The aim of this paper is to show how the concept of “possible world”, that Husserl inherits from his study of logics, is capital for the understanding of his phenomenology. This concept is a fine tool that provides him a possibility to articulate the question of the physical and the cultural dimensions of some objects. A cultural object as a book or a painting has in fact two dimensions: a “material” one and a “spiritual” one. The author examines which are the relationships between those two dimensions. This question leads him to an interrogation on the genesis of the ideality of the cultural world. Is there not a contradiction between the ideality of the meaning and his historical genesis? In order to provide an answer to this question, the author suggests that one may use the notion of a “linked ideality”, i.e. ideal but linked up to the earth.

According to Brentano, logic, ethics and aesthetics are practical normative sciences, and they correspond to the three classes of psychic phenomena. But if a judgment or a love may be correct or incorrect, it seems more difficult to speak of a correct representation as this class of phenomena ignores a polarity such as right / wrong or good / bad. Brentano speaks nevertheless from the aesthetical “value” of representations. Aesthetics could in this way be considered as part of a general theory of value; but compared to ethics the specificity of this science tends to vanish. Another way to consider the question is to remember that the distinction among the three classes of psychic phenomena is only formal. It means that one has to question more precisely the very nature of representation and especially its relation to feeling.

Bringing back reflection to the mobility of the existence, a systematic re-appropriation of the Aristotelian concept of movement underlines the Heideggerian re-foundation of philosophy. Hence deconstructed and elaborated through “mobility”, the notion of movement constitutes the foundation stone that allows to play Aristotle against Aristotle and to contribute, via his hermeneutical reinvestment, to the “destruction” of the substantialist tradition.

Roman Ingarden, one of Husserl’s most gifted students, devoted several thousand pages to the development of an ontological, epistemological, aesthetical and even anthropological framework that would allow him to firmly reject the so-called “idealistic turn” of his master Husserl. This paper aims at reconstructing an often overlooked side of his philosophy: his theory of consciousness and his analysis of the constitutive process involved in sense perception. After emphasizing the distinctive character of Ingarden’s ontological frame and its impact on understanding concepts as fundamental as consciousness or intentionality, this paper tries to sketch Ingarden’s answers to several genetic questions raised by Husserl: the relation between time and consciousness, the nature of the ultimate sense data and the question of motivation.

This paper examines how practical intentionality is described by Husserl and Heidegger respectively, and looks at the phenomenological and sociological issues of these descriptions. In Husserl, the phenomenological reduction reveals that the practices of the world involve two intentionalities which wrap one inside the other. The foundation of this dynamic is a theoretical intentionality: there are always reasons which make it possible to understand why such and such an object is surrounded by such and such a value. In the early Heidegger’s work, life is not expressed by means of judgments, and it coils around itself, perpetuating itself in the ordinary practices of the world. We show that this phenomenological immanentism is put in question by Heidegger himself, and in particular in connection to the issue of the social source of intentionality. We consider the question of the compatibility between immanentism and normativity, which involve a dialectic that sheds new light on the phenomenological project.

The purpose of this enquiry is to lay out the core features of Garelli’s conception of the world as a “pre-individual field,” as they emerge from his confrontation with Heidegger’s thought. In the first part, I am exploring Garelli’s interpretation of the “poetical expression” and the consequences he draws from it with regard to the process of “worlding” (Verweltlichung). Then, I am restating his criticism with regard to the concept of the world Heidegger developed within the framework of “fundamental ontology” and show why, on Garelli’s account, an understanding of the world as an “existential structure of Dasein” fails to grasp its proper meaning. In the final part, I expose Garelli’s objections to Heidegger’s later understanding of the world as “Fourfold” (Geviert) and underline the dependency of this conception on a set of assumptions which perpetuate the theoretical privilege of individual being.

La méthode psychoprophylactique d’accouchement sans douleur (MPP) se développe en URSS dans un contexte stalinien sur les principes de la médecine pavlovienne, définie officiellement lors de la « session pavlovienne » de 1950. En France, c’est la figure de Fernand Lamaze qui est associée à la promotion de l’accouchement sans douleur, après qu’il ait importé la MPP d’Union soviétique l’année suivante. D’abord soutenue par les organisations marxistes et le mouvement d’émancipation des femmes, elle sera ensuite contestée sous l’effet des transformations dans la gestion médicale de l’accouchement et des rivalités politiques de la guerre froide. L’article interroge les origines historiques, épistémologiques et politiques de la médecine pavlovienne. Il compare la réception du pavlovisme à l’Ouest et à l’Est en suivant le fil de l’histoire de l’accouchement sans douleur et les enjeux en France et en URSS d’une controverse dans laquelle médecine et politique s’entremêlent.

When I am watching a movie, I perceive on the screen a space, which is united and lived, even if it appears as fragmented and separated from the world in which I live. But is the space of the cinematic frame equivalent or commensurable with the one I see through my own eyes? Are they opposed to each other or do they merge together? The most amazing example of the possible convergence of gaze and frame the film realizes is the phenomenon of vision showing itself in the point-of-view shot. How can I perceive what I see on the screen as the vision of another, and the film itself as someone else’s vision? How does this relationship between the visual field of the film and my own, between my body and the screen, challenge the limits between objective and subjective? Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s reflections about cinema and visibility, I try to outline the traits of what I would call a reversible point-of-view shot.

The present paper investigates the late ontology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which considers being as expressive movement. The paper takes as its point of departure Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on painting, sculpture and especially cinema. Two reasons justify this choice. On the one hand, Merleau-Ponty’s reflections on film as a work of art are now starting to be better known, after they have been overshadowed by his writings on painting, sculpture or literature for a long time. This entails a considerable enrichment of our interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetics and his ontology. On the other hand, if Merleau-Ponty’s general theory of aesthetics leads to questions concerning the sense and the ontological status of movement, it is certain that, within this theory, the analysis of the particular mode of expression of cinematic images gains an extraordinary relevance.

In the vast field of Roman Ingarden’s ontology, film seems to occupy very little space. Indeed, Ingarden dedicated only two short texts to it. This paper aims at reconstructing Ingarden’s theory of film by expanding on the intuitions and sketches presented in those texts, using Ingarden’s general inquiries on aesthetics and specific inquiries on various forms of art (literary works, music, painting, etc.) The paper first focuses on the mode of being of film, trying to elaborate the distinctions made by Ingarden between physical foundation, work of art, and aesthetic object and elucidating the relations between film and reality. The paper then moves on to the investigation of silent pictures as an art of pure visibility, then to talking pictures, taking into consideration all the modifications induced by sound and music. Ontological and aesthetical considerations jointly underpin this attempt to show the richness and significance of Ingarden’s theories.

This article reconsiders some of the arguments that I made in my two phenomenology-inspired books on what I have called the “filmic identification” in the cinema: Les structures de l’expérience filmique (1969) and Essai sur l’image et la communication (1980). While the former has received some attention in film studies via Vivian Sobchack’s mediating work in her influential essay “Toward a Phenomenology of Nonfictional Film Experience” (1999), the latter is little known in film studies and phenomenological circles. The two guest editors have therefore asked me to introduce and update my former position and place it in the intellectual climate of French-speaking film studies from the 1950s to the 1980s—that is, from the filmology movement to the dominance of semiology and psychoanalysis.

The objective of this paper is to show that the specific meaning of “affectivity” in Merleau-Ponty’s works can be better understood by approaching its connection with the notion of “imagination”. This strategy can be contrasted with Sartre’s approach; his specific conception of consciousness locks off the relation between imagination and affectivity from the start. On the contrary, the free play of this axis, which can be analysed since the early Phenomenology of Perception, allows for the overflowing of the horizon of visibility of subjectivity toward a certain invisible. Th e concrete junction of imagination and affectivity then spreads out into the region of the notion of desire.