I would like to discuss—on the basis of a phenomenological argumentation—the different meanings of our everyday claim that we are free in our actions and decisions. First, I reject deterministic theories in the naturalistic approach by using Husserl’s argument that the subsumtion of human decisions under the causal paradigm is simply an unjustified extension of a methodical idealization in the framework of naturalization. Then I argue for Husserl’s understanding that humans are generally subjects under a manifold of effective influences but they are nevertheless free. In the end some aspects of our freedom are delineated.

The paper presents the phenomenological conception of bodily perception (leibliche Wahrnehmung) as a possible therapeutic model for treating melancholic depression. At the beginning, it discusses some key concepts of Freud’s psychoanalysis: instinct (Trieb), memory, perception, narcissism and melancholia. Next, the Freudian theory of melancholia is compared with studies of phenomenological psychopathology (Binswanger). It is investigated how melancholia is based on the division of temporal relations. Finally, the main problem of the paper is investigated: can the structure of perception and its constitutive openness toward the future represent a theoretical model for therapeutic practices designed to treat melancholic depression?

This article tends to connect phenomenological research with the psychoanalytical approach by focusing on the issue of conflict as the crucial dimension of human nature and its dynamics. On this basis, it becomes clear that human nature cannot be explained through a strict causal schema; rather, it can be grasped by exploring the dynamic motivational structures of experience which are expressed in the ambivalent tensions and striving tendencies of persons as subjects of the lifeworld. I stress that conflict is not a mere additional and accidental characteristic of experience that can somehow be eliminated, but it rather affects the fundamental structure of personal experience and should therefore be understood as a constitutive moment of human nature. Thereby, my claim is that both self-experience and the development of community can only be understood in the light of motivational conflicts.

Gernot Böhme’s philosophical anthropology combines a historistic-descriptive and a normative approach (“historical models of man,” the axiological “sovereign man” project).The author describes both types of philosophical narrative in detail, together with the categorial and argumentative inconsistencies which appear on their crossing point. His thesis is that the German philosopher attempts to neutralize these aporias by reference to the category of “relief” (Entlastung) and an argumentative strategy close to the position of thinkers like Jürgen Habermas, who made use of the “relief” category in his critical bioethical analyses.

This article attempts to present Gehlen’s concept of language in the context of his project of philosophical anthropology. The emphasis will be put on showing the role of language in: 1) the formation of motor and sensory imagination, 2) the crystallization of human drives and, finally, 3) the development of cognitive competences. Gehlen refers in his project directly to the thoughts of Herder, and therefore—according to the chronological order—a reconstruction of the origins of “the linguistic anthropology” will start from outlining the main objectives of Herder’s philosophy of language (the first chapter), and then will consider Gehlen’s considerations devoted to the genesis of language competence and to the impact of speech for the constitution of human self-knowledge (second chapter).

This paper discusses the criticism of naturalism based on the irreducibility of first-person-perspective facts. This critique considers naturalism insufficient since it proposes the view of reality as a centerless dimension. However, simply reintegrating subjective facts into a naturalistic view of reality we eventually produce a split situation in which conscious and self-conscious forms of life require a special consideration, thus appearing as separated from the whole of reality. In order to overcome what turns out to be a dualistic interpretation of reality, this paper considers Helmuth Plessner’s nonnaturalistic approach. It elaborates the notion of positionality and aspectivity as characteristics of all natural forms of life, thus leading to the consideration of reality an essentially centered dimension and of humans as part of nature.

I analyse Brentano’s argumentative strategy from his lectures in the Deskriptive Psychologie and how he introduces and reframes his fundamental psychological theses. His approach provides us with the reasons why psychology can be distinguished into different domains of investigation and how the tasks of one of these domains—the descriptive-psychological one—imply a specific understanding about the structure of consciousness. Thereby a mereology of consciousness is developed, which offers the theoretical background to the aforementioned reframing of the Brentanian theses.

The paper offers a systematic account of Vasily Sesemann’s aesthetics. First, I argue that, due to the primacy this aesthetics grants to intuition, intentionality and the objectivity of aesthetic values, its underlying principles are decidedly phenomenological. Secondly, I offer an account of the general structures of perceptual acts and I contend that the distinctive nature of aesthetic perception lies in the unique disposition of the aesthetic attitude. Thirdly, I maintain that there are three fundamentally different ways in which one can speak of aesthetic truth: in terms of formal requirements, subjective material requirements, and objective material requirements. Fourthly, I open a short dialogue between Sesemann and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and argue that an artwork fulfills the objective requirements of material truth when it succeeds in disclosing those levels of experience, on which the theoretical and practical attitudes rest and from which they take their departure.

This paper attempts to answer questions about, first, the historical motives which brought the “race” issue into the focus of phenomenological reflection, and, secondly, the theoretical grounding for calling such reflection “phenomenological.” The basis for this reconstruction will be the psychological race theory developed in the 1920s and 30s by Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, a somewhat forgotten student of Edmund Husserl, and its rooting in the history of the phenomenological movement. Discussed will be both, the theory’s historical background—which, in keeping with the paper’s main thesis, is best-expressed by Max Scheler’s reflections on “European patriotism”—and its relation to Husserl’s concept of phenomenology as a “strictly scientific philosophy.”

One of the constitutional moments of the structure of kinesthesia—that is the motions of the body—is the practical orientedness of motions towards something. In this article I will deal with this structural moment in the practical life of the subject. I will first differentiate between teleology in the instinctive movements of the body and the intentionality in the practical activities of the subject. Whereas the former refers to the primary and instinctive orientedness of the bodily motions toward something generally determined fulfilling the instinctive needs of the body, the latter is to be understood as the pre-reflexive orientedness of the bodily motions toward a goal in the practical sphere of subject-life. At the end I will examine Husserl’s idea of the universal teleological structure of reason, which has its roots in the primary instinctive life of the subject.

The question of the subjective and embodied character of appearing that was an important issue particularly in post-Husserlian phenomenology is posed in different ways and contexts by Edmund Husserl. One can see how—even according to the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. The second book. Phenomenological Investigations of Constitution subjectivity was not grounded in the acts of the I that it lent the body its subjective character—thanks to the originally egoic character of its own experiences my body also can be my own. In the paper this position is confronted with a deeper foundation of subjectivity than the I of acts. Husserl also sees in deeper levels of lived experience an immediate, non-intentional self-immersion in one’s own experiences. The question that we would like to outline here is: in what sense this self-experience is necessarily bodily, what is the mutual relationship between subjectivity and bodiliness in the later Husserl’s works in respect to his conception of phenomenality.

In the paper the concept of indistinctness is examined. In the author’s view, indistinctness is present in all the aspects of the world. The problem of indistinctness is apprehended in four steps, namely, by 1. claiming and proving that the world of indistinctness and vagueness enhances our creative intelligence; 2. examining who and when discovered the advantages of indistinctness; 3. maintaining that precision is usually of advantage, but not always; 4. proving the misery of reductionistic programmes.

The paper presents a new understanding of freedom. It refers to the concept of ideology and the interpellation of Louis Althusser. In this new perspective freedom is a phenomenon from the sphere of social communication, and, more broadly, a process of socialization, in which plays the role of a subtle medium of interiorization of ideological philosophical universalisms. This specific role of freedom and especially its prevalence in the contemporary world has its fundamental anchored in the common within the framework of capitalism society private ownership of the workforce.

Genealogy is a well-known philosophical method, often used by a disciplines of Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault. It is seen as part of a broader programme—one that offers critical tools for examining the modes of production of the modern political subject. The aim of this article is to show the usefulness of the genealogical method as a mode of critique separate from the philosophical programme it often belongs to. In order to do this, the paper examines the transformations of genealogy from Nietzsche to Foucault as well as the common lines of critique.

In my taxonomy, the tragic outlook is one of four types of outlooks, beside organological, mechanistic and personalistic. Its essence is the idea of non-integrity of being, non-integrity of man, and a dissonance between the quality-ridded scene of the becoming being and the creative actor. The tragic knowledge is a vital component part of the tragic outlook; it is inherent in Carl Jaspers and Christianity’s beliefs but as something transcended in the concept of salvation from the tragic. The Nietzschean challenge could be this “Be an affirming, creative way of life” upon seeing which the becoming “will not vomit.”