Blurred vision: Marion on the ‘possibility’ of revelation

In this paper I challenge Merold Westphal’s claim that Jean-Luc Marion’s hermeneutical phenomenology is especially useful for theology. I argue that in spite of his explicit allegiance to Husserl’s “principle of all principles,” Marion fails to embody a commitment to phenomenological seeing in his analyses of revelation. In the sections of Being Given where he discusses revelation, Marion allows faith-based claims to bleed into his phenomenological analyses, resulting in what I call his ‘blurred vision’—the pretension that phenomenological seeing can be extended to theological matters. This pretension undermines Marion’s phenomenological aspirations, because it invests his analyses with a theological content that phenomenological intuition cannot account for or clarify. At the same time, this blurring of the line between theology and phenomenology also makes Marion’s work theologically ineffective. For it furnishes the theologian and believer with the false assurance that faith-based commitments can be grounded in phenomenological knowledge—a claim that he simply cannot make good on. In light of these problems, I propose an alternative Heideggerian approach that maintains the boundary between philosophical and theological discourse and thereby safeguards the integrity of both.     

Gustav Shpet’s Implicit Phenomenological Idealism

The issue of whether the phenomenology presented in Ideen I was a metaphysical realism or an idealism came to the fore almost immediately upon its publication. The present essay is an examination of the relation of Gustav Shpet, one of Husserl’s students from the Göttingen years, to this issue via his understanding of phenomenology and, particularly, of the phenomenological reduction, as shown principally in his early published writings. For Shpet, phenomenology employs essential intuition without regard to experiential intuition. If we look on transcendental idealism as the label for this methodology, which disregards but does not deny either the empirical or its correlative species of intuition, then Shpet was such an idealist, all the while adhering to a metaphysical realism. In this way, Shpet could proclaim phenomenology to be the fundamental philosophical discipline without precluding the possibility of other philosophical disciplines insofar as they were conducted in relation to consciousness taken not as the “possession” of a human individual, but eidetically and thus not a “possession.”     

Regret and the Consciousness of the Past

This paper offers a phenomenological analysis of (1) the relationship between regret and episodic memory, (2) the temporal structure of ‘regretful memory’, (3) the affective and evaluative dimension of regretful memory and (4) the counterfactual dimension of regretful memory. Based on Husserl’s phenomenology, I offer an analysis of regret’s complex structures of intentionality and time-consciousness. Husserl held that episodic memory requires two temporal orientations on one’s own experience: the past now that one relives and the present now in which one does the reliving. If memory generally entails two temporal perspectives, regretful memory brings in a third point of temporal reference: that now that could have been. Drawing on Hoerl and McCormack, I give an account of regret as a mnemic and counterfactual form of intentional consciousness that confronts an alternative past and attempts to negotiate between two essential yet conflicting features of its actual past: its contingency and its irreversibility. On this basis, I then draw on Bagnoli to offer a phenomenological theory of regretful memory as an emotional mode of valuing possibilities that belong to the past.     

The Radical Empiricism of Contemporary French Phenomenology

This paper suggests that one single thread characterizes the developments of French phenomenology that occurred after 1990 in the wake of Merleau-Ponty's and Levinas's major contributions. Janicaud in 1991 had already identified one global trend in French phenomenology and believed it was possible to unite the thoughts of Levinas, Henry, Marion and Chrétien under the common banner of “theological phenomenology.” However, his analysis seems to fail to account for deeper-seated affinities that exist between French phenomenologists such as Marion, Lacoste, Chrétien, Richir, Depraz, Romano – and Benoist for part of his work. This is the reason why, although the present paper does agree with Janicaud's idea that the French authors who define themselves as phenomenologists share some common ground, it defines this common trend quite differently, i.e., as a form of epistemological realism that ultimately manifests itself as a radical empiricism.

Consequently, the present study will state and defend three hypotheses: (1) contemporary French phenomenology professes a form of realism of experience, which is the true rallying point (space of exchange) of otherwise differing elaborations; (2) this type of epistemological empiricism, by virtue of its radicality, implies a problem that threatens to drive phenomenology towards its own dissolution, because as it precipitates in fine the dilution of philosophical discourse into a multitude of other discourses; (3) this variant of empiricism shows that, within its strictly defined viewpoint, there is scarcely any difference between French phenomenology and a certain part of French analytical philosophy. All three hypotheses lead to the same conclusion: the determination of the defining aspect of contemporary French phenomenology entails, beyond the apparent, misleading, and futile quarrel of paradigms, to bring to light a common space for contemporary French philosophy, which, from both perspectives, can be conveyed by the single term “to show.” It is, in fact, the elevation of “to show” to the detriment of “to demonstrate” that seems to ensnare thinkers within an impasse.     

Phenomenology as the Original Science of Life in Heidegger’s Early Freiburg Lectures

The aim of this essay is to introduce an original and radical phenomenology of life into Heidegger’s earliest lectures at Freiburg University that stands independently from and in contrast to fundamental ontology. The motivation behind this aim lies in the exclusion of life from the existential analytic of Dasein despite Heidegger’s preoccupation with the question of life during this very early period. Principally, the essay demonstrates how Husserl’s phenomenological insight into the intentionality of life has the potential to be transformed into a living aporia. Although this demonstration is set within the general context of obtaining knowledge in and of life, it is achieved via a reciprocal critique of both the possibility of a philosophy of life and Husserlian phenomenology that reveals the congruence life philosophy has with the project of phenomenology. The essay ends by exposing Heidegger’s own latent and inexplicit formulation of phenomenology as the original science of life in terms of a radical correlation that holds aporetically between living and unliving experience.     

Weyl on Fregean Implicit Definitions: Between Phenomenology and Symbolic Construction

This paper aims to investigate certain aspects of Weyl’s account of implicit definitions. The paper takes under consideration Weyl’s approach to a certain kind of implicit definitions i.e. abstraction principles introduced by Frege. Abstraction principles are bi-conditionals that transform certain equivalence relations into identity statements, defining thereby mathematical terms in an implicit way. The paper compares the analytic reading of implicit definitions offered by the Neo-Fregean program with Weyl’s account which has phenomenological leanings. The paper suggests that Weyl’s account should be construed as putting emphasis on intentionality of human mind towards certain invariant features of the elements of initial domains of discourse that are involved in equivalence relations. Definition of terms like direction, shape, number etc. is achieved by a kind of transformation of those invariants into ideal objects that is involved in intuition. Then the paper argues that at the period of 1926 Weyl’s writings on implicit definitions, he is inclined to endorse symbolic construction as a way to explicate the objectivity of certain processes as those that are carried out in case of implicit definitions.     

Intentionality in Reference and Action

This essay asks whether there is a relation between action-serving and meaning-serving intentions. The idea that the intentions involved in meaning and action are nominally designated alike as intentionalities does not guarantee any special logical or conceptual connections between the intentionality of referential thoughts and thought-expressive speech acts with the intentionality of doing. The latter category is typified by overt physical actions in order to communicate by engaging in speech acts, but also includes at the origin of all artistic and symbolic expression such cerebral and linguistic doings as thinking propositional thoughts. There are exactly four possibilities by which meaning and action intentionalities might be related to be systematically investigated. Meaning-serving and action-serving intentionalities, topologically speaking, might exclude one another, partially overlap with one another, or subsume one in the other or the other in the one. The theoretical separation of the two ostensible categories of intendings is criticized, as is their partial overlap, in light of the proposal that thinking and artistic and symbolic expression are activities that favor the inclusion of paradigm meaning-serving intentions as among a larger domain of action-serving intentions. The only remaining alternative is then developed, of including action-serving intentions reductively in meaning-serving intentions, and is defended as offering in an unexpected way the most cogent universal reductive ontology in which the intentionality of doing generally relates to the specific intentionality of referring in thought to the objects of predications, and of its artistic and symbolic expression.     

The phenomenon and the transcendental: Jean-Luc Marion, Marc Richir, and the issue of phenomenalization

After reviewing the status of the concept of the phenomenon in Husserl??s phenomenology and the aim of successive attempts to reform, de-formalize, and to widen it, we show the difficulties of a method that, following the example of Jean-Luc Marion??s phenomenology, intends to connect the phenomenon directly to the revelation of an exteriority. We argue that, on the contrary, Marc Richir??s phenomenology, which strives to grasp the phenomenon as nothing-but-phenomenon, is more likely to capture the ??meaning?? of the phenomenological, and hence to help us orient in the field of problems that phenomenology encounters without always knowing how to tackle them. Yet, this extension of the phenomenon??s domain does not thereby encompass everything: there may well be certain issues that require a phenomenology without phenomenon; but the meaning of this cannot be determined before the complete reenvisioning of transcendental phenomenology.     

Naming the Unnameable God: Levinas, Derrida, and Marion

In this essay I present the postmodern phenomenological approach of Levinas, Derrida, and Marion to the problem of naming the unnameable God. For Levinas, God is never experienced directly but only as a third person whose infinity is testified to in the infinity of responsibility to the hungry. For Derrida, God remains the unnameable “wholly other” accessible only as the indeterminate term of pure reference in prayer. For Marion, God remains the object of “de-nomination” through praise. In all three, the problem of naming the unnameable God is necessarily linked to how we relate to fellow human beings, to the hungry in Levinas, justice in Derrida, and charity in Marion. I also reflect on the merits and adequacy of phenomenology as such for speaking of divine transcendence.     

The intentional mind and the hot hand: Perceiving intentions makes streaks seem likely to continue

People can appear inconsistent in their intuitions about sequences of repeated events. Sometimes people believe such sequences will continue (the “hot hand”), and sometimes people believe they will reverse (the “gambler’s fallacy”). These contradictory intuitions can be partly explained by considering the perceived intentionality of the agent generating the streak. The intuition that streaks will continue (reverse) should emerge in contexts involving agents that are perceived to be intentional (unintentional), and should be most common among those who are most inclined to attribute intentions to other agents. Four studies support these predictions, identifying both situational and dispositional determinants of the perceived continuity of streaks. Discussion focuses on the foundational nature of intentionality for perceptions of interdependence between events, the relationship between these findings and existing theoretical accounts, and the inverse possibility that people use perceptions of streakiness as a cue for an agent’s intentionality.     

Naturalism and Intentionality: A Buddhist Epistemological Approach

In this paper I propose a naturalist account of the Buddhist epistemological discussion of svasa[mdot]vitti (‘self-awareness’, ‘self-cognition’) following similar attempts in the domains of phenomenology and analytic epistemology. First, I examine the extent to which work in naturalized epistemology and phenomenology, particularly in the areas of perception and intentionality, could be profitably used in unpacking the implications of the Buddhist epistemological project. Second, I argue against a foundationalist reading of the causal account of perception offered by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Finally, I argue that it is possible to read Dignāga's (and following him Dharmakīrti's) treatment of svasamvitti as offering something like a phenomenological account of embodied self-awareness.     

Where is the Fundamental Disagreement Between Naive Realism and Intentionalism?

This paper aims to reveal the source of the dispute between naive realism and intentionalism. To accomplish this task, it examines Adam Pautz’s challenge to naive realism, according to which a naive intuition about visual phenomenology, which is the only workable case for naive realism, is problematic. It argues that naive realists can address the challenge from Pautz by rejecting his assumption that naive realists and intentionalists agree on the nominal definition of visual phenomenology. The paper then argues that the reason naive realists want to preserve the naive intuition is its irresistibility rather than its reliability. Given this, it concludes that the disagreement between naive realism and intentionalism is rooted in what philosophical projects they tackle. Naive realists are engaged in the philosophical project of delineating a coherent view of the actual world in which the irresistible naive intuition can be true; the intentionalist philosophical project differs from it.     

Intentional psychologism

In the past few years, a number of philosophers (notably, Siewert, C. (The significance of consciousness. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Horgan and Tienson (Philosophy of mind: Classical and contemporary readings, Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 520–533); Pitt 2004) have maintained the following three theses: (1) there is a distinctive sort of phenomenology characteristic of conscious thought, as opposed to other sorts of conscious mental states; (2) different conscious thoughts have different phenomenologies; and (3) thoughts with the same phenomenology have the same intentional content. The last of these three claims is open to at least two different interpretations. It might mean that the phenomenology of a thought expresses its intentional content, where intentional content is understood as propositional, and propositions are understood as mind-and language-independent abstract entities (such as sets of possible worlds, functions from possible worlds to truth-values, structured n-tuples of objects and properties, etc.). And it might mean that the phenomenology of a thought is its intentional content—that is, that the phenomenology of a thought, like the phenomenology of a sensation, constitutes its content. The second sort of view is a kind of psychologism. Psychologistic views hold that one or another sort of thing—numbers, sentences, propositions, etc.—that we can think or know about is in fact a kind of mental thing. Since Frege, psychologism has been in bad repute among analytic philosophers. It is widely held that Frege showed that such views are untenable, since, among other things, they subjectivize what is in fact objective, and, hence, relativize such things as consistency and truth to the peculiarities of human psychology. The purpose of this paper is to explore the consequences of the thesis that intentional mental content is phenomenological (what I call “intentional psychologism”) and to try to reach a conclusion about whether it yields a tenable view of mind, thought and meaning. I believe the thesis is not so obviously wrong as it will strike many philosophers of mind and language. In fact, it can be defended against the standard objections to psychologism, and it can provide the basis for a novel and interesting account of mentality.     

Jean-Luc Marion: the reinscription of heteronormativity into postmodern theology

ABSTRACT

Since the “theological turn” in continental philosophy, theologians have regularly turned to phenomenology as an authentic opening to a new mode of theological discourse. Yet, when these theo-phenomenological discourses turn to the questions of sexuality, gender, and love they often fail to live up to the radical opening promised by this turn. Taken as a case study, the work of Jean-Luc Marion is emblematic of this failure. While many of his insights might offer new openings for theological thought, his phenomenological speculations nonetheless often merely serve to re-inscribe a traditional, even reactionary heteronormativity into the heart of postmodern theological thought. In fact, it is not uncommon to catch his work offering a denigration of the body, presupposing a determinately male subject, and foreclosing the very possibility of non-heterosexual love. This critical examination of Marion’s account of sexuality shows that even the most radical phenomenological theology needs the ideological interruption of queer theory.     

Intentionality: Some Lessons from the History of the Problem from Brentano to the Present

Abstract

Intentionality (‘directedness’, ‘aboutness’) is both a central topic in contemporary philosophy of mind, phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, and one of the themes with which both analytic and Continental philosophers have separately engaged starting from Brentano and Edmund Husserl’s ground-breaking Logical Investigations (1901) through Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel C. Dennett’s The Intentional Stance, John Searle’s Intentionality, to the recent work of Tim Crane, Robert Brandom, Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, among many others. In this paper, I shall review recent discussions of intentionality, including some recent explorations of the history of the concept (paying particular attention to Anselm), and suggest some ways the phenomenological approach of Husserl and Heidegger can still offer insights for contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness.     

Making sense of Heidegger’s ‘phenomenology of the inconspicuous’ or inapparent (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Phänomenologie des Unscheinbaren</Emphasis>)

In Heidegger’s last seminar, which was in Zähringen in 1973, he introduces what he called a “phenomenology of the inconspicuous” (Phänomenologie des Unscheinbaren). Despite scholars’ occasional references to this “approach” over the last 40 years, this approach of Heidegger’s has gone largely under investigated in secondary literature. This article introduces three different, although not necessarily conflicting ways in which these sparse references to inconspicuousness can be interpreted: (1) The a priori of appearance can never be brought to manifestation, and the unscheinbar (inconspicuous) is interwoven with the 相似文献   

THE CALL AND THE GIFTED IN CHRISTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: A CONSIDERATION OF BRIAN ROBINETTE'S CRITIQUE OF JEAN‐LUC MARION

In his recent article, ‘A Gift to Theology? Jean‐Luc Marion's ‘Saturated Phenomena’ in Christological Perspective’, Brian Robinette has critiqued Marion's phenomenology for confining theology to a one‐sided approach to Christology, one that stresses only the passive, mystical reception of Christ. To correct this imbalance, Robinette brings Marion into dialogue with those more active Christologies or ‘prophetical‐ethical’ liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutierrez, Johann Baptist Metz and others that stress a life‐praxis focused on confronting evil and suffering. In this essay I am arguing that Robinette has not fully developed the ‘logic’ of Marion's phenomenology of the ‘call and the gifted’, in which both a passive and an active element are operative. I explore more fully that very dynamic phenomenological process of the call‐and‐the‐gifted as developed in Marion's work Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Once viewed in Christological perspective, and especially in light of Christ's death and resurrection, Marion's phenomenology entails an ethical trope consistent with the mission of Christ as rendered in Scriptural revelation, and thus the gap between Marion's work and the prophetical‐ethical theologies of Gutierrez and Baptist Metz becomes narrowed.