Continental Philosophy of Mind

In this article, we examine the idea of the method of analytic description as a theoretical link connecting Brentano’s philosophy and the Lvov–Warsaw School via a systematic historico-philosophical approach. Building on Czeżowski’s claim that the method was devised by Brentano, Twardowski, and Blaustein, this study situates the Lvov–Warsaw School within the Brentanian tradition. In section two, Brentano’s nuanced position is presented, vis-à-vis the use of description in psychological research, drawing a distinction between two phases. The third section reconstructs the theoretical (...) foundations of analytic description in Czeżowski and Twardowski. Section four analyzes Blaustein’s On the Perception of the Radio Play as a case study illustrating his methodological approach. The article concludes by assessing whether the methodological procedures devised by the aforementioned members of the Lvov–Warsaw School constitute a genuine implementation of the analytic method introduced and developed by Brentano. (shrink)

AI is not ONE system, it wasn’t suddenly pulled out of a drawer by companies, and it is (at least for now) not a direct path to human intelligence. The core problems that current developments are now encountering are neither new nor completely misunderstood. They point to fundamental philosophical problems surrounding the themes of information and meaning, abstraction and universals—to which continental philosophers have also always made substantial contributions. The aim of this text is to spark greater interest among continental (...) philosophers (and others with an interest in the subject) in the question of the nature of human thought through a concrete examination of modern AI systems. The manuscript is structured as follows: Following a deliberately sober, minimalist presentation of current technologies – in which both historical (Section 1.1) and technical aspects (1.2) are addressed – an overview of the possibilities and limitations of current AI systems (2.1 to 2.3) is given, including their political, economic, and cultural effects (2.4). After a brief overview of some philosophically relevant aspects (3), I will then attempt to demonstrate, using five problems of current AI systems, to what extent such approaches are fundamentally and comprehensively removed from human thought understood in an inflationary sense (4.1), before discussing the question of whether the developments to date should be understood as the beginning of a golden age, or rather as the zenith of a paradigm (4.2). The manuscript concludes with a brief outlook on the opportunities that, in my opinion, are opening up here for those engaged in continental philosophy, particularly in the tradition of Leibniz, German idealism, and, above all, Husserl. (shrink)

This article develops a structural account of consciousness and uses it to reinterpret reproductive aversion and contemporary demographic decline. It begins by rejecting the dominant capacity paradigm, which treats consciousness as something a structure possesses once it meets the right functional or informational threshold. In its place, the article argues that consciousness is better understood as a maintenance response that arises when self-reference penetrates organization deeply enough to make complete closure unavailable. Under this condition of closure failure, a structure can (...) no longer sustain coherence by operation alone and must supplement itself through what is here called the sentinel. From this account, the article draws a specifically human consequence. Developed self-referential subjectivity does not encounter reproduction first as future continuation, but as a present demand for the local recession of the very apparatus through which the subject maintains itself. This yields a reproductive paradox: the more deeply self-reference is installed, the more strongly the conditions of collective continuation may be experienced as forms of self-loss. The article distinguishes this claim from antinatalism by arguing that it operates at a prior, structural stratum rather than at the level of normative judgment. It concludes by redescribing demographic decline not as simple failure, choice, or value defect, but as the visible collective consequence of a form of subjectivity whose continuity can no longer be inhabited without self-loss. (shrink)

KI ist nicht EIN System, ist nicht plötzlich von Unternehmen aus der Schublade gezogen worden und ist (zumindest derzeit noch) kein gerader Weg hin zur menschlichen Intelligenz. Die Kern-Probleme, in die die Entwicklungen jetzt laufen, sind weder neu, noch vollkommen unverstanden. Sie verweisen auf grundlegende philosophische Probleme rund um die Themen Information und Bedeutung, Abstraktion und Universalien – zu denen auch kontinental Philosophierende immer schon Substantielles beigetragen haben. Ziel des vorliegenden Textes ist es, stärker kontinental Philosophierende (und andere Interessierte) für (...) die Frage der Natur des menschlichen Denkens in der konkreten Auseinandersetzung mit modernen KI-Systemen zu interessieren. Das Manuskript ist dabei wie folgt strukturiert: Nach einer Minimal-Darstellung derzeitiger Technologien bei der sowohl historische (Abschnitt 1.1) als auch technische Aspekte (1.2) angeschnitten werden, folgt zunächst ein Überblick über die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen derzeitiger KI-Systeme (2.1 bis 2.3), auch bezogen auf ihre politischen, wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Effekte (2.4). Anschließend an einen kurzen Überblick über einige philosophisch relevante Aspekte (3), versuche ich dann zunächst anhand von fünf Problemen derzeitiger KI-Systeme aufzuzeigen, inwieweit solche Ansätze grundlegend und umfassend von einem 'inflationär' verstandenen menschlichen Denken entfernt sind (4.1.), bevor ich die Frage diskutiere, ob die bisherigen Entwicklungen als Anfang einer goldenes Zeitalters, oder doch eher als Zenit eines Paradigmas verstanden werden sollten (4.2). Das Manuskript schließt mit einem kurzen Ausblick auf die Chancen, die sich hier meiner Meinung nach für kontinental Philosophierende u.a. in der Tradition von Leibniz, des deutschen Idealismus und v.a. auch Husserl bieten. (shrink)

This paper offers a structural reinterpretation of projection, shadow, and awakening. It argues that projection is not mere error or fantasy, but a distorted form of structural recognition: something real is often perceived, but mislocated. What appears in the other is frequently a pattern, tension, or possibility that is partly one’s own but not yet consciously owned. On this view, awakening is not just introspection but the inward reclaiming of hidden structure, so that what was previously scattered into projection becomes (...) increasingly visible, ownable, and revisable within the self. The paper then clarifies Structural Intelligence as a more answerable version of this capacity: not mere pattern-noticing, but the ability to perceive, test, and revise structure under contact. By reinterpreting projection, shadow, individuation, peace, and presence in structural terms, the paper builds a bridge between Jungian psychology and a broader philosophy of structure. Its larger claim is cautious but important: the human being is philosophically distinctive not because it stands outside structure, but because it is one of the places where structure becomes partially legible to itself. (shrink)

This treatise conducts a systematic dependency analysis of Jungian psychology following the demonstration that Jung’s collective unconscious hypothesis lacks empirical warrant as a mechanism of phylogenetic psychic inheritance (Boether, 2025a). Adopting the philosophy of science framework developed by Lakatos (1978), I treat the collective unconscious as the “hard core” of Jung’s research programme and trace the propagation of its failure through the “protective belt” of derivative constructs: archetypes, individuation, synchronicity, active imagination, dream interpretation, and psychological types. The analysis distinguishes four (...) tiers of theoretical vulnerability: constructs that collapse without the collective unconscious, those substantially weakened, those indirectly affected, and those that survive independently. Drawing upon the Life-Experience Encyclopedia model and the Pyramid of Personality framework (Boether, 2025a), supplemented by attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982) and predictive processing (Clark, 2016), I demonstrate that the phenomenological observations motivating Jung’s original theorizing can be preserved through developmental convergence—the thesis that universal psychic patterns arise from shared constraints of early human development rather than inherited psychic structures. The result is a reconstruction agenda that salvages what is empirically defensible in Jungian thought while excising its metaphysical excesses. (shrink)

_Dasein_ is the German term for concrete existence in general. In phenomenology, it is best known as the key term of Martin Heidegger’s _Being and Time_ (1927), where it specifically designates the existential, factical, and situated “being-there” of the concrete and individual human being, as opposed to the Husserlian understanding of transcendental subjectivity. In Heidegger’s fundamental ontology, the existential analytic of Dasein as dynamic and finite being-in-the-world and care aims to elaborate the fundamentally temporal structure of Dasein’s existence; this was (...) to serve as a pathway to articulating the temporal structure of meaningful being in general. In Heidegger’s later thought, the focus is on the _Da_, the “there” of Dasein as the situated and singular locus, site, or place for the event (_Ereignis_) of being. The Heideggerian Dasein has been a particularly influential concept within existential philosophy and existential psychology, and has also had repercussions in political theory. (shrink)

Guest editors' introduction to a Special Issue on Dan Zahavi's target article.

Bereavement has long been recognised as an experience of profound temporal disruption, unravelling and even severing the connections, meanings, and strategies we habitually use in navigating time. The technologies that are involved in our grieving and mourning processes can therefore also be temporal technologies; our encounters with them can both shape and be shaped by our entanglement in the temporalities of loss. The recent phenomenon of so-called ‘griefbots’ or ‘deathbots’ – Large Language Model-powered chatbots trained to imitate the dead – (...) is no different. This paper explores some of the implications that interactions with such bots might have for a bereaved person’s experience of time by turning to Heidegger’s conceptualisation of world-time. This framework is particularly useful for thinking about both intimacy and loss, and can shed light on both beneficial and deleterious consequences of griefbot usage. In particular, such an approach can show that the dangers of griefbots usage lie less in the potential for the bereaved being deceived, and more in the reductive perspective that these bots can encourage. Usage of, and even temporary reliance upon, a griefbot can generate attitudes with a protective effect, similar to the function that Lisa Bortolotti ascribes to delusions. However, griefbots can also interfere with the temporal unfolding of grief and mourning by disrupting the way that loss tends to transform our embedding within the dynamics of world-time. (shrink)

The primary aim of this research was to investigate the intricate relationship between the structural elements of experiences and their essential role in meaning formation. The analysis focused on understanding the nature of mental representations and the subjective, phenomenal qualities that emerge within experiences. To achieve this, an integrated approach, combining cognitive semantics with phenomenological analysis, was employed to examine the compositional complexities of the dynamic interaction between a priori and immediate experiences and their significance in meaning formation. The study (...) highlights the interconnectivity of structural elements within experience as a critical factor in shaping the phenomenal qualities of mental representations. Another key contribution of this study is the introduction of the “fulfiller” concept, which underscores the importance of absent qualities in meaning formation-an often-overlooked aspect in traditional models that focus solely on present attributes. The “fulfiller” concept emphasizes how absence, in addition to presence, influences meaning assignment. This inclusion enhances our understanding of meaning formation by considering both the tangible and intangible dimensions of the experiential-intentional process, offering a more comprehensive framework for understanding how meaning emerges from the complex interaction of present and absent qualities. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt notably remarked that thinking, understood as the non-conclusive inner dialogue of “me” with “myself,” is most indispensable in those historical moments when “things fall apart.” War often occasions such moments, not just because of the moral and political turmoil that accompanies it or the physical damage it inflicts upon people and their environments, but also because of its absurdity; this latter feature, the absurdity of war, is captured by Stanislav Aseyev, a Donetsk-born Ukrainian writer, in his books In (...) Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas and The Torture Camp on Paradise Street. In this essay, I argue that Aseyev’s reflections on Russian occupation, imprisonment, and torture demonstrate both the special value of Arendt’s “thinking” for those enduring war and violence and reveal a pre-moral-political capacity of “thinking” latent but never explicit in Arendt’s work: the power to cope with the absurd qua absurd. (shrink)

Joseph Rouse is one of the most distinctive and innovative proponents of practice theory today. This article focuses in section I on two extended elaborations with systematic intent from Rouse’s corpus over the last two decades regarding the nature of practices, highlighting in particular the concept of normativity. Toward this end, this article explains why Rouse argues that we need to bring about something like a Copernican revolution in our understanding of the intrinsic normativity of practices as an essentially interactive, (...) temporal, contestable, and open-ended process. In section II, this article then examines some commonalities and apparent divergences of Rouse’s practice theory from the existential phenomenology of the early Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The article draws to a close by considering two apparent divergences between Rouse’s conception of practices and existential phenomenology: (1) the degree of compatibility between the claim of existential phenomenology to reveal necessary enabling background conditions of our lived experience and Rouse’s normative conception of practices; and (2) the compatibility of “quasi-transcendental” constitution, as this is at work according to existential phenomenology, and Rouse’s argument that it is wrong to understand practices as exclusively centered on the activities of human beings. (shrink)

Does browsing the world through a screen change a person, especially in the context of COVID-19? Recent studies indicate that self-care, psychological well-being, and empathy may suffer. The “Californian ideology” privileges expression of the self even as digital technology tends to interrupt the modern trend towards elaborating distinct selves via texts that convey knowledge. Meanwhile, digital browsing may be fracturing attention and empathy. -/- As these changes proceed, legislators react to a medical and social crisis. Relaxation of business, community center, (...) and school closures prevailed, under pressure from advocates of liberty, jobs, and pro-market economics. A rival set of regulatory reforms would prioritize fighting the virus and providing more relief to its victims as being forms of care for others. In the international domain, nationalist ideology and economic warfare intensify disparities in access to medical care, imported goods, and livelihoods. At stake is how best to take beings into care. (shrink)

Brentano’s introduction of the concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy was indebted to scholastic sources. Among these, Suárez has not been sufficiently addressed, even though his idea of transcendental relation is relied upon by Brentano to describe the intentional relation. In addition, in his examination of being as truth in Suárez, Brentano manifests his assumption of the principle of immanence. Finally, this article argues that, even in his reist period, Brentano continued to understand knowledge as a relation.

The organism against its environment. The organism against other organisms, competing and struggling for life. Antagonism and confrontment as the only possible relation in nature. The tendency to anthropomorphize nature and explain it using concepts and facts from the human sphere. A stroll through the worlds of Uexküll and Merleau-Ponty in the search of alternative knowledge that allow us to understand relation from another point of view. A counterpoint and identification of common tonalities between the research programs from both thinkers (...) as a way to demonstrate the possibilities of a more fruitful approach. Umwelt as a generative system of meaningful relations in which its participants are not mutually exclusive, but express a melody that include them all. (shrink)

In this paper, we set out to develop a theoretical and conceptual framework for the new field of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience. This framework should be able to integrate insights from several relevant disciplines: theory on embodied cognition, ecological psychology, phenomenology, dynamical systems theory, and neurodynamics. We suggest that the main task of Radical Embodied Cognitive Neuroscience is to investigate the phenomenon of skilled intentionality from the perspective of the self-organization of the brain-body-environment system, while doing justice to the phenomenology (...) of skilled action. In previous work, we have characterized skilled intentionality as the organism's tendency toward an optimal grip on multiple relevant affordances simultaneously. Affordances are possibilities for action provided by the environment. In the first part of this paper, we introduce the notion of skilled intentionality and the phenomenon of responsiveness to a field of relevant affordances. Second, we use Friston's work on neurodynamics, but embed a very minimal version of his Free Energy Principle in the ecological niche of the animal. Thus amended, this principle is helpful for understanding the embeddedness of neurodynamics within the dynamics of the system “brain-body-landscape of affordances.” Next, we show how we can use this adjusted principle to understand the neurodynamics of selective openness to the environment: interacting action-readiness patterns at multiple timescales contribute to the organism's selective openness to relevant affordances. In the final part of the paper, we emphasize the important role of metastable dynamics in both the brain and the brain-body-environment system for adequate affordance-responsiveness. We exemplify our integrative approach by presenting research on the impact of Deep Brain Stimulation on affordance responsiveness of OCD patients. (shrink)

One of the major works of an important modem philosopher, Matter and Memory investigates the autonomous yet interconnected planes formed by matter and perception on the one hand and memory and time on the other. Henry Bergson (1859-1941) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1927. His works include Time and Free Will, An Introduction to Metaphysics, Creative Evolution, and The Creative Mind.

The Hegelian and the Thomistic accounts of self-knowledge are solidly Aristotelian in their origins and motivations. In their conclusions and consequences, however, the two accounts exhibit significant differences. Hegel argues that genuine self-knowledge is necessarily social and historical, while Aquinas says nothing about history or society in his account of self-knowledge. The aim of this paper is not to decide the issue concerning historicity in favor of either Hegel or Aquinas. The aim here is rather to address a prior question: (...) what are the systematic and philosophical reasons for the difference between the two thinkers? In order to articulate this difference between the two, we might begin by considering an underlying similarity: their common Aristotelian background. (shrink)

Some of the most innovative philosophical engagement with cinema and ethics in recent years has come from phenomenological and cognitivist perspectives. This trend reflects a welcome re-engagement with cinema as a medium with the potential for ethical transformation, that is, with the idea of cinema as a medium of ethical experience. This paper explores the phenomenological turn in film theory, emphasizing the ethical implications of phenomenological approaches to affect and empathy, emotion, and evaluation. I argue that the oft-criticized subjectivism of (...) phenomenological theories can be supplemented by cognitivist approaches that highlight the complex forms of affective response, emotional engagement, and moral allegiance at work in our experience of movies. An empathic ethics or “cinempathy” is at work in many films, I suggest, such as Ashgar Farhadi’s A Separation, which offers a striking case study in cinematic ethics. (shrink)

This thesis argues that Heidegger’s accounts of practice and temporality in Being and Time are inseparable, and demonstrates the importance of temporality for contemporary dialogues between Heideggerian phenomenology and cognitive science. It proposes that enactive and action-oriented models of cognition are best suited to engaging with a Heideggerian view of the temporality of practice, and will benefit from the latter’s capacity to explain the purposive self-concern, possibility-directedness, and varying complexity of cognition in richly temporal terms. I begin by showing that (...) Heidegger’s account places temporality and practice in a complex reciprocity in which each fundamentally shapes and permeates the other. The Heidegger of Being and Time conceptualises practice as fundamentally temporal and temporality as intrinsically purposive, meaning that we cannot adequately understand or utilise his analysis of either structure without acknowledging the role of the other. In outlining and defending this reading, I draw out two characteristics of Heidegger’s model of temporality; these features, which affect and are affected by the interconnection of temporality and purposiveness, are an inherent connection to the self-concern of the entity and an emphasis upon a radically indeterminate futurity. I then consider which contemporary approaches in cognitive science represent the most promising interlocutors for this temporality-oriented Heideggerian perspective. After rejecting selected in principle objections to the pursuit of a collaborative, rather than primarily critical, dialogue between Heideggerian phenomenology and cognitive science, I put forward two candidates for participation in a ‘temporality-oriented Heideggerian cognitive science’: the enactivist tradition and Michael Wheeler’s model of cognition. I set out each approach’s connections to Heideggerian thought (which involves arguing for as-yet unexplored links as well as defending existing ones) before showing how and why a Heideggerian conception of temporality can be integrated into both. I suggest that the structures of a Heideggerian model of temporality already resonate with and operate in enactivists’ and Wheeler’s analyses of cognition, and outline how I think each framework benefits from explicitly taking up and developing these connections. Rather than ultimately choosing one of these perspectives over the other, I conclude by proposing that they cooperate with one another. A Heideggerian conception of temporality opens up a space for enactivism and Wheeler’s approach to contribute distinct and complementary insights in the pursuit of a collaborative temporality-oriented Heideggerian cognitive science. (shrink)

Early modern automata, understood as efforts to ‘model’ life, to grasp its singular properties and/or to unveil and demystify its seeming inaccessibility and mystery, are not just fascinating liminal, boundary, hybrid, crossover or go-between objects, while they are all of those of course. They also pose a direct challenge to some of our common conceptions about mechanism and embodiment. They challenge the simplicity of the distinction between a purported ‘mechanistic’ worldpicture, its ontology and its goals, and on the other hand (...) an attempt to understand ourselves and animals more broadly as flesh-and-blood, affective entities (that is, not just breathing and perspiring, but also desiring and ‘sanguine’ machines, as La Mettrie might have put it). In what follows I reflect on the complexity of early modern mechanism faced with the (living) body, and its mirror image, contemporary theories of embodiment. At times, embodiment theory seems to be governed by a fascination with what the Artificial Life researcher Ezequiel Di Paolo has called ‘biochauvinism’ (Di Paolo, “Extended Life”): an unquestioned belief that ‘living bodies are special’. Yet how does the theorist define this special status? The question is apparently a simple one, or at least promptly yields an aporia which appears simple: to borrow a provocative phrase from Terry Eagleton, embodiment theory is obsessed by the body but terrified of biology. Yet at the same time, at least since Hubert Dreyfus and Andy Clark’s groundbreaking works, embodiment has been a legit part of cognitive science, yielding the even more recently emerged field of ‘embodied cognition’ (see the work of Larry Shapiro), which seeks to depart from traditional cognitive science, especially the latter’s understanding of cognition as computational, in order to instead underscore “the significance of an organism’s body in how and what the organism thinks,” in Shapiro’s words. (shrink)

This chapter uses one particular proposal for interdisciplinary collaboration – in this case, between early Heideggerian phenomenology and enactivist cognitive science – as an example of how such partnerships may confront and negotiate tensions between the perspectives they bring together. The discussion begins by summarising some of the intersections that render Heideggerian and enactivist thought promising interlocutors for each other. It then moves on to explore how Heideggerian enactivism could respond to the challenge of reconciling the significant differences in the (...) ways that each discourse seeks to apply the structures it claims to uncover. (shrink)

ExcerptAs Jürgen Habermas has recently pointed out, scientific naturalism represents one of the “two countervailing trends that mark the intellectual tenor of our age,” the other being religious worldviews.1 In a broader intellectual landscape dominated by research programs in neuro- and cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics and so on, contemporary naturalism symbolizes not only the meta-philosophical framework of these leading intellectual enterprises, but more fundamentally a sort of zeitgeist for our epoch. This is true not only at an epistemological (...) level, characterized today by the efforts of an entire generation of philosophers to “naturalize” knowledge, the mind, consciousness, and…. (shrink)

To understand the radical potential of Heidegger’s model of practice, we need to acknowledge the role that temporality plays within it. Commentaries on Heidegger’s account of practical engagement, however, often leave the connection between purposiveness and temporality unexplored, a tendency that persists in the contemporary discourse generated by the interaction between the phenomenological tradition and certain approaches within cognitive science. Taking up a temporality-oriented reading that redresses this can, I want to argue here, reveal new illuminating sites for the intersection (...) between phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, particularly between Heideggerian perspectives and what have become known as enactive approaches to the study of cognition. According to the latter, cognition is an inherently relational process through which the interaction of a living being and its environment generates meaning and, ultimately, a world of significance defined by the cogniser’s self-concern. I will suggest that this emphasis upon the inextricable intertwining of agent and world renders enactive models of cognition particularly congenial to a mutually enriching dialogue with Heidegger’s account of purposiveness, particularly if we read the latter in terms of the temporal framework that Being and Time offers us. (shrink)

Arendt is a philosopher despite herself, and this paper uses the resources of her > to develop her comparison of thinking as a 'departure' from the world with the fore-doomed attempt by Orpheus to bring from underground into the light of day. The paper investigates how thinking, though we 'lose' it in the speech and writing that makes it public, still can have the delicate power that Arendt attributes to it.

In this paper, I will argue that the experiential-based approaches of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and William James’s radical empiricism can help inform an account of humanism more rooted in concrete experience. Specifically, I will outline a form of humanism closely connected to the conceptual similarities between James’s radical empiricism and the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology of experience. Whereas many forms of humanism are underscored by an eliminativist impulse, I sketch a humanism of lived-experience more motivated by the restrictive and (...) experiential impetus closer to pragmatism and phenomenology than humanism defended on metaphysically eliminativist grounds.This paper is organized in the following way. In the first section, I explain the general character of Husserl’s phenomenology and explain the methodological commitments that underscore his concept of experience. In the second section, I outline the conceptual similarities between James’s later radical empiricism and Husserl’s thought. Finally, in the third section, James’s critique of metaphysics and his radical empiricism allow for a limited acceptability of religious interests in experience as well as scientific interests. These interests result from how we experience the world and affirm freedom and individuality of every person’s lived-experience. (shrink)

Phenomenology is often described as a paradigm shift that calls for a re-assessment of inherited themes and concepts. One of its most important contributions is the central role given to the embodied subject as opposed to the conception of the disembodied subject that has dominated philosophy since Descartes. If perspectival painting best represents the paradigm of modern philosophy since the Renaissance, it is the multiple perspectives of Cubist painting that best represent the phenomenological paradigm. While the relationship between phenomenology and (...) art has been widely studied, my aim in this article is to focus on the way in which Cubism represents the embodied, horizonal structure of our perception, and then to discuss the new form of contemporary art installation as an actualization of Cubist principles in the age of digital reproduction. The embodiment of the subject necessarily involves intersubjectivity, for others appear in the subject’s contextual frame of public space. While for Arendt the shift from private subjective space to public intersubjective space is effected through dialogue, I argue that it is also effected architecturally, for architecture facilitates dialogue by offering multiple perspectives on common space and shared time. I suggest, finally, that architecture’s multiperspectival strategies offer the humanities a useful model of a multidisciplinary methodology. (shrink)

Phenomenology of religion is among the oldest branches of the discipline founded by Husserl. It has always been difficult to define its outlines: from the very first essays of Scheler, Reinach and Heidegger to the so-called “theological turn” of French phenomenology, one has always feared the transformation of the phenomenology of religion in a religious philosophy that would give up the sacred principle of neutrality. This situation is perhaps behind us thanks to the recent endeavors to renew the field of (...) research. French and American specialists of Husserl’s thought Natalie Depraz and Anthony J. Steinbock try to push back the limits of and to explore new ways in genetic phenomenology by describing religious attitudes by mean of a philosophical-existential methodology especially designed for this task. This paper introduces what might open of a new era of the phenomenology of religion. (shrink)

Simon Glendinning explains the mysteries of phenomenology.

This essay was written on the basis of what I call a ‘happy misunde rstanding’, which is already conspicuous in the first paragraph below. Most misunderstandings have negative consequences. But in this case I was delighted to learn that I was mistaken in believing that phenomenology was just getting going in South Africa, when actually there have been phenomenologists there since before World War II! Why I and my colleagues editing the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology were ignorant of this and failed (...) to include an entry on South Africa I am not yet able to explain, but I was at least able to apologise for this omission at the recent meeting. Beyond the firstclass quality of the presentations that I heard, the colleagues on the program were typically younger than I have seen in meetings of other groups recently and also a higher proportion were women, both factors auguring well for the future. I have not tried to hide my misunderstanding in the following essay and do hope to see two delegates at the meeting of the Organization of Phenomenological Organizations in Australia next year. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the few major phenomenologists to engage extensively with empirical research in the sciences, and the only one to examine child psychology with rigor and in such depth. His writings have recently become increasingly influential, as the findings of psychology and cognitive science inform and are informed by phenomenological inquiry. Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne lectures of 1949 to 1952 are a broad investigation into child psychology, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, phenomenology, sociology, and anthropology. They argue that the subject of child (...) psychology is critical for any philosophical attempt to understand individual and intersubjective existence. Talia Welsh’s new translation provides Merleau-Ponty’s complete lectures on the seminal engagement of phenomenology and psychology. (shrink)