Maija Kule

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka was an outstanding personality who created a new school—phenomenology of life. Later it was named eco-phenomenology or philosophy of the New Enlightenment. Tymieniecka’s philosophical style was orientated to optimism, multi-layered system, value’s hierarchy, teleological process expressed into logos, aesthetical dimension interpreted by ontopoiesis, importance of life preservation and development of human individual capacities. Philosopher’s biography is adequate to her teaching—creativity, ontopoiesis expressed as her love for nature, wild flowers, woods, rivers, sea and meaningful places as home and gardens. Tymieniecka took philosophy into an unusual field, that is, following the logos through the labyrinth of life and cosmos. Human being should be interpreted as a Human Condition within the Unity of everything-there-is-alive. In this respect her teaching is useful for today’s eco-philosophy and for the practical programmes to harmonise human relationships with nature. Tymieniecka has emphasized the necessity to study Islam philosophy in the context of phenomenology of life. She attached importance to Illuminationism and Sufism. Tymieniecka disagreed with feminism but under her influence very many professional women-philosophers turned to life phenomenology thus stimulating gender balance in philosophy.

Philosophical anthropology can be developed in close relationship with the teaching of life forms: upward, based on hierarchy of values, forward and on the surface. In the life form upward where ethics strictly distinguish good from evil, philosophical anthropology looks for the human being’s essence. In the life form forward the relationships between the good and evil become uncertain, the human being is explained as a complex of functions. In the life form on the surface casual events are in power and the human being is expressed as a multiplicity of events and narratives, evil in many cases becomes indefinable. How to struggle against evil? Evil is a loser only if it loses sense, if turning the other cheek makes the enemy suffer qualms of conscience, it might happen that the whole senselessness of the evil deed becomes clear. Thus, fighting evil is a struggle in an existential – meaningful – plane. To explain this, philosophical anthropology must be closely related to a new understanding of ethics. Concepts “life forms”, “event”, “fitting response” and making evil senseless come to the forefront at the new philosophical anthropology.

Different forms of life can be described making use of hermeneutical description of the life-world (Lebenswelt) the field of vision of which encompasses the changes of value systems and lifestyles. Contemporary life forms typical of Europe are: upward, forward, on the surface. Life forms display differing attitude towards space, time, universal ideas, differences, hierarchy, mind, body, causal relationships, chance, language and etc. Contemporary changes are not a string of spontaneous incidents, but a relationship of life forms where the form upward gives way to the form forward, the form on the surface following. Contemporary Europe is peculiar in none of these forms being lost or having emerged victorious. The characteristic manifestation of the life form upward is Christianity. The life form forward is typical of capitalistic ideas with the predominance of history and economical development, the main categories being progress, more and more. The majority of people in contemporary Europe live leaning forward, be a citizen and workforce. Man is perceived as a functional totality, pragmatism arepredominant in societies. Things tend to rule over man, ideals turn into ideologies. That certainly strengthens the technological and military might, but it does not form the common idea of Europe. The form on the surface finds manifestation in post-modernism, which spread up around the world. A question arises: can there appear a fourth form of contemporary life – perhaps we might call it a dimension of depth, which comes from the dialogue between civilizations?

Eco-phenomenology is a new developing trend, but its roots can be traced to philosophia naturalis, the philosophies of Schelling, Nietzsche, Bergson, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and other philosophers. The ecological turn in phenomenology is prompted by authors dealing with the problems of the human being – nature, life, the Universe. Eco-phenomenology and eco-philosophy are different teachings, eco-phenomenology being more theoretically fundamental while eco-philosophy until now more politically oriented. Eco-phenomenology appeals to us to look “Back to the Earth itself,” but that it is not enough to solve the question of the nature of nature and to recognize the meaning of natural reality in phenomenology. The basic issues for eco-phenomenology can be found in A.-T. Tymieniecka’s phenomenology of life. Her teaching actually is eco-phenomenology developed in a systematic way with new concepts. Many concepts of her phenomenology of life can be cornerstones for eco-phenomenology: Logos and life, the Unity-of-Everything-there-is-Alive, ontopoiesis, the individualization of life, and imaginatio creatrix. Here are offered additional eco-phenomenological concepts which could be termed the fundamental phenomena unifying the world’s natural, human, cultural and symbolic dimensions – light, rhythm, silence, place.

Theodors Celms, a prominent Latvian philosopher, was one of Husserl's best students. Intersubjectivity was an important theme in the "psychological" reading of phenomenology when Celm turned to the problem of the transcendental "I" and to a living-rather than logically defined-subject. Celms concluded that Husserl's phenomenology could not address the question of intersubjectivity because in the course of its development it merely substituted pluralistic solipsism for monistic solipsism. What is most essential in phenomenology-the process of sense formation-remains hardly noticed in Celms' work. Contemporary phenomenology has developed as a philosophy of new thinking-a phenomenology of life that can be applied in different ways toward solving various problems of intersubjectivity.