Michael Staudigl

Das Werk des französischen Phänomenologen Jean-Luc Marion wird in diesem Buch in systematischer wie kritischer Hinsicht ausgeleuchtet. Schwerpunkte sind 1. eine historisch-kritische Verortung von Marions Denken im Kontext von Descartes, Kant und der Phänomenologie. 2. eine inhaltliche Entfaltung des Programms der „Phänomenologie der Gegebenheit“ und der daraus resultierenden Implikationen für die Grundbegriffe der Phänomenologie (Welt, Subjekt, Zeit, etc.). Der Band enthält zudem zwei Texte Marions in deutscher Erstveröffentlichung. Mit Beiträgen von Thomas Alferi, Jason W. Alvis, Lilian Alweiss, Katharina Bauer, Natalie Depraz, Peter Gaitsch, Branko Klun, Alwin Letzkus, Jean-Luc Marion, Karel Novotný, Marcus Schmücker, Claudia Serban, Emilie Tardivel und László Tengelyi.

Schutzian Phenomenology and Hermeneutic Traditions links Alfred Schutz to the larger hermeneutic tradition in Continental thought, illuminating the deep affinity between Schutzian phenomenology and hermeneutics. The essays collected here explore a broad spectrum of Schutzian themes and concerns, from Schutz’s concrete affinities to hermeneutic traditions, his interpretationism and the pragmatist nature of Schutz’s thought, to questions concerning the role of the media and music in our understanding of the life-world and intersubjectivity. The essays go on to explore the practical applicability of Schutz’s thoughts on questions regarding economics, literature, ethics and the limits of human understanding. Given its emphasis on the application of Schutzian ideas and concepts, this book willbe of special interest to a wide range of readers in the social sciences and humanities, who are interested in the application of phenomenology to social, political, and cultural phenomena.

This introductory essay discusses how the trope of “religious violence” is operative in contemporary discussions concerning the so-called “return of religion” and the “post-secular constellation.” The author argues that the development of a genuine phenomenology of “religious violence” calls on us to critically reconsider the modern discourses that all too unambiguously tie religion and violence together. In a first part, the paper fleshes out the fault lines of a secularist modernity spinning out of control. In a second part, it demonstrates how the “liberal imaginary” revolves around individualist conceptions of freedom and sovereignty that, on their part, become parasitic upon imaginations of disorder, otherness and violence. In a third part, the author demonstrates how these insights call for developing a transformed phenomenological framework in order to give a more sensible account of “religious violence.” Finally, in presenting the articles gathered in this “special issue” of Continental Philosophy Review, some pathways into such a sensibilized phenomenology of “religious violence” are outlined.

This paper examines the relationship between religion and violence from a phenomenological point of view. In the context of the so-called "return of the religious" and the crisis of contemporary social imaginaries, it deals with the supposedly disruptive and liberating potentials of religion in general, and religious violence in particular. The discussion revolves around the concept of "verticality" as developed by A. Steinbock and offers a generative interpretation of verticality's liberating and transformative potentials. The paper proceeds to demonstrate how religion and violence are interrelated on a variety of levels. In conclusion the author argues that we need to understand the relationship between religion and violence in terms of its contingent actualization and display but must avoid pitting it down as an essential feqture of religious systems of knowledge and practice.

This paper provides a phenomenological exploration of the phenomenon of collective violence, specifically by following the leading clue of war from Plato to the “new wars” of late globalization. It first focuses on the genealogy of the legitimization of collective violence in terms of “counter-violence” and then demonstrates how it is mediated by constructions of “the other” in terms of “violence incarnate.” Finally, it proposes to explore such constructions—including the “barbarian” in Greek antiquity, “the cannibal” in the context of Colonialism, or the contemporary cipher of religious irrationality—as mirror effects of one’s own disavowed forms of violence.

Die Beiträge des Bands analysieren die vielen Gesichter der Gewalt und fragen nach übergreifenden Wesenszügen des Phänomens Gewalt. In phänomenologischer Perspektive rücken sie das erfahrende Subjekt ins Zentrum der Analyse. Der Band fokussiert Gewalt als ein perspektivisches Phänomen, als erlittene, verübte oder aus der Perspektive Dritter erfahrene, etwa bezeugte Gewalt, ohne zu unterstellen, dass sich schlicht von der Gewalt reden ließe. Dass der Sinn der Gewalt immer perspektivisch erfahren wird, besagt nicht, dass zwischen Gewalt als Widerfahrnis, als Intention und als sozialem Ereignis ein unüberbrückbarer analytischer Abgrund bestünde, wie er handlungs- und diskurstheoretische Ansätze traditionell trennt. Vielmehr ist dem Sinn der Gewalt nur im Rückgang auf jenes Zwischenreich von subjektivem Sinn und objektiven Ordnungen auf die Spur zu kommen, in dem wir als leibliche Wesen der Welt Sinn abgewinnen, in dem aber auch unsere vielfältige Verletzlichkeit gründet.

This paper lays the groundwork for developing a thorough-going phenomenological description of different phenomena of violence such as physical, psychic and structural violence. The overall aim is to provide subject-centered approaches to violence within the social sciences and the humanities with an integrative theoretical framework. To do so, I will draw primarily on the phenomenological accounts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Alfred Schutz, and thereby present guiding clues for a phenomenologically grounded theory of violence.

In this paper I argue that we need to analyze ‘religious violence’ in the ‘post-secular context’ in a twofold way: rather than simply viewing it in terms of mere irrationality, senselessness, atavism, or monstrosity – terms which, as we witness today on an immense scale, are strongly endorsed by the contemporary theater of cruelty committed in the name of religion – we also need to understand it in terms of an ‘originary supplement’ of ‘disengaged reason’. In order to confront its specificity beyond traditional explanations of violence, I propose an integrated phenomenological account of religion that traces the phenomenality of religion in terms of a correlation between the originary givenness of transcendence and capable man’s creative capacities to respond to it. Following Ricœur, I discuss ‘religious violence’ in terms of a monopolizing appropriation of the originary source of givenness that conflates man’s freedom to poetically respond to the appeal of the foundational with the surreptitiously claimed sovereignty to make it happen in a practical transfiguration of the everyday.

It is common sense today that we need to relieve human living-together from claims that do not permit any compromise. Do such claims when taken as indispensable not really conjure up the worst forms of violence? In face of this danger the consequent renunciation of all allegedly incontestable truths that are taken to function as the foundations of the political is frequently stipulated and it is claimed that there is nothing as dangerous as the claim for some community founding truth. Viewed against this background, this anthology, which includes contributions from social philosophy, sociology, political theory, and religious studies, sets a threefold focus: in a first part, it deals with the phenomenology of unconditional ethical and political claims and their suspected potential of violence; in a second part, it focuses on the possible scope of action vis-a-vis such unconditional claims; in a final part, it concretely fathoms this scope with a view to the critique of religion.

In this paper, we propose to analyze the phenomenon of Christian prayer by way of combining two different analytical frameworks. We start by applying Schutz’s theories of “intersubjectivity,” “inner time,” “politheticality,” and “multiple realities,” and then proceed by drawing on the ideas and insights of linguistic philosophers, notably, Wittgenstein’s “language-game,” Austin’s “speech act,” and Evans’s “logic of self-involvement”. In conjoining these accounts, we wish to demonstrate how their combination sheds new light on understanding the phenomenon of prayer. Prayer is a complex phenomenon that involves two major dimensions: the private and the social, as Matthew and Acts, respectively, demonstrate. Schutz’s study of the phenomenon of “inner time” and the “polithetical” structure of consciousness, at both the subjective and intersubjective level, provides a useful lens to analyze these two dimensions. In addition, prayer, in following a specific set of rules, can also be considered as a specific, i.e., religious “language-game”. In the last analysis, however, we propose to analyze prayer within the Schutzian framework of “multiple realities,” “enclaves,” and “symbolic appresentation,” which permits accessing the “religious finite province of meaning” in the very midst of the paramount reality of everyday life. In a nutshell, we claim that Christian prayer is a practice of constructing and living within a “religious province of meaning” in the everyday world; it is a practice that revolves around self-involving language-activities such as praising, confessing, thanksgiving, or requesting to God, which enable the praying subject to transfigure the language of everydayness and “see through” the world of everyday life in order to let it appear in a different light, e.g., the light of grace, gift, and salvation.

This article elaborates a relational phenomenology of violence. Firstly, it explores the constitution of all sense in its intrinsic relation with our embodiment and intercorporality. Secondly, it shows how this relational conception of sense and constitution paves the path for an integrative understanding of the bodily and symbolic constituents of violence. Thirdly, the author addresses the overall consequences of these reflections, thereby identifying the main characteristics of a relational phenomenology of violence. In the final part, the paper provides an exemplification of the outlined conception with regard to a concrete phenomenon of violence, i.e., slapping, and a concluding reflection upon its overall significance for research on violence