Academic literature on the topic 'Phenomenological monism'

La crítica de la ontología ocupa un lugar preponderante en la filosofía de Michel Henry. No obstante, los términos en que se expresa son diversos según los contextos argumentales en que se despliegan. En este trabajo distingo tres argumentos con los que Henry cuestiona la ontología en distintas obras y períodos de su filosofía; a saber: (1) la crítica del monismo ontológico; (2) la crítica del monismo fenomenológico; (3) la crítica de la ontología. Una vez expuestos, indago el modo en que estos argumentos han sido tratados en la bibliografía secundaria. Concluyo con algunas reflexiones en cuanto al alcance de las variaciones terminológicas y argumentativas propias de estos tres argumentos y expresando una preferencia personal por la tercera y última formulación.The critique of ontology is preponderant in the philosophy of Michel Henry. However, the terms in which it is expressed are diverse according to the different lines of argument. In my paper I distinguish three arguments with which Henry challenges ontology in three different works and periods of his philosophy; namely: (1) the critique of ontological monism; (2) the critique of phenomenological monism; (3) the critique of ontology. Once exposed those arguments, I describe how they have been received in the secondary literature. I conclude with some reflections on the terminological and argumentative variations characteristic of these three arguments and I express my personal preference for the third, last formulation.

AbstractThe phenomenological conception of “life-world” lays the theoretical foundation for the openness of the world. The founding relationship between the individual and the world, the interactive relationship among different cultural worlds on the intersubjective level, the free nature of truth and its presence in the open world, the “ek-sistent” characteristics of the human-being, the structural constitution of the life-world – all these topics demonstrate the open nature of the world in a phenomenological way. Based on these ideas, “reflective judgment” as “phronesis” and “fear” as ethic sentiment based on family experience become the practical stance, which is consistent with the “life-world” conception of phenomenology; the characteristics of publicness and intersubjectivity of the open world are thus maintained. In the face of the multicultural world, this attitude presents as a brand-new practice of intercultural philosophy, which is different from the centralism found under the framework of monism and the comparative philosophy under the framework of dualism. Such a practice of intercultural philosophy is “polylog”, i.e. based on the principles of difference and equality and searching for the “overlapping consensus” in full multi-participatory discussion. Through polylog, a harmonious life of human community is constructed. This paper attempts to derive a set of practical principles for maintaining the openness of the world and intercultural polylog in the era of globalization from the theoretical view of the phenomenological life-world.

This paper refers to the connection between the metaphysical duality of ground and existence and inner dynamic of the particular will of man. We will analyse how the metaphysical monism, which Schelling attributes to Spinoza and later to Hegel, is responsible for the abolition of the freedom of the human individual, because it does not account for the existence of evil, and consequently reduces it to the existence of a higher order reference system that over and predetermines the individual (1). We will first scrutinise the principles of separation and union, ground and understanding from the human point of view, namely as the will of ground and love, as particular and universal will (2). The will of man reveals itself as the culmination and model of the will that permeates nature, an essential aspect of the process of God’s revelation and becoming. The link between the principles of separation and union shows us the difference that Schellingian thought establishes between man and God, the real and the ideal. While God, or the purely ideal principle, precedes the separation in a logical-ontological sense, the will of man remains always in an indissoluble tension between the principles, since it is unable to overcome the opposition between good and evil that is characteristic of freedom. The good remains one of the results of human freedom and thus of the particular will of man. The good lies for Schelling not in the simple actualization of the general, but in the moment ineradicable particularity needed for the attainment of a real and effective principle (3). It is to this insurmountability of the particular will in the process of the constitution of man that our proposal of Schelling’s libertarian anarchism refers. The connection of this thesis with the critique of the State is also discussed (4).

Plato?s ?Phaedo? has taken up its position in European culture primarily thanks to its philosophical arguments for the immortality of the soul and the statement that for a true philosopher it is not enough to be free from the fear of death: one should strive for it. Christian theology adjusted these views so that they correspond to biblical eschatology and reproduced them repeatedly. However, there have always been and still are Christian theologians (including Orthodox Christian ones) who deny Platonic dualism as a world-view completely alien to Holy Scripture. It should be noted that criticism of the ?Phaedo? was always wider than the metaphysical question of monism or dualism in the comprehension of human nature; it gave rise to a certain existential philosophy focusing on the attitude towards death. In the Old and New Testament, death is never represented as some wonderful liberation from bodily existence that a philosopher should strive for: it is always horrible. The author of the article considers this problem of attitude to death across three dimensions: metaphysical, phenomenological, and syntactic. Syntactically, death imparts a character of logical sequence to our life, turning the totality of ?atomic facts? into fate. The image of fate makes our existence in time meanin?gful, and therefore becomes an existential phenomenology of the finitude of our existence. But eternal life does not depend on time, it is neither ?before? nor ?after?, and, hence, it is here in every tiniest moment of the present. Thus, the ?syntax of fate? determines the phenomenology of death, and the phenomenology of death determines the metaphysics of Eternity.

Abstract Despite recent interest in his work, little has been written about Løgstrup’s relation to phenomenology—what he thinks phenomenology is, how it informs his approach to ethics, and what he believes it can accomplish. Here I hope to stimulate further discussion of these matters. In this, consideration of Levinas’s understanding of phenomenology will be useful. While sharing many of Løgstrup’s concerns, Levinas insists on a distinction between phenomenological ontology and “metaphysics,” one that Løgstrup tends to blur in support of his argument that “absolute nihilism is an impossibility.” After showing why this distinction matters, I will argue that Løgstrup’s goal is better achieved if we embrace Heidegger’s transcendental version of phenomenology rather than follow Løgstrup or Levinas, despite much that remains phenomenologically valuable in both.

Three fundamental problems are connected with modern philosophy of subjectivity: first, the irreflexivity and immediacy of self-consciousness, second, the temporality and, third, the being of the finite self. The text will discuss the first problem in an introductory way by a reconstruction of the positions of Henrich and Frank. The second and third problem will be presented by an investigation of the phenomenological approaches of Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. It will be argued that none of these approaches are able to solve the problems mentioned above in a satisfying way. Therefore, Henrich’s critical thesis will be discussed that an appropriate philosophical discussion of subjectivity cannot consist in phenomenological inquiry, but has to re-integrate the monist theories of the Classical German Philosophy. This thesis finally will be rejected in favour of a non-monist metaphysics of personal selfhood.

Abstract: To establish The Texture of Time as a notable philosophical achievement, this essay puts it in the context of transcendental phenomenology and elucidates "Veen's Time" by way of comparison to Husserl's theory of time-consciousness. Despite Nabokov's apparent disinterest in phenomenology, the monist stance, descriptive method and de facto epoché in The Texture of Time all point to it being a piece of phenomenological analysis. Veen's conception of the Present as a hollow is analogous to Husserl's notion of the absolute flow of time-constituting consciousness; by emphasizing the stillness of the Present, Veen even irons out a couple of rough edges in Husserl's account. The Past is not a mere extension of the Present, but an equally important panel of "Veen's Time" with its own structure that centers on the subject and the object as two identity poles. Finally, drawing on the concept of "protention," the future-facing element of the Present, Veen's dismissal of the Future as "a quack at the court of Chronos" is interpreted as attacking the conventional tripartite image of Time instead of the Future per se.

As a result of many years of discussions about what exactly culturology studies and whether it is a separate science at all, it has become, by and large, the conventional agreement of scientists to consider, following the post-positivist Popper, that there are as many sciences as there are scientists. In a sense, this is convenient, since it allows any available methods to be used for the study of culture with an equal degree of acceptability. The problem is not that they cannot be applied at all, but in their equivalence, lack of causal subordination, hierarchy. It is this position that follows from the impossibility (or unwillingness) to strictly limit the subject of cultural studies because if culturology studies “... any types and forms of human life” (A. Flier), then any method for studying them can be chosen. After Hegel, attempts to comprehend the general laws of the development of culture (and this is the task of culturology as a science) become increasingly rare, and the work of a culturologist is reduced to a phenomenological description of individual cultural phenomena, which are essentially unknowable without their generalization. The substance of culture has dissolved in all the infinite variety of its accidents. Human activities depend on living conditions, but it also creates new conditions, a new “context”, which in turn mediates new forms of activity, and these create a new culture, a new social experience materialized in artifacts, norms of behavior and language and so on ad infinitum. A person constantly creates culture and a new oneself with it, he himself becomes the result of his creation. “The circle of culture”, its development from person to person, i.e. from oneself to oneself, with each circle at an ever-higher level of social progress - conceptually, such a movement can be comprehended only with the help of Hegelian dialectics. Logic reflects the movement of the world in the movement of concepts, thereby becoming a theoretical reflection of scientific thinking. The principle of the dialectical method lies in the identity of thinking and the thinkable, i.e. in that the movement of the scientist's thought coincides with the movement of the development of science. This conclusion does not imply that other methods are inapplicable in cultural studies. On the contrary, the diversity of different approaches to the study of culture is also objectively necessary, as is the objective existence of the diversity of cultural phenomena. But as an individual presupposes the universal, so the manifold presupposes the one. This connection is cognized with the help of Hegelian dialectics, dialectical monism, a universal method for social sciences, including cultural studies; universal, not in the sense of the only one, but in the sense of a single, systemically uniting various particular methods, a kind of logical “compass” that does not allow one to stray from the right direction of movement of any science - movement to truth.

Notre objet d'étude est constitué par ce qu'il faut désigner comme le monisme phénoménologique de Michel Henry. Cette expression semblera cependant bien étrange au vu de la critique qu'Henry ne cesse d'adresser à ce que lui-même choisit de nommer « monisme » et à quoi il oppose son propre dualisme, ainsi que la thèse incessamment reprise de la duplicité de l'apparaître ; elle semblera d'autant plus étrange et comme inacceptable, si on souligne que la « phénoménologie historique », selon l'expression par laquelle Henry la désigne, et en premier lieu la phénoménologie husserlienne, se trouve critiquée parce qu'elle participe du « monisme ontologique ». Le sens de la critique qu'Henry produit de cette « phénoménologie historique » est cependant entièrement dépendant de l'identification de la matière phénoménologique qui donne son nom à la phénoménologie nouvelle, radicale, matérielle, qu'Henry veut lui opposer et c'est dans la mesure où cette matière phénoménologique est révélation qu'elle permet enfin le renversement et la refondation de la phénoménologie. Seule cette matière phénoménologique comme révélation constitue le fondement véritable, fondement que la « phénoménologie historique » occulte bien plutôt qu'elle ne sait en constituer le « Remémorial ». Cette matière ne désigne rien d'autre que la profusion de la vie absolue dont la vision des essences apparaît dès lors comme une réification. En regard du texte de Phénoménologie matérielle, s'illumine ainsi la première critique de la phénoménologie husserlienne entreprise par Henry dans L'Essence de la manifestation. L'apparaître du monde et la transcendance en laquelle il se lève ne doivent être rapportés au sujet humain que dans la mesure où sa vie se trouve déjà tenue dans l'essence, dans la vie en son sens absolu. C'est dans sa séparation que la subjectivité humaine se trouve donnée à elle-même sous la forme de la transcendance. Elle ne se fonde pas elle-même comme séparée, elle ne se donne pas à elle-même sa propre transcendance. L'inhérence de la subjectivité humaine à la vie absolue rend seule raison de la séparation à savoir de l'absence de distance de l'ipséité à l'égard d'elle-même. La thèse de l'irréalité du monde loin de faire obstacle au concept de cosmos en est ainsi un jalon essentiel. Le monde est l'image irréelle d'une séparation réelle, celle qui comme auto-différenciation de l'essence génère chaque subjectivité comme une monade, c'est-à-dire dans une absolue séparation. Si donc, l'articulation des formes de l'immanence autorise à parler d'un monisme phénoménologique c'est qu'en elle gît la possibilité d'une destruction du concept du monde, d'une destruction de l'extériorité. Rien ne peut être donné de manière originelle dans la forme de l'extériorité pour cette raison que l'extériorité est un néant. Il n'y a pas de monde extérieur et en ce sens il n'y a pas de monde. Du moins y a-t-il cependant un apparaître du monde, une phénoménalité et de celle-ci ne faut-il pas rendre raison ? S'il y a un apparaître du monde ce n'est cependant qu'en regard de cette forme primordiale de la phénoménalité et ainsi de la révélation qu'est l'affectivité. Comment le monde serait-il donné en dehors de toute relation à un être extérieur ? Comment le serait-il si l'immanence ne désignait que le seul rapport à soi ? Derechef, l'immanence n'a jamais désigné ce seul rapport ; et le concept du soi n'est avancé que sous la protection de l'essence, que dans l'ambiguïté de sa référence à la Vie. Aussi la distinction des sens fort et faible de l'auto-affection, celle également de la vie absolue et de la vie finie, propre à la dernière partie de l'œuvre de Henry ne peuvent-elles être expliquées sans cette rétro référence. Elles ne prennent leur sens qu'en regard de cette affirmation : « tout est vivant. »
Our object of study is what we shall refer to as Michel Henry's phenomenological monism. This expression will seem very strange, however, in view of Henry's constant criticism of what he himself chooses to call “monism”, to which he opposes his own dualism, as well as the constantly-repeated thesis of the duplicity of appearing. It will seem even stranger, and even more unacceptable, if we emphasize that “historical phenomenology”, as Henry calls it, and first and foremost Husserlian phenomenology, is criticized because it participates in “ontological monism”. The meaning of Henry's critique of this “historical phenomenology” is, however, entirely dependent on the identification of the phenomenological matter that gives its name to the new, radical, material phenomenology that Henry wishes to oppose it to. It is insofar as this phenomenological matter is revelation that it finally enables the overthrow and refoundation of phenomenology. Only this phenomenological matter as revelation constitutes the true foundation, a foundation that “historical phenomenology” conceals rather than constitutes the “Remémorial”. This matter designates nothing other than the profusion of absolute life, of which the vision of essences appears to be a reification. Against the text of Phénoménologie matérielle, Henry's first critique of Husserlian phenomenology is illuminated in L'Essence de la manifestation. The appearance of the world and the transcendence in which it arises must be related to the human subject only insofar as his life is already held in essence, in life in its absolute sense. It is in its separation that human subjectivity finds itself given to itself in the form of transcendence. It does not found itself as separate, nor does it give itself its own transcendence. The inherence of human subjectivity in absolute life is the sole reason for separation, i.e. for the absence of distance between ipséity and itself. The thesis of the world's unreality, far from standing in the way of the concept of cosmos, is thus an essential milestone. The world is the unreal image of a real separation, which, as a self-differentiation of essence, generates each subjectivity as a monad, i.e. in absolute separation. If, then, the articulation of the forms of immanence allows us to speak of a phenomenological monism, it is because in it lies the possibility of a destruction of the concept of the world, a destruction of exteriority. Nothing can be originally given in the form of exteriority, because exteriority is nothingness.There is no external world, and in this sense there is no world.At least, however, there is an appearance of the world, a phenomenality, and shouldn't this be accounted for? If there is an appearance of the world, it is only in relation to that primordial form of phenomenality, and thus of revelation, which is affectivity. How could the world be given apart from any relation to an external being?How could it be, if immanence referred only to the relation to oneself? Immanence has never designated this relationship alone, and the concept of the self is only advanced under the protection of essence, in the ambiguity of its reference to Life. So the distinction between the strong and weak senses of self-affection, and between absolute and finite life, which is characteristic of the last part of Henry's work, cannot be explained without this retro-reference. They only make sense in relation to the statement that “everything is alive”

Following Spinoza’s lead, this book imagines an embodied environmental ethics based on the relations between sentient beings and sustained by affections, sensibility, the senses, and contact. Engaging embodied, cognitive, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic aspects of affectivity, Omar Felipe Giraldo and Ingrid Fernanda Toro help us understand how places inhabit us, and therefore, how places transformed lovingly have the immense capacity to modify the body, to redirect desire, to clarify our sensibility – in order to create an affectivity in a direction opposite to the regime imposed by this ecocidal society. Beginning with a discussion of environmental epistemology on ontological monisms and dualisms, Giraldo and Toro question theoretical approaches that correctly challenge Cartesian dichotomies but which they claim continue to examine the environmental problem from two angles: culture versus nature, the human versus the non-human. The environmental crisis is more than a technological or economic problem. In this book, Giraldo and Toro argue that it is a threat to survival inscribed in the deepest foundations of our body, in the intimacy of our skin, in the intensity and tone of our affections, in our desires, in our perceptions, and in our sensory-motor capacities.

Coseru examines whether proto-phenomenological accounts in Chinese thought, introduced through Buddhism, provide a conceptual bridge to Husserlian phenomenology. He explores the renewed interest in Yogācāra among twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals, in particular Xiong Shili, revealing certain tensions in his interpretation of Yogācāra concepts. Coseru argues that while something analogous to an appearance-reality distinction is present in classical Chinese philosophy, it differs in important ways from how that distinction is drawn in the Yogācāra and Husserlian traditions. He further argues that the fundamental act-content distinction central to Husserlian phenomenology may be absent in Xiong’s monism, raising questions about the compatibility of his New Confucian thought with Yogācāra and the broader phenomenological project, and showcasing the challenges that cross-cultural philosophical inquiry some faces.

Could it be the case that all of us as individual human subjects stand to one another as Caeiro stands to Reis and Reis to Campos: just as they are the multiple heteronyms of one and the same subject, Fernando Pessoa, so too we are all heteronyms of one and the same subject, a single cosmic subject? There is a famous line in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad which might be interpreted as saying something of the sort—tat tvam asi: you are that, that single cosmic subject, brahman. For the eighth-century Vedāntic philosopher Śaṅkara, whose reading of the Upaniṣads would much later establish itself in the popular imagination, the similarity is further reinforced because he provides a context of phenomenological simulation similar to dreaming and imagining, namely, māyā, ‘cosmic illusion’. Let me call the view that individual human subjects are heteronyms of a single cosmic self ‘heteronymic cosmopsychism’. Heteronymic cosmopsychism is different from the comparatively more common variety of cosmopsychism according to which the grounding relation between the single cosmic self and the multiplicity of individual selves is mereological, not heteronymic. Heteronymic cosmopsychism agrees with priority monism in rejecting a monistic existence thesis, differing from it only as to the nature of the grounding relation, sidestepping the problems that bedevil priority cosmopsychism because its grounding relation is not one of decomposition.