Ming-Hon Chu

In this article, we focus on the C-Manuscripts to see how Husserl reflects on the margins of phenomenality with reference to the three limit-phenomena of sleep, death, and others. We choose to juxtapose these three limit-phenomena, because in the C-Manuscripts Husserl has depicted their affinities, both in terms of their phenomenal characters and their transcendental functions, in a creative way. There Husserl has outlined at least two approaches for introducing the limit-phenomena of sleep, death, and others to the core concerns of phenomenology. These two approaches rely on different heuristic strategies to shed light on the genetic constitution of monadic life and the generative constitution of humanity respectively. The first approach privileges sleep as the model of unconscious pause in order to illuminate the more perplexing cases of death and others. The second approach treats sleep and death as bridging-members of the constitution of the total human world, after the model of others in the constitution of transcendental intersubjectivity.

There is a growing interest among philosophers in the relation between phenomenology and mindfulness. In addition to phenomenological descriptions of mindful experiences, a debate also arises over the utility of mindful training to the practice of phenomenology. In this chapter, I suggest that the practicality of phenomenology is in itself a core theoretical issue, hence the significance of the debate. Since phenomenology is by and large a transcendental discipline, it is obliged to clarify its own methodological ground, namely the practical as well as theoretical conditions of exercising the phenomenological reduction. This direction of inquiry, as I attempt to show, unfolds itself preliminarily in the works of Edmund Husserl. Then his last assistant Eugen Fink gives a systematic shape to the same inquiry through a transcendental theory of motivation. I propose to evaluate the relevance of mindfulness to phenomenology in this theoretical framework. An in-depth inquiry into the motivation for phenomenological reduction, I submit, will help to decide how far mindful training can complement the practice of phenomenology.

Der vorliegende Band beschäftigt sich mit dem philosophischen Traumarguments im Hinblick auf die Frühphase der Phänomenologie Eugen Finks. In seiner 1930 publizierte Dissertation Vergegenwärtigung und Bild und die Preisschrift, die einen Entwurf seiner Dissertation darstellt, findet sich eine implizite Verbindung zwischen zwei Forschungshorizonten, nämlich eine Phänomenologie des Traums und eine Phänomenologie des hyperbolischen Zweifels. Während die Vergleichbarkeit zwischen Wach- und Traumzustand lange umstritten ist, bringen Finks Analysen der Versunkenheit als Grenzfall der Vergegenwärtigung die Legitimität eines solchen möglichen Vergleichs ans Licht. Darüber hinaus trägt seine originelle Erklärung der Begriffe wie „Widersinn“, „transfinite Intention“, „Nichts“ und „Überwelt“ zu einer phänomenologischen Fundierung des hyperbolischen Zweifels bei. Eine gemeinsame Betrachtung dieser beiden Forschungshorizonte, die im Frühwerk Finks skizziert wurden, wird unser Verständnis der transzendentalen Instabilität der Weltlichkeit bereichern.

Parmi les psychanalystes, c’est principalement Donald Winnicott qui a aidé Marc Richir à éclaircir et à approfondir la phénoménologie génétique déjà amorcée par Edmund Husserl. Ce travail a pour but de montrer les usages que Richir fait de Winnicott dans ses recherches visant à prolonger le projet husserlien. Selon la lecture de Richir, Winnicott insiste sur « la primauté de la constitution de l’objet transitionnel » en termes d’accès au réel. À l’aide des propres mots de Winnicott, nous allons démontrer dans quel sens Winnicott privilégie le rôle constitutionnel de l’objet transitionnel, et comment Richir a assimilé et réinterprété cette étude de Winnicott. Suivant notre exposé, l’objet transitionnel va ainsi dévoiler sa complexité avec une fonction à la fois facilitatrice et dérangeante dans le processus « d’hominisation ».

The phenomenal character of dreaming has long been a matter of philosophical debates. Most of the time, dreaming is either likened to perception or likened to imagination, in order to decide whether it gets closer to normal or abnormal states of consciousness. This line of debates extends from the traditional dream argument to the contemporary movement of phenomenology. This article presents what specific contributions phenomenology has made to the millennial investigations of dreaming. Its structure is twofold. Firstly, we introduce how pioneering phenomenologists, including Edmund Husserl, Jan Patočka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Eugen Fink, and Jean Héring, analyse the lived characters of dreaming respectively. Secondly, we show that those pioneering phenomenologists, by engaging with the traditional dream argument, have laid out the worldliness of dreams as a crucial criterion for deciding how similar dreams and reality can be.