Christian Lotz

Der vorliegende Band versammelt Beiträge von Philosophen und Philosophinnen innerhalb der phänomenologischen Forschung, speziell derjenigen Husserls. Die Beiträge zeichnen sich durch ihre innovative Kraft aus, da sie Neuland betreten und der phänomenologischen Forschung neue Wege eröffnen. Die Beiträge repräsentieren den gegenwärtigen Forschungsstand auf internationalem Niveau. Forscher und Forscherinnen aus Österreich, Deutschland, Dänemark, Japan, Taiwan, Italien und den USA sind versammelt. Dieser Band enthält fünf Beiträge in englischer Sprache.

In this paper, I first argue that Lucien Goldmann’s attempt to confront Heidegger and Lukács, though it deserves to be revitalized, remains ultimately insuficient. Second, I propose that a more fruitful reading of Heidegger and Lukács should be based on three aspects: first, Lukács’ concept of social totality should be related to Heidegger’s concept of world. Second, the more meaningful way to confront Lukács and Heidegger on the level of praxis is not the everyday dealings with ready-to-hand things, but, instead, the second division of Being and Time in which a political concept of subjectivity and action comes to the forefront. Third, a proper approach to Heidegger’s and Lukács’ philosophies should be based on their respective appropriation of the concept of categories.

In his new book, Lambert Zuidervaart argues that the concept of propositional truth remains one-dimensional and needs to be extended by and embedded in several versions of what the author calls “existential truth,” which he discusses in relation to phenomenology and critical theory. Zuidervaart focuses on key figures of twentieth-century German philosophy, such as Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, and Max Horkheimer. According to the author, his book “does not intend to be a historical narrative” ; nor does it intend to present “a few nuggets of insights from continental writings”. Instead, Zuidervaart tries to reconstruct the primary material and immanently criticizes the...

In this essay, I offer thoughts on the constitution of images in art, especially as they are constituted in painting and in photography. Utilizing ideas from Gadamer, Derrida and Adorno, I shall argue that representation should be conceived as a performative concept and as an act of formation; i.e., as a process rather thanas something "fixed." My reflections will be carried out in connection with a careful analysis of Gerhard Richter's painting Reader (1994), which is a painting of a photograph that depicts a female who is reading. I demonstrate how a close analysis of this fascinating painting leads us deeper into the problem of painted images, insofar as it enacts what it is about, namely, the constitution of itself as an innige by means of a complex and enigmatic relationship between seeing, reading, memory, inner, outer, gaze and blindness.

In this paper, I shall present an argument against Deleuze’s philosophy of painting. Deleuze’s main thesis in Logic of Sensation is twofold: [1] he claims that painting is based on a non-representational level; and [2] he claims that this level comes out of the materiality of painting. I shall claim that Deleuze’s theses should be rejected for the following reasons: first, the difference between non-intentional life and the representational world is too strict. I submit that the nonintentional relation that painting opens up is itself part of andemerges out of the representational force of painting. If this would not be the case, then the criterion for differentiating between paintings and other objects cannot be developed. Indeed, Deleuze fails to give us a criterion. Second, Deleuze’s way of dealing with materiality in painting remains unsatisfactory insofar as he is unable to take into account how materiality is charged with an “attitude toward the world.” In sum, materiality can only be painting’s materiality if we understand it as being formed and disclosed in representation.

Christian Lotz shows in this book that Husserl's Phenomenology and its key concept--subjectivity--is based on a concrete anthropological structure, such as self-affection and the bodily experience of the other. The analysis of the sensual sphere and the lived Body forces Husserl to an ongoing correction of his strong methodological assumptions. Subjectivity turns out to be an ambivalent phenomenon, as the subject is unable to fully present itself to itself, and therefore is forced to allow for a fundamental non-transparency in itself

In this paper, I will perform a "step back" by showing how Derrida's analysis of forgiveness is rooted in Kantian moral philosophy and in Derrida's interpretation of Kierkegaard's concept of decision. This will require a discussion of the distinction that Kant draws in his Groundwork between price (the economic) and dignity (the incomparable), as well as a discussion of the underlying notion of singularity in Kant's text. In addition, Derrida universalizes Kierkegaard's concept of the agent so that, with this perspective in view, the interpretation of Kantian morality as something that must be described in a paradoxical way, becomes fully transparent. Whereas the interpretation of Kantian morality will provide us with a concept of morality that remains a "blind spot" for the agent, with the help of Derrida's Kierkegaard interpretation we can see that the concept of decision remains ultimately ambivalent. In conclusion, both (a) the deconstructed concept of morality and (b) the concept of decision will finally (c) let us understand Derrida's radical concept of forgiveness, which is both a non-economic act of morality in the sense explained and an unpredictable, uncontrollable decision and event.

I argue from a hermeneutic point of view that formal elements of poetry can only be identified because poetry is based on both the phenomenon and the conception of poetry, both of which precede the attempt to identify formal elements as the defining moment of poetry. Furthermore, I argue with Gadamer that poetry is based on a rupture with and an epoche of our non-poetic use of language in such a way that it liberates “fixed” universal aspects of everyday language, and that through establishing itself in a new, self-referential and monologue unity, it individualizes speech . From the hermeneutic position, poetry is a form of speaking rather than a “fixed” object. As such, I will try to make sense of what Paul Celan said in his famous “Meridian” speech: namely, that the poem is “actualized language, set free under the sign of a radical individuation, which at the same time stays mindful of the limits drawn by language, the possibilities opened by language.”

Phenomenology and Embodiment. Husserl and the Constitution of Subjectivity is a surprising study, given that much has been written during the last decades on phenomenology and embodiment. Although its author, Joona Taipale, does not offer revolutionarily new insights into Husserl’s phenomenology , the book is an outstanding contribution to phenomenology in general, and to Husserlian phenomenology in particular. For although it covers a broad range of topics within the area of a phenomenology of embodiment, its author expertly brings together a diverse range of aspects of his topic and weaves together many thematic threads in a lucidly written and coherent text. The study is superbly organized, as well as clearly laid out in its introduction and conclusion. And though partial aspects of Taipale’s topics have been addressed before, this is the first study, as far as I can see, that brings them all together within 240 pages. After a discussion of “small scale” issues, such ..

Hubert L. Dreyfus has worked out a critique of what he calls “representationalism” and “cognitivism,” one proponent of which, according to Dreyfus, is Husserl. But I think that Dreyfus misunderstands the Husserlian conception of practical intentionality and that his characterization of Husserl as a “representationalist” or as a “cognitivist” is thereby wrongheaded. In this paper I examine Dreyfus’s interpretation by offering a Husserlian critique of Dreyfus’s objections to Husserl, and then by outlining Husserl’s account of practical intentionality and the practical lived Body. I sketch the critique and the approach of Dreyfus in three steps. First, I deal with his objections against Husserl’s theory by arguing that Dreyfus understands neither the role of the reduction nor the function of background-awareness in Husserl’s phenomenology. Second, I elucidate the central role that the “practical lived Body” plays in practical intentionality for Husserl, and, third, I highlight the consequences that follow from the analyses offered in the previous sections.