The crucial distinction for ethics is between the good and the apparent good, between being and seeming. Tradition is useful for developing our ability to make this distinction and to live ethically or in self-responsibility, but it is also threatening to this ability. The phenomenology of Husserl and of others in the Husserlian tradition, especially Robert Sokolowski, are helpful in spelling out how tradition works; how the difference between the apparent good and the good is bridged in the experience of moral truth but also a permanent, challenging feature of human life; what ethics requires regarding self-responsibility or authenticity; and what the proper voice of tradition is in the ethical or moral life.

In this article I examine the relation between the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze by looking at the way in which they refer to Henri Bergson’s time theory. Although Merleau-Ponty develops some fundamental Bergsonian insights on the nature of time, he presents himself as a critical reader of the latter. I will show that although Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Bergson differs fundamentally from Deleuze’s interpretation, Merleau-Ponty’s “corrections” of Bergson’s theory fit Deleuze’s reading of Bergson very well. This indicates a similarity with respect to what is at stake in the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. Hence the critical reference that Deleuze makes to Merleau-Ponty’s conception of cinema and thus of movement is not justified, but is the result of a selective and prototypical reading of the early Merleau-Ponty.

The article aims at bringing to light the internal necessity that shapes Husserl’s concern with the issues of history and tradition. After discussing the role played by the teleology of reason and by genetic constitution in preparing the ground for Husserl’s reflection on the historical dimension, we specifically dwell on the idea of tradition. Tradition appears both as a hindrance in our pursuit of truth, and as an indispensable sense-bestowing factor. Against this ambivalent background, history emerges as an interpretive activity charged with the task of defusing the threats implicit in the incontrollable efficaciousness of tradition, while preserving the sense-bestowing character of the formations of sense (Sinngebilde).

Individual traditions are prior to social or intersubjective traditions, but all tradition involves carrying over of doxic, axiotic, and volitional sense from the past to the present and future. Social tradition involves empathy and communication, while individual tradition is based chiefly on forms of experiencing.

This paper 1) examines Husserl’s critique of presuppositions, a critique that realizes a desideratum of the Western philosophical tradition precisely by clarifying and grounding the latter’s own tacit presuppositions; 2) surveys Husserl’s descriptions of the apperceptions whose operative efficacy make tradition itself effective, holding good at both the individual and the generative levels; 3) identifies the need for a further critique of the psychophysical apperception in particular; and 4) offers a phenomenologically grounded alternative to the latter way of understanding and experiencing embodiment.

The question addressed in this article is to what extent a destructed concept of religion can be said to characterize the philosophical method of Martin Heidegger. In order to approach this question, we first characterize his method as “Vollzug der Fraglichkeit”: philosophy in its deepest sense does not mean to give answers to questions but to ask questions. According to Heidegger, the execution of questioning consists in the “transforming repetition” of the leading question (Leitfrage) of philosophy in order to ask the basic question of philosophy (Grundfrage). In the second part of the article, we reflect on the “religious” character of Heidegger’s method of questioning. The reflection makes use of different etymological derivations of the word ‘Religion’: relegere (to observe carefully), re-eligere (to choose again), religare (to bind back), relinquere (to leave behind). In the third part of the article, we discuss what Heidegger’s “religious” method of philosophy means for present questions concerning religion. To that end, we finish with a confrontation between Heidegger and Derrida with respect to the “religious” method of philosophy.

Paul Ricoeur develops a hermeneutics of tradition centered on a threefold conception of tradition which involves the notions of traditionality, traditions, and Tradition. These refer to form, content, and truth-claims within the framework of the hermeneutics of historical consciousness. This hermeneutics of tradition is treated in a panchronic and ternary way. Both methods operate at the levels of past, future and present, while the ternary method also consists in the rhetoric of truth-claims, the dialectic of remoteness vs. de-distanciation and that of question vs. answer. This article attempts to study three aspects of the panchronic and ternary approach: (1) a living and ternary tradition with an ongoing dialectic interweaving the ecstases of time; (2) tradition in relation to historical consciousness and the spatialization of historicity; (3) temporalizing history and historicizing schematism in threefold mimesis.

Daniel Marcelle, Aron Gurwitsch, The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch, Volume I: Constitutive Phenomenology in Historical Perspective (Jorge García-Gómez ed.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2009; Volume II: Studies in Phenomenology and Psychology (Fred Kersten ed.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2010; Volume III: The Field of Consciousness: Theme, Thematic Field, and Margin (Richard M. Zaner ed.), Dordrecht: Springer, 2010; Claudia Șerban, Jean-Luc Marion, Certitudes negatives, Paris: Grasset, 2010; Christian Rössner, Hans-Dieter Gondek, László Tengelyi, Neue Phanomenologie in Frankreich, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011; Daniel Dwyer, Hans-Helmuth Gander (ed.), Husserl-Lexikon, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2010; Délia Popa, Jean-François Lavigne, Acceder au transcendantal? Reduction et idealisme transcendantal dans les Idées directrices pour une phénoménologie pure et une philosophie phénoménologique de Husserl, Paris: Vrin, 2009; Mădălina Diaconu, Lambert Wiesing, Das Mich der Wahrnehmung. Eine Autopsie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009; Mădălina Diaconu, Sam B. Girgus, Levinas and the Cinema of Redemption. Time, Ethics, and the Feminine, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010; Rolf Kühn, Frédéric Seyler, ≪ Barbarie ou culture ≫ : L’ethique de l’affectivitedans la phenomenologie de Michel Henry, Paris: Kimé, 2010; Stephan Steiner, Mette Lebech, On the Problem of Human Dignity. A Hermeneutical and henomenological Investigation, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009

Dan ZAHAVI, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity. A Response to the Linguistic-Pragmatic Critique (Adina Bozga); Françoise DASTUR, Chair et langage. Essais sur Merleau-Ponty (Delia Popa); Jean GREISCH (éd.), Michel Henry et l’épreuve de la vie (Mihail Neamţu); Elisabeth STRÖKER, The Husserlian Foundations of Science (Adina Bozga); John McCUMBER, Metaphysics and Oppression, Heidegger’s Challenge to Western Philosophy (Daniela Pălăşan); Marc RICHIR, Phénoménologie en esquisses. Nouvelles fondations (Horaţiu Crişan); Raphaël GÉLY, La genèse du sentir. Essai sur Merleau-Ponty (Ligia Beltechi); John SALLIS, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental (Roxana Albu); Bin KIMURA, L’entre. Une approche phénoménologique de la schizophrénie (Ciprian Ţiprigan); Dermot MORAN, Tim MOONEY (eds.), The Phenomenology Reader (Radu M. Oancea); Ion COPOERU, Structuri ale constituirii (Dorel Bucur); Fabio CIARAMELLI, La distruzione del’desiderio. Il narcisismo nell’epoca di consumo di massa (Anca Dumitru); Pierre KELLER, Husserl and Heidegger on Human Experience (Ciprian Mîinea)

Charles E. SCOTT, Susan M. SCHOENBOHM, Daniela VALLEGA-NEU, Alejandro VALLEGA (eds.), Companion to Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, IndianaUniversity Press, Bloomington & Indianapolis, 2001 (Cristina Ionescu); Gernot BÖHME, Aisthetik. Vorlesungen über Ästhetik als allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München, 2001 (Mădălina Diaconu); Dean KOMEL, Osnutja k Filozofski in Kulturni Hermenevtiki [Outlines to Philosophical and Cultural Hermeneutics], Nova revija, Ljubljana, 2001 (Janko Lozar); Marc RICHIR, L’institution de l’idéalité. Des schématismes phénoménologiques, Association pour la promotion de la Phénoménologie, Paris, 2002 (Victor Popescu); Fred EVANS & Leonard LAWLOR (eds.), Chiasms. Merleau-Ponty's Notion of Flesh, State University of New York Press, 2000 (Viorel Niţă); Udo TIETZ, Ontologie und Dialektik. Heidegger und Adorno über das Sein, das Nichtidentische, die Synthesis und die Kopula, Passagen Verlag, Wien, 2003 (Ştefan Nicolae); Etienne FERON, Phénoménologie de la mort. Sur les traces de Levinas, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Boston, London, 1999 (Cristian Ciocan)

In attempting to address the heideggerian Seinsfrage, by way of situating it between the platonic conception of ̉όν in the Sophist and of χώρα in the Timaeus, this paper investigates the ontological possibilities that are opened up in terms of rethinking space. Asserting the intrinsic connection between the question of being and that of space, we argue that the maturation of ontology as phenomenology would not unfold in its furthermost potential unless the being of space gets clarified. This state of affairs confronts us with the exacting ontological task to found a theory of space that contributes to an explication of the question of being beyond its associated temporocentric determinations. Consequently, our line of inquiry endeavors herein to constitute a prologmenon to the elucidation of the question of the being of space as “ontokhorology.”

It is well known that Heidegger described his Nietzsche lecture courses as confrontations with National Socialism. Traditionally, this sense of resistance was seen firstly in the fact that Heidegger read Nietzsche at the level of metaphysics and explicitly rejected those ideological appropriations which attempted to reduce Nietzsche’s philosophy to the level of biologism or mere Weltanschauung. This essay argues that the way in which Heidegger framed his interpretation of will to power in his first and second Nietzsche lecture courses can be seen to contain a more explicit critique of the contemporaneous “official” Nietzschebild than has customarily been said.