Anna Varga-Jani

It is a well-known fact that Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and phenomenological Philosophy I, published in 1913, was disappointingly received in the phenomenological circle around Husserl, and started a reinterpretation of Husserlian phenomenology. The problem of the constitution was a real dilemma for the studentship of Munich–Gottingen. More of Husserl’s students from his Gottingen years reflected in the 1930s on transcendental idealism, which they originated from the Ideas and found fulfilled in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations and Formal and transcendental Logic. The remarkable similarity between these papers lies in how the question of being is incorporated into the problematic of the method in Husserlian phenomenology. But this parallelism in the problem reveals the origin of the religious phenomenon in Husserlian phenomenology as well. Adolf Reinach’s religious terms such as gratitude (Dankbarkeit), charity (Barmherzigkeit), etc. in his religious Notes, Heidegger’s notion of being as finiteness in Being and Time, Edith Stein’s concept of the finite and eternal being in Finite and Eternal Being are fundamental to the problem of constitution in transcendental phenomenology, but these two phenomena of being point at the constitution theologically. In my paper I would like to show the transition from the critique of Husserlian transcendental idealism to the roots of the experience of religious life through the phenomenological problem of being in Edith Stein.

This paper examines the methodological differences between Edith Stein and Eugen Fink in their interpretations of Husserl’s phenomenology. While it is well known that Husserl’s methodology evolved over time and that Stein’s and Fink’s interpretations are both controversial and distinct from one another, what remains unclear– and what this paper seeks to clarify—is how these differences can be precisely defined. Although both thinkers engage with world experience, epoché, and reduction, they do so in fundamentally different ways: Stein focuses on world experience, the problem of the external world, and constitution, whereas Fink investigates the process of constitution itself and the inseparable connection between world experience and reduction. Husserl’s own self-reflections in the early 1930s, particularly on _Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy_, mark a shift in the understanding of _epoché_ between two generations. By analyzing Stein’s and Fink’s approaches in this context, this paper clarifies how their differing interpretations of the epoché not only shaped their respective versions of phenomenology but also redefined the very relationship between epoché and reduction– shifting the methodological focus from suspending the natural attitude to interrogating the constitutive process itself.

Im Allgemeinen widmet sich das vorliegende Buch dem gemeinsamen Problembereich der zeitgenössischen Theologie und Philosophie, aber den konkreten Anlass der hiesigen Beiträgen geben jedoch die Parallelität in der Erscheinung der Enzyklika Fides et Ratio vom Papst Hl. Johannes Paulus II., und die Heiligsprechung Edith Steins (Mitpatronin Europas) von demselben heiligen Papst. Die Autoren des Bandes reflektieren sich auf die Gemeinsamkeit des Denkens dieser zwei Heiligen des 20. Jahrhunderts, auf ihre philosophischen Engagements in der christlichen Philosophie, sowie auf die heutigen Möglichkeiten des gemeinsamen Denkens von Philosophie und Theologie.

Well known is the fact that Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and phenomenological Philosophy I, published in 1913, made a strong disappointment in the phenomenological circle around Husserl, and started a reinterpretation of the husserlian phenomenology. The problem of the constitution was a real dilemma for the studentship of Munich — Göttingen. More of Husserl’s students from his Göttingen years reflected in the 1930th on the transcendental idealism, which they originated from the Ideas and found fulfilled in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations and Formal and transzendental Logic. The remarkable similarity between these papers is the questioning on being incorporated in the problematic of the method in the husserlian phenomenology. But this parallelism in the problem reveals the origin of the religious phenomenon in the husserlian phenomenology as well. Adolf Reinach’s religious terms as gratitude, charity, etc. in his religious Notes, Heidegger’s notion of being as finiteness in Being and Time, Edith Stein’s concept about the finite and eternal being in Finite and Eternal Being are originating in the problem of constitution in the transcendental phenomenology on the one hand, but these phenomenon point at the constitution theologically. In my paper I would like to show the relationship between the critique on the husserlian transcendental idealism and the roots of the experience of religious life by the phenomenological problem of being especially at Edith Stein.

The question of whether Heidegger’s phenomenological contribution to the philosophy of being originates from his pre-philosophical attitude to theology or rather, it is the methodological question of phenomenology which influenced his thinking, is one of the most essential questions in Heidegger-research. Though, this has already been elaborated on in a broader sense, the publication of the Black Notes has opened new dimensions for discussion. It is not the aim of this paper to represent Heidegger’s concept of the history of being in the light of the new debates, but rather to confirm the thesis, that, in spite of the ‘turn’; in Heidegger’s thinking, his phenomenological hermeneutics was inspired, above all, by his reflection on Christianity. Moreover, the paper will question whether the linearity of Heidegger’s thinking about the historical being remains on the horizon of the religious phenomenon, as it is thematized in his early papers and lectures. While Heidegger’s early phenomenological approaches to religion and theology have been sufficiently elaborated on by several authors, and the phenomenological–hermeneutical relevance has been proven in his thinking, the linkage between the early philosophical approaches to the problem of religiosity and of historical being arising newly in Heidegger’s thinking from the 1930s is missing. The present paper will not just refer to the thesis that Heidegger’s theological background contributed to his questioning of being, and that it was influenced in different ways, but makes an attempt to reveal the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s early thinking prior to the publication of Being and Time and the time of composing the Contributions to Philosophy of those of Heidegger’s lectures which remain in the parallel analysis of religiosity and historicity.

Though Paul Ricœur’s phenomenological contribution manifests mainly in a philosophical interpretation of Husserlian phenomenological methodology, which leads finally into the theory of narrative identity, and this theory also extends to biblical hermeneutics, a connection between the theory of narrativity and biblical hermeneutics is still missing in Ricœurian phenomenology. Therefore, according to my thesis, the importance of narrativity for Ricœur’s biblical hermeneutics is the transition from textual interpretation to the phenomenology of action. My present essay will contribute to the elaboration of this missing link by investigating the role of reality in Ricœur’s thinking. Ricœur emphasized both in his...

In his early Freiburg lectures on the phenomenology of religious life, published as his Phenomenology of Religious Life, Heidegger sought to interpret the Christian life in phenomenological terms, while also discussing the question of whether Christianity should be construed as historically defined. Heidegger thus connected the philosophical discussion of religion as a phenomenon with the character of the religious life taken in the context of factical life. According to Heidegger, every philosophical question originates from the latter, which determines such questions pre-theoretically, while the tradition of early Christianity can also only be understood historically in such terms. More specifically, he holds that the historical phenomenon of religious life as it relates to early Christianity, inasmuch as it undergirds our conception of the religious phenomenon per se, reveals the essential connection between factical life and religious life. In this way, the conception of religion that Heidegger establishes through his analyses of Paul’s Epistles takes on both theological and philosophical ramifications. Moreover, the historicity of factical life finds its fulfillment in our comprehension of the primordial form of Christianity as our very own historical a priori, determined by our own factical situation. Hence, historicity and factical life belong together within the situation that makes up the foundation of the religious life.