Irene Breuer

This paper aims to pay tribute to Figal’s comprehensive and innovative analysis of the artwork and beauty, while challenging both his realist position on the immediacy of meaning and his monist stance that reduces sublimity to beauty. To enquire into the origin of aesthetic feelings and sense, and thus, to break the hermeneutic circle, we first trace the origin of this reduction to the reception of Burke’s concept of the sublime by Mendelssohn and Kant. We then recur to Husserl and Dufrenne to trace the origin of the sense of the feeling of sublimity in the realm of affectivity or sensuousness. This genesis takes place in passive experience, where we identify an excess of sensuous sense over categorial meaning that is constitutive of the affective sense that our bodily sensations give to hyletic material. It is argued that this sensuous excess evokes a sublime experience in the phenomenological sense, involving an affective and disruptive bodily experience and an endless process of sense formation. Affective or sensuous sense is thus an event that irreversibly affects the bodily surface. To elucidate this phenomenon, we draw on the theoretical framework of Breton and Bataille, positing it as a form-transgressive ‘convulsive’ sublime, which we then illustrate in the architectural works of Tschumi and Eisenman. In short, we have retrieved the origin of aesthetic experience and redefined the feeling of the sublime as a phenomenological ‘convulsive’ sublimity.

Husserl’s conception of humanism has ethical roots: philosophers as “functionaries of mankind” are committed to a “renewal” of reason and to the creation of a “new humanity” that transcends all cultural particularisms. In his later ethics, however, he grounds rationality in affectivity, such that rational life becomes a personal life guided by love. Hence, the task of renewing reason can only be accomplished based on the human person as a moral person. The constitution of a moral person takes place, so I contend, in three steps: firstly, a human being must be ontologically constituted as person; secondly, it must be constituted as a subject that empathizes with others within a community; and thirdly, it must be a moral person that acts on the grounds of reason based on the recognition of what is truly good, and most importantly, guided by love. The ethical life of a person is therefore interwoven with the ethical life of a community as an intertwining of not only responsibilities and duties but of love. The ultimate telos of the ethical life is a communitarian ideal, which at its highest degree embraces humanity as a community bound by love and striving towards rational ends.

Heraclitus establishes the philosophical thinking as a new form of episteme, philosophy, which he opposes to doxa. Logos or the ideal of rationality is common not only to both, but to the godly kósmos and the human soul. The difference lies in “how” it is followed: while philosophical thinking is ruled by “what is common” (xynós), the majority follow their own insights (idia phrónesis). True wisdom implies an ideal of rationality that is based on the common, the logos. It is the rational insight into this cosmic order that allows access to wisdom (to sophon). These propositions are ultimately interpreted phenomenologically.

This contribution explores Julia Iribarne’s philosophical research into Husserlian transcendental intersubjectivity and the constitution of a transcendental ethics. It reveals the inseparability of ethics and metaphysics and considers the implications of this for questions concerning the meaning of life. Particular attention is given to the dialogue between this philosophy and literature. Building on Husserl's work, she proposes establishing a transcendental ethics grounded in transcendental equality between one's own being and that of others, and in freedom and mutual responsibility. The overarching theme of her work is the meaning of life, which she addresses in her unique ethical philosophy through the concept of 'decentered centring'. According to Iribarne, only by assuming responsibility for ourselves and for others in a community bound by love can our whole life gain dignity and ethical meaning. This is Iribarne’s central message. It is undeniably topical.

This article deals with Conrad-Martius’s conceptions of reality as “wirkliche Wirklichkeit”, being, existence, and essence and sets them in relation to the conceptions of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Husserl. It delves into the problems of both the hypostatization of being, where I assert that it concerns the noema itself, and the origin of being in particular. I claim that even though Conrad-Martius rejects the transcendental reduction, Conrad-Martius accepts the eidetic reduction and the positing of a sphere of original and given facts, whose origin Conrad-Martius traces back to a transphysical realm, thus revealing the grounds for the Husserlian sphere of primal facts, which itself remains beyond the reach of phenomenological enquiries. Hence, Conrad-Martius’s and Husserl’s investigations encounter and complement each other at the point where the real bursts into reality and becomes available for consciousness.

In architecture, typology is understood as a regulative principle for design that is interwoven with history and the respective context. It arises in opposition to the literal concept of imitation, which is based on the repetition of certain timeless models. Types are the end product of fundamental systematic, analogical, rational, and combinatory processes that unfold between recognition of a historical context and subsumption under universal laws of geometry. Types fulfilled the function of representing social values, such that, based mainly on Cassirer’s theory of symbolic forms, we will argue that architectural types can be understood as the imaginary processing of symbolic forms – a basic idea that opposes the reduction of type to a trivial classification of forms and functions that is common today. Therefore, a renewed conception of architectural typology proves to be an unavoidable task of architectural discourse.

This chapter deals with the role of gender in place and enquires into the ways in which the question of space and place is already inscribed into the question of sexuality. I claim that from antiquity to modern times, women have usually been the object of the other’s gaze, being thus reduced to an image. Architecture provided a frame for the feminine body, a body that ‘orchestrated’ the male gaze directed at it to produce the effect of interiority or containment, the ‘proper place’ of women. This strategy concealed the fact that it was this panoptic gaze which produced this space of women’s confinement, thereby instituting a masculine space of control and discipline. Contemporary tendencies in architecture break with this long-lasting tradition by both annuling impositions on gendered attributions of place and conceiving of a fluid and hierarchy-free space, thus allowing for the intertwinement of bodies and spaces as flesh.

This paper enquires into a paradigmatic change concerning the concept of motion: from a phenomenological conception of motion understood as a continuous and finite process of translation, to a physical conception of motion as rectilinear, uniform and continuous, that is, as an inertial state that if unhindered, can extend infinitely – the former held by Aristotle, the latter by Koyré, a shift that is evidenced by their contrasting treatment of Zeno’s paradoxes. I argue that both ontologies of motion can be understood in phenomenological terms: Motion is accomplished by the real itself. However, while Aristotle’s continuous motion as actualization of the form of a given body involves its formal determination and constitution of sense, Koyré’s conceives of motion and rest as kinds of being and motion itself as exemplifcation of the mathematization of nature that Husserl described in the Crisis. Taken together, these changes presuppose a transformation of metaphysical and epistemic frameworks.

El artículo se centra en el filósofo argentino Eugenio Pucciarelli (1907-1995) y su recepción de la fenomenología, a la que confiere un sesgo humanista. Se procederá a una introducción a su contribución a la fenomenología en América Latina y se abordarán los siguientes temas: 1) la misión de la filosofía, las diversas vías de acceso a su esencia, en particular aquellas de Scheler, Dilthey y Husserl, 2) su recepción de Husserl en cuanto concierne a los ideales de ciencia y de razón, 3) la crisis de la razón y de la evidencia, 4) su concepción pluralista de la razón, del tiempo y de la cultura, 5) humanismo y libertad. La tesis sostiene que su concepción de la filosofía, que enfatiza la dimensión personal y el compromiso social de la práctica filosófica, revela un profundo humanismo pluralista que no descuida su función militante y crítica, evidenciado así la actualidad de su mensaje.

This paper focuses on the Argentine philosopher Eugenio Pucciarelli (1907–1995) and his critical reception of phenomenology. It introduces to his contribution to phenomenology in the context of its early reception in Argentina and addresses the following issues: 1) the mission of philosophy, the various ways of accessing its essence, in particular those of Scheler, Dilthey and Husserl, 2) his reception of Husserl as far as the ideals of science and reason are concerned, 3) the crisis of reason 4) his pluralistic conception of reason and time, and finally, to 5) his humanistic stance. I argue that his conception of philosophy, which emphasizes the personal dimension and the social commitment of philosophical practice as well as the relentless search for unshakeable foundations of knowledge as carried out by Husserl, is underpinned by a pluralistic conception of reason, time and culture that confers Pucciarelli’s philosophizing a humanistic bias. Phenomenology as conceived by Pucciarelli becomes thus an active force by embracing multiple perspectives, such that its methodology can be applied to varying contexts and circumstances. Pucciarelli’s commitment to social justice and Latin American culture responds to the attempt to rescue the virtues and freedom of the individual, which ground human dignity. In short, Pucciarelli’s stance reveals a profound pluralistic humanism that does not neglect its militant and critical function, thus evidencing its relevance to the current sociopolitical situation in Latin America.

In her article “Die Irrealität des Kunstwerkes,” first published in 1938, Hedwig Conrad-Martius delves into the question of the artistic representation of the real reality of the world, which basically concerns the classical distinction between art and nature. It is in this context that Conrad-Martius rejects idealism and the concomitant assumption that an artwork imitates the “living reality” of Nature. She clearly distinguishes between the task of phenomenology and that of art: while phenomenology should surpass the sphere of mere sensuous appearances and inquire into the “real reality” (wirkliche Wirklichkeit) of the world, phenomenological aesthetics should conversely deal with the expressive character of appearances and assume their inherent “irreality” (Irrealität), such that phenomenological ontology and aesthetics involve distinctive ontological realms that vary according to the subject-matter. However, while she clearly distances herself from Husserl’s phenomenology in her search for the consciousness-independent facticity of the world, she concurs with him in her eidetic enquiries and in the assertion of the creative potential of art, which lies in the creation of a new, even “irreal,” world. For this purpose, I will explore confluences and divergences between their respective conceptions.

This article inquires firstly into the descriptive and affective function of images as examples and exemplars in both Cassirer’s and Husserl’s conceptions of perception and aesthetics in order to disclose their respective relationship to reality, that is, mimesis. In view of the correlation between symbolic comportment and symbolic forms at Cassirer, it will secondly show that the ensuing hermeneutical circle can be overcome by taking recourse on Husserl’s genetic analyses on passive sense constitution. It will thus set the basis for a “hermeneutics of expression” that should, thirdly, shed light on the possibility of establishing an aesthetical knowledge. For this purpose, it will disclose an excess of sensuous expression that is determined by a pre-categorial limit-concept within the process of sense-formation. This inquiry shows that, while images as examples are characterized by their ideal arbitrariness, aesthetic images as singular and categorially determined exemplars can be understood as the affective expression of reality.

Der Beitrag widmet sich der Entwicklung der Untersuchungen Husserls und Merleau-Pontys in Bezug auf die Wechselverhältnisse zwischen Welt, Raum und Leib. Die These besagt, dass die ›genetische‹ Einsicht, die leiblich aff ektive Erfahrung verleihe der Welt einen subjekt-relativen Sinn, anfänglich zu einer Umkehrung des Fundierungsverhältnisses und schließlich zur Ausarbeitung der Urhyle als sinnliches Prinzip bei Husserl geführt hat, während sie Merleau-Ponty dazu verleitet hat, die Unterscheidung ›Bewusstsein-Objekt‹ zu revidieren und eine Ontologie des Fleisches zu entwickeln. Aus dieser Initialthese wird sich zeigen, dass die durch pathische Empfindungen, Gefühle und Stimmungen hervorgebrachte Verschränkung von Leib und Ort die existenzielle Dimension der Raumerfahrung, das ›Hier-in-einem-Ort-zu-sein‹, ausmacht. Der Begriff der Atmosphäre verbindet diese Einsichten mit der Architekturerfahrung: Insofern eine Atmosphäre alle unsere Sinne durch optische und haptische Empfindungen simultan ergreift, gleicht sie einer intensiven Gefühlskraft und stellt die Dauer und die affektive Dimension eines Seins-in-Situation hervor. Sie veranschaulicht somit das Erklärungspotential der genetischen Phänomenologie für die Architektur.

This paper deals with the problem of the origin of sense and meaning. For Husserl, the determination of the ideal identity of something new can only take place retroactively in the totality of the preceding series by stepping back towards the original foundation of sense. In this regard, J. Derrida questions the ideality of the same as presence and the possibility of retrieving any arché of sense in his writings Speech and Phenomena and Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry. Phenomenology is not oblivious to these difficulties, as results from a closer reading of the correlation between idealities and sensory experience: It will show that there are at least four interrelated gaps in the Husserlian phenomenology which testify the difficulty in grasping a retraceable arché of sense. First, the gap between the ideality of sense and its representation. Second, the gap between sensory and categorial intuitions, whereby both exceed one another. Third, the gap between the ideality of sense and the sense which exceeds our expectations. Fourth, the gap between the experience of the new that overcomes us and its apprehension by consciousness. Hence, there is a fundamental gap between the conceptual idealities and the essential indeterminacy of our phenomenological sensory experience, which is correlative to an excess of one in respect to the other. In this sense, Derrida’s concepts of « différance » and “invention” allow us to conceive of this self-givenness of sense as the expression of its constant self-renewal. This expression takes the form of a trace, which, neither present nor absent, suspends meaning and full presence, leaving the narrative “open” for the reinvention of sense.

Wenn Lernen dort beginnt, wo etwas Neues erlebt wird, so muss der vorreflexive Erfahrungsgrund, das sinnliche, leibliche Erlebnis freigelegt werden. Es ist die primäre Aufgabe einer ontologischen Praxis als lebendiger Vollzug, die von Husserl aufgedeckten Urtatsachen – Welt, Leiblichkeit, Intersubjektivität, Geschichtlichkeit – in ihrem Sinn für uns zu konstituieren. Der Beitrag zielt darauf hin, diese These im Ausgang der affektiven Erfahrung und des ihr vorausliegenden leiblichen Erlebens zu beleuchten. In diesem Sinne stehen die Forschungsansätze Husserls und Merleau-Pontys paradigmatisch für die Umwälzung der Beziehungen zwischen Leib und Welt: Von einem Erfahrungssinn, der von einem transzendentalen Ego konstituiert wird, bis zu jenem der leiblich im Fleisch der Welt inkarniert ist. Diese Überlegungen beabsichtigen, einen Beitrag zum Verständnis des Lernprozesses als vorreflexiver Erfahrungsprozess zu leisten sofern er leibliche Ausdruckleistungen innerhalb konkreter sozial-geschichtlicher und raumzeitlicher Aktionsfelder umfasst.

This paper concerns both Aristotle's notion of right feelings and Husserl's account of intentional feelings and emotions as developed in their ethical writings and it discusses these approaches in relation to each other. It addresses the question of motivation and justification or evidence for moral feelings and actions. In particular, it focuses on the emotional states of Philia and love as well as the inherent relationship between affectivity and reason. The paper concludes with some reflections on the requirements for the constitution of a moral self.

The interweavement of philosophy and literature allows to gain a new sense from the own, lived experiences and to express them through narrations, as the paradigmatic works of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Borges show. They all deal with the inexorability of time and the fact of being at the mercy of the unwanted aspects of Being-in-the-world, the detailed reading of which allows us to assert that the event of the emergence of a new sense lies in the experience of the creative power of the instant, wherein the difference is introduced as the first principle through a Copernican turn and where the eternity expresses itself. In fact, the instant in its repetition results from a strike of chance, an assumption which leads to a new understanding not only of time as a network of destinies, but of eternity as extensive, intensive or ecstatic eternity. Being involved in this experience means to undergo an existential experience of time which produces an irrevocable change of the self.

The Sublime in a phenomenological sense: The Affective Bodily Experience of Space The aim of the following paper is to redefine the sublime in phenomenological terms, a task long overdue. Departing from Kant, it claims that the phenomenological sublime is an emotion aroused neither by the power of our reason transcending the inadequacy of imagination as it concerns nature, nor by the overwhelming powers of imagination as it concerns an artwork, but by the excess of sensuousness over conceptuality, which is bodily felt. This shift into bodily apprehensions, though advanced by empirical psychologists, took place in the twentieth century resulting from Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's reformulation of the affective sphere of the body and of its concomitant experience of space. Their criticism of compossibility and harmony lead to a disruption of the bodily metaphoric order inherent to artistic representation. This becomes evident in the conception of present architecture, as the works of Tschumi and Eisenman show. The phenomenological emotion of sublimity expresses thus the affective bodily experience of space.

Esta contribución elabora la concepción del “Un-zuhause-sein” en Heidegger en su relación con la experiencia del exilio, como es descripta por Mario Benedetti. En la experiencia del exilio, cuando se quiebra la familiaridad tranquilizadora con el mundo, se accede al «fenómeno más original desde el punto de vista ontológico existenciario» de la absoluta negación del estar en casa. Mientras la angustia despertada por la soledad fáctica conduce a una ruptura con el mundo cotidiano, el extrañamien-to nos desnuda y nos revela al mundo en su inhospitalidad originaria. Es la angustia la que tanto abre a este modo de ser originario y propio del “ser ahí”, la que hace patente su ser-en-el-mundo, la que lo singulariza y lo aísla de los demás seres. El exilio, como experiencia paradigmática de la in-hospitalidad, demuestra que la experiencia del Un-zuhause-sein es un rasgo ontológico-existencial del Dasein.

Esta contribución elabora la concepción del ser en su mismidad e ipseidad en Heidegger y Nietzsche, contrastando la concepción nietzscheana de la voluntad de poder y del eterno retorno con la interpretación heideggeriana y enmarcándola dentro de su concepción del ser anterior y posterior a la Kehre. La tesis sostiene que, mientras Heidegger concibe la ipseidad ya no como identidad a sí mismo en el sentido de las egologías tradicionales, sino como modo de existencia auténtico del Dasein que se asume como tal, la concepción de Nietzsche es la inversa: la ipseidad como modo de existencia implica la renuncia a ser uno mismo y la asunción de diferencias y transformación de las fuerzas componentes. Mientras la mismidad en Nietzsche se resume al querer [Wille] como unicidad eternamente retornante, un retorno a la mismidad originaria en el sentido heideggeriano es imposible porque las diferencias son irreductibles a una pertenencia originaria de ser y pensar. Paradójicamente, el “yo” nietzscheano es propiamente él mismo, renunciando a ser él mismo: éste es el poder que lo singulariza.

La confrontación entre Heidegger y Husserl que ha dominado hasta fecha reciente la interpretación filosófica debe ser revisada a la luz de las indagaciones de Husserl sobre la protofacticidad: Ella concierne a una ontología del mundo de la vida que es afín a la mundaneidad heideggeriana: Los protohechos constituyen un horizonte de sentido ya instaurado, que el yo debe reconfigurar en su praxis. Esta protofacticidad inmodalizable alberga un núcleo de protocontingencia que da cuenta no sólo de la contingencia fáctica de las categorías experienciales, sino también la del mundo, del ego y de los entes finitos: En tanto procesos o sujetos a cambios cualitativos en sus características esenciales su modo de ser se caracteriza por una permanente apertura esencial. Ambos pensadores sostienen la contingencia esencial del mundo, de la que sólo puede dar cuenta la experiencia fáctica hic et nunc de un ego encarnado y mundano.The confrontation between Heidegger and Husserl, ever present in philosophical debates, should be reviewed in the light of Hus-serl’s late inquiries into protofacticity. Concerning the ontology of the lifeworld, it addresses some of the issues of Heidegger’s characterization of Dasein as being-in-the-world: Protofacts constitute an already given sense-horizon, which the ego must re-configurate in its praxis. This unmodalizable primal facts host a core of protocontingency that accounts for the factual contingency not only of the categories of experience, but of the world, the ego and of finite beings: Understood as processes or subjected to qualitative changes in their essential structures, their mode of being is characterized by an essential openness. Both thinkers sustain the contingency of the world, for which only the hic et nunc factual experience of a mundane, incarnated ego can account.

Summary This paper deals with the development of Husserl’s and Merleau-Pontys analyses of the affective lived experience of body and space. Both the concept of „flesh“ (Merleau-Ponty) and „Hyle“ (Husserl) stand for a sensuous principle that underlies the original givenness and solidarity of body and world and I claim that this interaction and the concomitant intertwining of body and place make up the existential dimension of architecture, i.e. the, being-here-in-a-place’. In this connection, I argue that the fact that bodily affective experience endows the world with sense has led to a double break: On the one hand with representation and on the other with perspectivity and compossibility of the realms of being in Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s respective approaches. Finally, I will exemplify this break and the development of genetic insights – from an anthropocentric, organic and harmonious space conception to a topologic space made up of incompossibilities expressing an ambiguous sense – with paradigmatic works of architecture, so as to make evident the explanatory potential of phenomenology for architecture.