Victor Gelan

In this paper I intend to grapple with the idea of philosophy as rigorous science from the point of view of Husserl‟s phenomenology in order to show that this idea may have an important contribution to the way in which the scientific character of sciences in general, and of human and social sciences in particular, is being conceived. As rigorous science, phenomenology emphasizes and investigates the a priori context of other sciences. In this way, it plays a vital role in the development of every particular eidetic upon which any sciences rely. This eidetic (or the eidetic layer of any mature science) embraces the goal and strives to reach the objective of determining the valid sense of the fundamental notions used by the scientist in his research, without, nevertheless, stirring a radical questioning of this sense and of the ultimate validity of these notions. To define them requires passing from the usual level of inquiring of that particular science (the processes of dealing with facts and experiments) to the level (or meta-level) of a radical reflection on the sense or the meaning of the basic notions of the science in question (its own foundations). Philosophy as rigorous science connects the researcher´s assertions not only to the empirical state of affairs envisaged by his work, but, moreover and in a fundamental way, to their noematic content, to their intrinsic intentional meaning. Therefore, the idea of rigorous science elaborated in Husserl‟s phenomenology is heavy with the potential of clarifying the foundations and stakes of the research undertaken by the other sciences.

In this paper I aim to show that the philosophy of Mihai Şora can both be seen as a phenomenological treatment of being and as a general theory of being in its most rigorous sense. At least, this philosophy could be designated as a phenomenological ontology which opens up itself towards an originally metaphysical perspective based on a specific type of knowledge of the sort of “global disclosure”. I will argue too that within Şora's philosophy one can have a twofold approach: one starts from what we could call the phenomenology of the “common givenness” (“ordinary/ quotidian givenness”) and then proceeds (in a phenomenological manner) to a general theory of being, which is represented in Şora's philosophy by the constitution of the model of the “sphere with the null ray”; the second commences with the treatment of the ontological model as such (the model, which is already formed, represents in the end the symbolic structure of reality), that is, from this “general theory of being” (or of the constitution of being) and then advances step by step towards various (phenomenological) applications of this ontological model to the multifaceted spheres of the domain of being (the sphere of language, of temporality, of ethics, of the social, of politics, etc.).

In this paper I aim to show that the issue of the constitution of time in Husserl’s thought can not be fully exhausted by a descriptive analysis of the immanent level of consciousness and it rather asks for a deeper search at a pre-immanent (and pre-subjective) level. The way Husserl developes his interpretation regarding the constitution of time leads the descriptive (phenomenological) method to an impasse. Because of this, the Husserlian analysis proceeds to some techniques which bear on what some commentators called a constructive phenomenology. The central point that I argue for in this study is that the premise from which Husserl starts his examination of the constitution of time is ab initio problematic or debatable: that is, consciousness forms the origin of time and one could reach this source by following the path oppened by descriptive analysis. I will hold that time rather originates in the encounter between consciousness and objects or between consciousness and other consciousness (i.e. founded/originated in a relation).

My aim in this paper is to analyze the way in which Edmund Husserl deals with the problem of the constitution of image in his writings. The difference between a common thing and a work of art lies in the fact that the ‘thing’ is submitted as an object to perception, while the work of art is the product of the human capacity called imagination or fantasy (Phantasie). Therefore, the difference between perception (which is an objectifying act) and imagination (which refers to a mental representation) is the fundamental difference Husserl operates with in his analysis of the phenomenological problem of the image building. I also want to show that Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of the image is fundamental in the understanding of the work of art (aesthetic phenomena including) and of its difference from a common thing. From the point of view of the History of Philosophy, the Husserlian analysis presupposes the overcoming of the classical opposition between subject and object, and the aesthetic experience is one of the (privileged) ways through which this overcoming can be achieved.

In his fifth Logical Investigation, Husserl intensely scrutinizes three possible significations of the concept of consciousness. In these analyses, he also strives to clearly delineate between two types of consciousness: psychological and phenomenological. The goal of this paper is to show that the way in which the (psychical) act is conceived and defined, according to the Husserlian approach, as a lived, intentional experience plays an essential role in clarifying the distinction between the empirical-psychological level of consciousness (where the act as a lived experience manifests itself) and its eidetic or ideal level (wherein any type of objectivity is constituted as such). Moreover, I shall try to argue that the notion of act conceived in this manner had influenced and decisively determined the development of the entire Husserlian phenomenology and theory of knowledge exactly because it explains how knowledge in general is constituted from an objective point of view. Another highly relevant distinction that needs to be dealt with in this context is the difference that Husserl establishes between the descriptive and intentional contents of the act. I shall try to show that this distinction presupposes in fact a previous conceptual determination of the noema (undertaken jointly with the analysis of the noetical components of consciousness at this level), and that the way in which the relationship between these two strands of consciousness is described determines further and in a fundamental manner the development of the idea of intentionality itself.

According to Husserl, time represents the general characteristic of all inner experiences (Erlebnisse) of consciousness and the internal time-consciousness is, together with intentionality, one of the two general structures of the pure transcendental consciousness. The problem of the consitution of the objectivity of the knowledge of the world pressuposes as a first level of inquiry exactly the consciousness of time and the detachment of the specific structures of this consciousness. However, the problem of the constitution of time cannot be exhausted throughout a descriptive analysis of the immanent level of consciousness for it asks for a diving to a pre-imanent (pre-subjective) level and requires some procedures which rather belong to what we could call constructive phenomenology. The central point which I am arguing for in this study is that the premise from which Husserl starts in his analysis dedicated to the constitution of time is from the beginning problematic and debatable: that is, consciousness as such would represent the origin of time and that one could reach this origin by following the line of a descriptive analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to show that the dichotomy between factual and eidetic represents one of the fundamental presuppositions of the Husserlian phenomenology. No authentic understanding of the phenomenological reduction and of its constitutive role for the transcendental phenomenology is possible without a proper understanding of this dichotomy and of its relevance for the transcendental problem. One of the questions I am going to discuss in this paper is the following: Could it be possible that both the dichotomy between fact and essence and that between empirical and eidetic sciences is actually at work in Husserl’s Ideen I as a phenomenologically uninvestigated presupposition of his undertaking? The other matter I am going to address in this paper is the concept of originary givenness and the legitimacy of the knowledge based on it (which is presupposed by the “principle of all principles” which Husserl formulates in Ideen I). I will argue that this concept is a revolutionary idea not only from a philosophical standpoint, but also from a more general scientific one, because it offers a new criteria of knowledge, that of the originary donating intuition.

The present contribution has the purpose of evidencing both the originality of Şora’s understanding of time (and its importance for the question of authenticity, empathy and intersubjectivity), and the possibility of a dialogue with Husserl’s understanding of the consciousness of internal time. One of the most important aspects of my paper is the endeavour to bring to light the underlying structure of temporality at work in Mihai Şora’s philosophy. The two forms of temporality present in Şora’s thought – the temporality “of the Moment” and that “of the instances of countable time” – open up the possibility of a phenomenological understanding of time. Some specific terms which Şora uses to describe the two forms of temporality – like the “vertical plunge”, “openness”, “disclosure”, “the gift of Encounter”, “the horizontal walk”, etc. – seem, at least at first, to belong to a poetic language, full of metaphors, a language which doesn’t seem to have much in common with the rigors of a philosophical language, but they nevertheless reveal some fundamental characteristics of the two forms of temporality. The possibility of understanding and interpreting these forms of temporality as structures belonging to the consciousness of time, in a broad sense (which correspond to the fabric of the real word, according to Şora’s ontological model), is another interesting question which will be debated in the present study

Dans ce travail, je me propose d'examiner, en réfléchissant sur l'apophatisme, les modalités par lesquelles la philosophie entre ou peut entrer en dialogue avec la théologie. L'ouverture vers la pensée théologique est fondée sur le fait que l'apophatisme philosophique peut être compris comme une étape préparatoire à l'apophatisme théologique: le dernier niveau auquel le philosophe peut arriver dans sa méditation peut correspondre à la première étape de la pensée apophatique à un niveau theologique.

The main aim of this paper is to show that the idea of rigorous science, elaborated by Edmund Husserl, makes a fundamental contribution to the understanding, clarification, and development of the idea of science in general, and especially to the structuring of the character of science itself for social and human sciences. The first step of my approach is to outline a general theoretical framework for discussing the thorny issues of methodology and epistemology in the social and human sciences. I shall start by probing the way in which Husserl tried to give a philosophical clarification of the sciences and sought to ground them through transcendental phenomenology. Husserl’s idea of rigorous science proposed a new understanding of the way science is constituted in general and led to important developments which determined a re-evaluation of the scientific character of other sciences, and in particular, the social sciences. The rich programme of grounding the social sciences and the rigorous reconfiguring of their scientific character that was developed by the Austrian phenomenologist and sociologist, Alfred Schutz, is just one major exemplification of Husserl’s idea of rigorous science. In the second part of my paper I shall show how the Husserlian idea of rigorous science influenced the scientific understanding of, and approach towards social life. In this sense, I shall direct my analysis towards the way Schutz understands and elaborates the idea of social relations in a phenomenological manner, by which he tries to account for the phenomenological constitution of the meaning of social action and the possibility of knowledge in social sciences. When shaping his programme, Schutz begins with the Husserlian phenomenological reduction and theory of constitution of meaning. But both the theory of the constitution of meaning, and the idea of the phenomenological reduction itself, are made possible for Husserl precisely through his idea of rigorous science.

According to Mihai Șora’s theory/philosophical stance, every inquiry into the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics must start first from the clarification of the notions of existence and in-sistence. If, according to the existentialist phenomenology, existence sends to the fact of being situated in the exterior of your inner self (as Heidegger would put it that is being thrown out ahead in your existential projects), in-sistence is, in Șora’s view, a way of being centered upon yourself, i.e. lying entirely in your own self. For Heidegger, the essence of the Dassein consists in the Dassein’s existence. For Șora, the integral existential project of man, being made of the man’s totality of existential acts, does not come out from the mode of existence (as interpreted by Heidegger), but rather resides in the in-sistence’s mode. The passage from existence to in-sistence marks here a leap from phenomenology to a sort of metaphysics which nonetheless does not cancel out the phenomenological inquiry, but rather attempts at integrating the latter in a broader and more comprehensive theory of being and grounding. The result of this analysis would be that phenomenology and metaphysics are in truth two complementary domains, and not two opposed approaches in philosophy.

My aim here is to analyze a few possible ways of transcending the dichotomous character of philosophical thinking. I focus on Mihai Şora’s philosophy because it is best suited for this goal. The question that will guide this paper is whether it is possible to go beyond the dichotomous nature of philosophy. My thesis will be that, when considering Mihai Şora’s thought, one can answer in the affirmative. We look for the details of Şora’s philosophy which allow us to set forth how actually takes place the transcendence of the dichotomist view. We focus on the concept called “the organic entanglement” since it is the core of Şora’s approach.