealism, provided, however, and contrary to what Husserl often seems to do, one does not “internalize” (all) sensations, and, especially, not their “contents”.

Keywords: Judgement, Reality, Refutation of Idealism, Sensations, Transcendental Phenomenology

Una requisitoria a tratti simpatetica. Il corpo a corpo tra la fenomenologia trascendentale husserliana e il trascendentalismo di Kant

Stefano Besoli — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 17:54:37 +0000

This essay develops a comparison between Kant’s transcendental idealism and Husserlian transcendental phenomenology. The theme of the transcendental is at the centre of Husserl’s interest, who aims to highlight the teleological motif that emerges in the history of modern philosophy. In particular, it was shown how in the transition from static phenomenology to genetic-constitutive phenomenology Husserl’s detachment from Kant manifested itself with increasing clarity, through Husserl’s criticism of Kant’s method of transcendentalism, his theory of knowledge, the so-called revolutionary Copernican turn, the Kant’s doctrine of the faculties of the soul and presupposition of absolute things in themselves, which introduced psychologistic and anthropologistic aspects into Kant’s thought. The profound diversity that reigns between Kantian idealism and the peculiar form of idealism claimed by Husserl concerns, above all, the respective conception of experience and transcendental subjectivity, from which derives the Husserlian need to reformulate the field of transcendental aesthetics, privileging from the constitutive point of view the theme of embodiment and intersubjectivity.

Keywords: Achievement, Constitution, Experience, Phenomenology, Transcendental, Transcendentalism

La nozione di filosofia prima in Husserl e nella tradizione filosofica

Vincenzo Costa — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 18:11:55 +0000

In the transition from descriptive phenomenology to transcendental phenomenology, the Husserlian notion of philosophy takes on the aspect of a first philosophy. It indicates a field of “preliminary” research, which comes first, since it must clarify the concepts that all sciences use, as well as the relations that the various regional ontologies entertain. This outlines the Husserlian notion of first philosophy. In the last part of the paper, we try to highlight the structural differences that separate it from the notion of first philosophy in Aristotle, Descartes and Hume.

Keywords: First Philosophy, Insight, Metaphysics, Phenomenology, Subjectivity

Immanence, idéalité et inclusion: Husserl lecteur de Berkeley

Julien Farges — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 18:29:28 +0000

This article examines the relationship between Husserlian phenomenology and Berkeley’s empiricism and attempts to reconstruct the reasons why, despite the untenable nature of Berkeley’s immaterialism, Husserl recognizes nevertheless its crucial importance for the idea of phenomenology. First, the paper shows that Berkeley’s intermediate position between Locke and Hume enables Husserl to see in his empiricism a philosophy of pure immanence capable of raising the question of the foundation of transcendence without falling into skepticism. It then shows that Berkeley’s phenomenological critique, on both sides of the transcendental turn, relies on the idea of intentional content to demonstrate that ideality can be included in this immanence without being reduced to one of its parts.

Keywords: Berkeley, Husserl, Immanence, Ideality, Inclusion

Phenomenology as First Philosophy and Metaphysics. Some Thoughts on Husserl’s Method and System

Sebastian Luft — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 16:30:21 +0000

In this article, I shall address some of the central points tied to his claim that phenomenology should come forth as “first philosophy”. Understanding these can help the reader understand the main intentions driving Husserl. But before that, I will start out with a simple definition of what phenomenology is; this will provide the basis for my discussion of Husserl’s attempt to bring phenomenology forth as first philosophy.

Keywords: Husserl, First Philosophy, Descartes, Aristoteles, Phenomenology, Transcendental Philosophy

Il filosofo e il suo doppio. Husserl tra fenomenologia, sofistica e contro-storia della filosofia

Claudio Majolino — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 16:45:55 +0000

This essay addresses the relationship between phenomenology, the history of philosophy, and sophistry. Its aim is to emphasize the originality of Husserl’s claim according to which the sophist is, somehow, the “doppelganger” of the philosopher. At first, two main figures in the phenomenological tradition are examined: Brentano and Heidegger. Both authors, in fact, also discussed the role of sophistry in the history of philosophy. The way in which Husserl conceives the history of the idea of philosophy and the historical function of Protagoras and, especially, Gorgias are then examined in detail. After a series of comparative remarks, this essay concludes by highlighting the philosophical function of the confrontation between philosophy and sophistry as it is emphasized by Husserl.

Keywords: Brentano, Heidegger, History of Philosophy, Husserl, Sophists

Empirisme et phénoménologie: Husserl et l’empirisme humien

Dominique Pradelle — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 17:20:49 +0000

What position does English empiricism, especially Hume’s, occupy within the history of philosophy as conceived by Husserl? Did English empiricism anticipate the phenomenological problem of the transcendental constitution of objects by consciousness or, on the contrary, act as an epistemological obstacle by failing to recognize the intentional essence of consciousness? Leaving aside the question of Husserlian nominalism, we focus here on what Husserl calls his fictionalism, i.e. his theory of object identity as a fiction produced by the imagination. The contribution of Hume’s empiricism to transcendental phenomenology is to have thematized the field of cogitationes, where Descartes had concentrated on the evidence of the cogito alone, and to have posed the problem of the relation of consciousness to an external and permanent object. But his essential limitation is to have conceived this field on the model of material nature, and to have sought to provide a genetic explanation for the shared belief in the existence of external objects; in so doing, he misses the intentional essence of consciousness and the ideal status of the external thing.

Keywords: Associationism, Constitution, Empiricism, Exteriority, Fictionalism, Imagination, Immanence, Intentionality, Permanence, Phenomenology

Il campo di battaglia di ragione e sentimento. Husserl sulla storia della filosofia alla ricerca di un’etica fenomenologica

Inga Römer — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 17:37:00 +0000

Husserl’s search for a phenomenological ethics, initially conceived of as a practical science analogous to an a priori theoretical science, was shaped by several historical sources. The article shows which sources influenced Husserl in what way. A first part discusses Brentano’s and Jodl’s influence on how Husserl approaches ethics. Part two to five follow Husserl’s interpretations and critique of the history of ethics from Socrates to Fichte. A final part discusses the history of ethics viewed from the standpoint of Husserl’s late ethics. The article culminates in the question as to whether Husserl’s conception of ethics stood in a certain tension to what he actually discovered in his phenomenological analyses of ethical phenomena.

Keywords: Brentano, Feeling, Fichte, Jodl, Husserl, Reason, Shaftesbury

Hegel and Husserl on Perception. A Phenomenological Dispute

Andrea Sebastiano Staiti — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 17:54:26 +0000

In this paper I stage a phenomenological dispute between Hegel and Husserl on the essence of perception. I argue that Hegel’s dialectical reconstruction of perceptual experience in the Phenomenology of Spirit hinges on two problematic assumptions: (1) the properties of perceptual objects are universals; (2) the way in which sensory properties determine perceptual objects is a kind of negation. I challenge both assumptions drawing on Husserl analysis of perception in Experience and Judgment. On Husserl’s account perceptual objects are not originally experienced as “things-of-multiple-properties”, as Hegel would have it, but rather as inarticulate perceptual wholes. Only through explicative contemplation do perceptual properties become salient and when they do so, they do not negate each other or the object but are rather taken up in a special kind of synthesis of partial coincidence. I conclude with a recapitulation and point toward the relevance of the disagreement between Hegel and Husserl for any future discussion of conceptualism and non-conceptualism in the philosophy of perception.

Keywords: Conceptualism/Non-Conceptualism, Hegel, Husserl, Perception, Phenomenology

Filosofia “more geometrico” e metafisica della sostanza. Husserl e l’oggettivismo di Cartesio

Emiliano Trizio — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 18:14:44 +0000

This article approaches Husserl’s critique of Descartes by focusing on the issue of the scientificity of philosophy. In particular, it consists in an attempt to answer the following three questions: 1) What is the historical origin of the unprecedented form of objectivism that characterizes Descartes’ philosophy, and, after him, the entire modern rationalist tradition? 2) How did this form of objectivism shape the outcomes of Descartes’ thought, and caused him to miss the goal of a genuinely scientific universal philosophy? 3) How did Descartes’ objectivism become intertwined with a metaphysics based on the concept of substance, i.e., a metaphysics that transcendental phenomenology has the task of overcoming?

Keywords: Descartes, Husserl, Metaphysics, Objectivism, Substance

Una storia di fantasia. Sul metodo storico-filosofico di Husserl e sulla storicità produttiva

Lorenzo Biagini — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 18:28:56 +0000

This article focuses on Husserl’s historical-philosophical method as outlined in The Crisis of European Sciences. My main goal is to understand why in his view philosophical historicity can be considered productive. I will first address Husserl’s idea of historical-teleological reflection emphasizing the existential and linguistic dimension of the phenomenological Rückfrage. I will then develop these aspects by referring to the way Adorno interprets the connection between history, terminology, and phantasy. Finally, Ricoeur’s analyses of productive imagination will clarify how the philosopher can construct the teleological and dialectical unity of history as a “philosophical poem”. These steps will allow to conclude that philosophical historicity is artistic and scientific at the same time, and that it is productive insofar as it is founded on the generative power of imagination.

Keywords: Husserl, Motivation, Productive Historicity, Productive Imagination, Teleology

La monadologia husserliana

Daniela De Leo Giorgio Rizzo — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 18:46:32 +0000

This paper investigates the encounter, dialogue, and contamination of Leibnizian monadology in phenomenology. It analyzes both the theoretical-phenomenological motivations that led the German phenomenologist to reintroduce the notion of the monad and the consequent intersubjective path that enabled a more solid degree of objectivity, through the “res publica” of monads or their harmonic agreement. Additionally, it examines the critical issues in Husserl's interpretation. The aim is to highlight that the Monadenlehre develops on a plane of theoretical and historical immanence which takes over and modifies the results of Leibniz’s philosophy. All this serves to emphasize that the thoughts of the philosopher from Leipzig, embedded in phenomenological reflection, come back to life, initiating a new spiritual generativity, even though the historical reconstruction conducted by the phenomenologist is sometimes confused and naive.

Keywords: Intersubjectivity, Metaphysics, Monadology, Phenomenology, Spiritual Generativity

Husserl e la storia della filosofia. Descartes come caso di studio esemplare

Stefano Franchini — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 14:13:16 +0000

In this article, I will reflect on Husserl’s references to Descartes’ philosophy. My aim is to show why Descartes can be considered an exemplary case within Husserl’s investigations on history of philosophy. In the first part, I will consider the image of Descartes in Husserl’s philosophy, which remains virtually unchanged until his late work. Then I will stress the ambivalence that runs through Husserl’s evaluation of the French philosopher. In the second part of this article, after discussing the meaning of Husserl’s Dichtung der Philosophiegeschichte and Crisis’ zig-zag method, I will debate the reasons behind the corrections Husserl makes to Descartes’ thought. Finally, in the third session, I will show Descartes’ function for the philosophy of the present.

Keywords: Cogito, Descartes, History of Philosophy, Husserl, Idea of Philosophy

Husserl e l’empiriocriticismo. L’interrelazione tra io, corpo e mondo nella costituzione dell’esperienza

Edoardo Fugali — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 14:44:04 +0000

The contribution investigates the influence of Avenarius and Mach’s empiriocriticism on Husserl’s phenomenology. Despite his critical reservations, Husserl acknowledges the role of both in anticipating his phenomenological method and appreciates their critique of materialistic metaphysics and the prevailing physicalism in psychology. Phenomenology and empiriocriticism share the goal of a science of conscious experience, free from reductionism and capable of preserving the specificity of its object. Husserl adopts Mach’s analyses of the living body and spatial sensations, developing a phenomenology of kinesthesia in which transcendental consciousness, body, and world are fully integrated. This approach influences his theory of constitution, aimed at overcoming Cartesian dualism and adequately accounting for the subject’s rootedness in the world.

Keywords: Empiriocriticism, Lived Body, Natural World, Phenomenology, Transcendental Consciousness

La historische Besinnung del vero essere. L’attualità della teleologia fenomenologica di Husserl

Nicoletta Ghigi — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 14:59:48 +0000

Human reason, according to Husserl, is guided by a telos, by an entelechy that aims at the progress of human reason itself and that unfolds in history. But if this path is diverted or interrupted by a false entelechy, then teleology loses its goal and the telos reverses course towards a “decadent technique” in which the “foundations” and the “sense of reason” are lost and “forgotten”. It is the philosophers who have the task of reactivating the original teleology and bringing it back into evidence, through a historical awareness of the telos that constantly manifests itself in history.

Keywords: Entelechy, Historische Besinnung, Reason, Teleology, Zweckidee

Husserl, Cohen e Cassirer

Luigi Laino — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 15:13:22 +0000

In this essay, I will discuss the concept of historical teleology in Husserl, Cohen and Cassirer. I will distinguish between a “strong” and a “weak” teleology to define two paths that seem to enliven transcendental philosophy. On the one hand, the strong option is underpinned by more general hypotheses on the relationship concerning “consciousness” and “reality”, “thought” and “being”, as well as it gives rise to an “archaeo-teleology”; on the other hand, the weak option tones down the substantial unity of this framework and enables a comparative approach. Therefore, I will show that the most important difference between strong and weak teleology revolves around the emphasis respectively put on the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem, but I will also draw attention to the intertwining of these two strategies.

Keywords: Culture, Origin, Science, Teleology, Weltgeschichte

Husserl e la storia della logica

Felice Masi — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 18:05:16 +0000

The essay aims to examine the role that the history of logic, in its different versions, has played in Husserlian thought. The essay consists of five paragraphs. In the first, I will go back over some preparatory material to the 1890-91 review of Schröder, in which the role of Viète and his specious algebra is mentioned for the first time, and the 1895 lectures on the history of contemporary logic. In the second, I will go back to the 1887-88 manuscripts on the history and philosophy of mathematics (in which Kant and, above all, Hume are discussed), then follow their development in 1896, when logic as a theoretical discipline is included, and in 1908, where an early reference to the Stoic theory of lektòn appears. In the third section, I will address the connection between the 1913 reduction of logic with the historical-critical analysis of the apophantic-formal analytic of 1923-24 and the distinction between rationalisation, comprehension and logification of the same years, through which the problem of the ideal genesis of the idea of rigorous science is posed. In section four, however, I will address the brief history of logic that Husserl composes in 1929, within Formal and Transcendental Logic, in which the link between Stoics and Viète, i.e. between symbolic knowledge and algebra, is now explicit, and in which the historical problem of logic is intimately connected to that of rationality as a praxis of responsibility and control, and the link between the documentation of the sciences and the creation of communities professionally concerned with truth is evident. Finally, in the conclusions, I will try to show how and why, in Crisis, the order of historical prominence goes from physical geometry to modern logic, and not vice versa.

Keywords: Algebra of Logic, History of Logic, Mathematical Logic, Phenomenological Logic

Edonismo, sentimentalismo morale e riflessione emotiva. Husserl e la storia del dibattito in etica

Alessandro Poltronieri — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 18:22:09 +0000

Husserl had never hidden the essentially ethical connotation of phenomenological practice. Since it is configured as an attitude, phenomenology cannot ignore the ethical dimension in which it is necessarily inscribed. The same goes for history: before being an objectum with which the phenomenologist must deal, history is a dimension in which the phenomenologist carries out his research. Therefore, it is fruitful to look at the investigation that Husserl pursues on the history of ethics. In the introduction to ethics course of 1920-24 Husserl tackles hedonism and moral sentimentalism. Both perspectives have seen, without becoming authentically aware of it, the transcendental role played by feeling acts [Gemütsakte] with respect to the axiological sphere. Husserlian phenomenology aims to bring this discovery to consciousness, showing its advantages in ethical debate.

Keywords: Ethics, Hedonism, History, Husserl, Sentimentality

Husserl storico delle idee, fra foreste e ontologie regionali

Carlo Serra — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 18:39:32 +0000

Critical History of Ideas is the title Husserl gave to a series of lectures in 1932, focusing on the history of the relationship between truth and perception and to phenomenological reduction. These lectures form the first part of a course dedicated to Erste Philosophie (First Philosophy: Critical History of Ideas and Theory of the Phenomenological Reduction). Their purpose is to reconstruct the genesis of the structural problems of phenomenology through historical perspective. Plato, Descartes, Locke, Hume, and Berkeley are interpreted as opportunities to focus on the fundamental themes of phenomenology. In this sui generis history of ideas, the most substantial section is devoted to the reconstruction of empiricism and its skeptical outcome. This highlights a form of elective affinity between the empiricist world and the phenomenological field, engaging Husserl in remarkable discussions that go far beyond mere historical reconstruction of the genesis of ideas. The underlying intuition of these lectures is that the history of philosophy can be seen as a precursor to philosophical themes, and that there is a common ground of truth between traditions, which must be tested in a typically Platonic dialogic form.

Keywords: Acknowledgment, Empiricism, Identity, Immanence, Phenomenological Reduction, Skepticism, Synthesis of Aspects