Rosa Maria Lupo

Should contemporary phenomenology be considered as a series of heresies or is it still possible to follow the direction of classical phenomenology to renew it? Does a classical phenomenology exist at all? We can already observe in Husserl’s work a kind of stratification of phenomenology which makes it possible to affirm that from its beginning phenomenology has been already deconstructed and revised, never closed in a specific ontological field. Rather it is an indication of a method, of a cognitive praxis with a transcendental status. That opens phenomenology up to continuous revisions according to the object to which consciousness is addressed. This methodological essence of phenomenology explains its wide thematic modulation and its claim to be applied as a method to everything that has a phenomenal nature. As a way towards phenomena, the aim of phenomenology still today goes on deciphering the conditions of phenomenality and its reception by subjectivity.

The contemporary research on "meta-function", closely associated with names as Breton, Ricoeur, Greisch, is located in continuity with the traditional question on metaphysics, which metaphysics itself has posed in its historical development starting from Aristotle, followed by the exegetical readings in the late antiquity, in the Arabic philosophy and in the Scholasticism. The analysis of meta-function as peculiar character of metaphysics highlights the double movement of transcendence and immanence, of going beyond and coming back. It shows how metaphysics overcomes physis to rediscover it in a formal way on a deeper ontological level by posing the question about "being as being", which is not a natural object. In this way metaphysics displays its eidetical nature according to which metaphysics and phenomenology no longer appear as opposed in front of phenomena