Francesco Pisano

The paper discusses some aspects of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) as a philosophical research program. The discussion stems from a reading of Decentrare l’umano. Perché la Object-Oriented Ontology (Kaiak 2021), a collection of essays that aims at introducing the Italian reader to the debate surrounding OOO. Working both as an introduction and as a critical discussion, Decentrare l’umano highlights the main tenets of OOO and some of their problematic implications. It does so through both theoretical arguments and imaginative literary performances played out by some of the collected essays. Adopting a Kantian point of view, I argue that such a pluralistic approach to OOO rightly shows the need for an “Object-Oriented critique” that should put OOO in question as a theory, i. e. as a discursive product, without losing sight of OOO’s appeal to realism, concreteness, and directedness.

Foucault found the starting point of modern European philosophy to be the construction of “man” as both an empirical fact and a transcendental operator. The aim is to show how this construction was made possible by an underlying strategical handling of the concept of matter. Some restrictions imposed on the materiality of knowledge-contents became key in explaining how actual men could gain access to transcendental knowledge. The paper focuses on Husserl and Kant as meaningful turning points of this transcendental discourse. However, the relevance of their dematerializing strategies will be shown to lay beyond their historic-cultural meaning, since they can also provide a way of dealing with knowledge experiences that can be critical even towards modernity’s characteristic anthropocentrism.

In this paper I draw from Husserl’s lectures on ethics and manuscripts on phantasy to clarify the role and the structure of aesthetic education within a phenomenological theory of value experience. First, I show that Husserl’s take on emotions as material contents of value experiences involves the problem of justifying the validity of the relation between factual emotional states and ideal values. I then suggest, on the basis of some of Husserl’s phenomenological arguments on phantasy, that this discrepancy can be bridged through the enjoyment of art – that is, through a process of aesthetic education. I will focus, as Husserl does, on theatrical art as a case study. My aim is to support the claim that artistic phantasy offers us the possibility of an education of emotions by helping us to progressively explore the eidetic structure of emotional states in their individuality, but regardless of their isolated here and now (that is, of their factual occasionality). The first part of the argument refers mainly to the last chapters of Husserl’s Einleitung in die Ethik (1920/1924). The second part focuses on a 1918 manuscript. I conclude by hinting at how the idea of a phenomenological aesthetic education could help providing a coherent interpretation of Husserl’s ethics, while also contributing to the ongoing debate about fictional objects.

Intuitions play a relevant role in the acquisition of knowledge. Among those who believe that this is the case, some base their claim on the peculiar phenomenology of intuitions. These theorists often adopt a perceptualist and seeming-based model for their phenomenological description. Deeming intuitions as essentially private phenomena, however, seeming-based descriptions end up supporting a dogmatic view of intuitions as a source of epistemic justifications. I argue that this is because the seeming-based model is incomplete in that it does not consider some virtue-related aspects of the plasticity of intuitions in social contexts. Then, I propose a way of integrating an explanation of these aspects in it through a Neo-Kantian reinterpretation of some of the concepts involved. I will draw from the work of Christoph Sigwart on the so-called Evidenzgefühl that characterizes the phenomenology of intuitions, showing the ties between this feeling and the linguistic, communicative, and social dimension of scientific research. The broader aim is to suggest that it is possible to make an open-minded use of intuitions even when basing their epistemic relevance on their peculiar phenomenology.

Il volume raccoglie saggi dedicati alla Fenomenologia dello spirito di G.W.F. Hegel e ad alcune sue principali interpretazioni. A scritti dal taglio più nettamente storiografico che ne ricostruiscono le influenze in autori quali Marx, Gentile, Heidegger, Kojève, Paci, Lacan e Brandom, si affiancano contributi volti a ricostruire alcuni nodi categoriali che, sollecitati dal testo hegeliano, hanno segnato le riflessioni etiche, teoretiche, filosofico-politiche e psicoanalitiche successive: dialettica, cultura, negazione, desiderio, corpo, fenomeno, riconoscimento. Questa raccolta non intende quindi né riproporre la lettera del testo hegeliano, né avanzare una sua specifica interpretazione. Piuttosto, gli autori hanno condiviso lo sforzo di illustrare in actu exercito le possibilità di movimento tra questi due estremi – testo e interpretazione – tra cui la cultura filosofica si muove. Attraverso questo movimento la Fenomenologia dello spirito continua a produrre filosofia, ossia ad essere occasione e strumento per la comprensione del “proprio tempo col pensiero”.

I present some aspects of Sein und Zeit’s phenomenology of possibility as a key feature of Heidegger’s theoretical confrontation with the crisis of European culture. I draw from paragraphs 73-74 for an inquiry into the relation between possibility and historicity within the structure of the Dasein. Specifically, I consider the concept of repetition in light of Heidegger’s idea that authentic historicity is to be grounded in temporality. Many interpreters found the concept of repetition to be the mark of a conservative conception of history. However, I argue that this is not the case. The concrete act of repetition involves all moments of the temporal horizon – even the future. If we can find our concrete possibilities of action only within our contingent historical situation, the act of repetition is always also a decision for a certain contingent future. This future is radically unpredictable. It is neither identical to the (repeated) possibility of the past, nor definable through rigid normative laws or dogmatic political positions. I then examine the concept of being-towards-death as a heuristic instrument for the task of historical decision. I argue that this ontological structure allows for a critical use of Sein und Zeit’s fundamental ontology. By deciding towards our death, we decide towards the entirety of our existence. This decision is a possible response to the crisis of culture: in front of the rationalization, the atomization and disenchantment of our experience of the world, we can react by perpetually trying to invent new possible forms of reconciliation between the values of our historical Gemeinschaft and the essential novelty of the future. I conclude by presenting Richir’s Phénoménologie et Institution symbolique as an elaboration of this suggestion and as a path for a possible renewal of Heidegger’s critical phenomenology of possibility.

Some developments of the last century’s philosophical culture show instances of solidarity between phenomenology and dialectical materialism. This paper discusses an aspect of these reconciliatory attempts, in order to clarify a few key features of the political projects they imply. I argue that the varying political outcomes of these theoretical operations depend on different conceptions of the transition between phenomenology and materialism. The perspective on this connection can be either materialistic or phenomenological. After an ahistorical introduction to the issue, I present both cases through an examination of Thao’s and Paci’s viewpoints on the matter. The aporetic result of Thao’s investigations ensues from his dogmatic stance towards this transition, whereas the theoretical and political fertility of Paci’s project follows from his phenomenological approach to the problem. However, Thao’s proposal remains relevant for the possibility of a phenomenological praxis: Neri, a student of Paci, underlines this potentiality in his reception of Thao’s work.

The paper aims at outlining the conceptual frame in which nineteenth-century German philosophy inherits and pursues the British debate on induction. It investigates this debate as a case study for a broader inquiry about the German reception of late British empiricism. The Mill-Whewell controversy on induction is central to the late British empiricism´s project of a logic of natural sciences. It becomes significant in Germany during the second half of the nineteenth century, as a means of defining a theory of science that supports the rising anti-idealist endeavor. The paper first defines what is at stake in the Mill-Whewell controversy, then considers how the same issue is handled in Apelt´s Die Theorie der Induction (1854) and in Sigwart´s Logik (1873-1878). It concludes that, within the German context, the understanding of this issue cannot be disconnected from a Kantian focus on the transcendental foundation of scientific knowledge, and that this characteristic perspective on induction also implies some innovative developments for induction as a scientific method, mainly concerning the relevance and use of probability and statistics in inductive methods.

What is the logical form of judgments, if they have one? This question remains an enigma for any transcendental approach to logical thought. The paper addresses the matter by following the debate between Edmund Husserl and Christoph Sigwart from 1890 to 1904. It shows the pivotal role that the problem of judgment played in this discussion. Since judgments were thought to be both refined mental acts and fundamental logical elements, the related issue was a thumbnail version of the broader conflict between psychology and logic. The paper argues that Husserl, far from overcoming Sigwart’s “Kantian-psychologistic” approach, ends up integrating it into the later stages of his phenomenological work; and that this approach does in fact pose an unavoidable transcendental-genetic problem for Husserl’s phenomenology of logic. The argument intends to contribute to a possible integration of the study of the factual “nature” of men within the horizon of the philosophical logic of knowledge.