The paper discusses motivation as the inner lawfulness of consciousness and a central methodological principle of genetic phenomenology, highlighting the problem of its ambiguous status oscillating between a historical-empirical and a transcendental account of consciousness. The focus on motivation allows for the practical character of intentionality to emerge, thus presenting genetic phenomenology as a more comprehensive approach to subjective life which takes into account its constitutive indeterminacy.

The familiar Husserlian conception of fulfillment involves a contrast between the same content as being represented emptily and then (more) fully, and also the idea that the empty givenness is rightly conceived in terms of anticipations of fullness. Since perceptual experiences provide a paradigmatic case of such fulfillment, I will call it “P-fulfillment.” Additionally, there is also the fulfillment of our wants, wishes, and desires. Taking wants as the paradigmatic case, I will call it “W-fulfillment.” In this paper, I consider the applicability of these conceptions of fulfillment to Husserl’s views of instincts, and conclude that the fulfillment of instincts is best understood not as P-fulfillment or W-fulfillment, but as sui generis, “I-fulfillment,” which is distinguished by its peculiarly retrospective nature, and by the fact that when it reveals something, it can also give rise to determinacy where previously there was none.

The present article intends to show that genetic phenomenology, as conceived by Edmund Husserl, implies an essential biological dimension. In his later research manuscripts, from the 1920s and 1930s , Husserl not only reflects on the conceivability of forms of intropathy (Einfühlung) regarding animal and plant bodies, based on dismantling reduction (Abbaureduktion), but also on the embeddedness of the human monad in ontogenetic and phylogenetic generative becoming. On that basis, the article aims to locate the place of bio-generative phenomena within the field of genetic analysis in the theories of monadic gradualism and of somatic anomalism. However, by taking into consideration that new attempts to approach biological generativity from a Husserlian perspective (A. Steinbock, R. Affifi) are only partly successful, the article ends with a delimitation of certain elements that require further elaboration, namely the investigation into the biological implications of monadology, the determination of forms of corporeal anomality, and the vindication of the notion of essential limit-phenomena.

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.

In this paper, I examine how Merleau-Ponty develops Husserl’s genetic phenomenology through an elaboration of language, which is largely influenced by Saussure’s linguistics. Specifically, my focus will be on the unpublished notes to the course Sur le problème de la parole (On the Problem of Speech). I show how Merleau-Ponty recasts Husserl’s notion of the historicity of truth by means of an inquiry into the relation between truth and its linguistic expression. The account that Merleau-Ponty offers differs from Husserl’s in two important respects. Firstly, whereas Husserl describes a regressive inquiry of truth, Merleau-Ponty describes a regressive movement of truth, where every acquired truth seizes the tradition that precedes it. Secondly, this new notion of truth, and its dependency on its proper expression, opens up a new understanding of literature.

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.

Many genetic approaches in philosophy, psychology or sociology lead to a partially or fully deterministic understanding of the self and its position-taking. In this article, I argue that Husserl’s view of genesis differs broadly from such deterministic conceptions, as he investigates the genesis as the awakening of consciousness as consciousness or spirit as spirit. Husserl claims that the passive foundation of conscious life is the topsoil of activity and rational position-taking. But still the genetic process of the awakening of the ego, far from being an automatism, demands a primary responsibility to proceed with the awakening itself. I discuss the issue of the responsibility of wakefulness in three interconnected ways. Drawing on Edith Stein, I first develop some theological implications to demonstrate how the paradox of responsibility points toward its divine ratio, because the unfounded givenness of responsibility links the awakening person to a phenomenological understanding of theosis: the more a person cultivates her responsibility the more she resembles the divine actus purus. In a second step, I show how the ethical implications of the responsibility of awakening connect it with the truth of will. The manifold obstacles that tend to undermine ethical love reveal a new level of both responsible position-taking and practical faith in the divine entelechy. Finally, the theological and ethical results motivate a social renewal, in which responsibility embraces the Other and longs for the communitization of the truth of wills. Clearly, the Husserlian view of genetic philosophy enables deep theological and ethical insights, that remain hidden from the method of static phenomenology and that are denied by most empirical genetic approaches.

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.

In this paper, I consider the idea of space-time in its philosophical specificity. Such an approach must satisfy three main conditions. First, the inquiry must meditate on the link epitomized by the hyphen in the expression “space-time”. Second, it must not reduce either space to time or time to space, but must instead explore the significance of their in-between-ness and of their interweaving reality. Third, the inquiry must rid itself of any priority of space over time or of time over space that would take place in the mediation of space-time. I explore whether there is a metaphysical approach that might be able to articulate the organic link of space-time epitomized by the hyphen in order to grasp the philosophical meaning of its irreducible, deep, and fleshly thickness. I argue that Merleau-Ponty might usher in decisive clues and some insightful tools for building such a theory. I accordingly begin by discussing his later topic of an endo-ontology, linking together concepts such as endospace and endo-time. Starting from there, I examine what he finally envisions as the chiasm and nexus of space-time.

From the hermeneutics of facticity to phenomenological destruction, Heidegger’s constant effort has been to achieve a non-metaphysical, pre-theoretical methodology of philosophy. His ideas finally lead to the development of the method of formal indication. In this essay, I will consider first the methodological function of historical things, in order to illustrate the method of destruction. Then, I will explain the definition of philosophy from the point of view of formal indication, thereby showing how different this method is from traditional philosophical methods. Finally, I will analyse the importance of this transformation of methodology, in order to reveal in which sense a concrete universality is possible and how it contributes to the foundation of the ontology of life.

The discourse on escaping is primarily directed towards the who of escape. The question of what and how of escaping in its cultural-anthropological significance is usually neglected. The present paper claims to overcome this inadequacy by exploring escape eo ipso and as a spatial-theoretical phenomenon. For this purpose, it is necessary to rethink escape as a triple articulated phenomenological topology based on three vectors: escape as a start, escape as a transition and escape as a destination/refuge. The escape-vectors play the role of symbolic and basic structures which are connected with linguistic and cognitive paradigms. Among the basic figures of escaping, this paper examines escape as a separation, as a non-place and as a fugue; these correspond in turn to the environmental metaphors, first, of the earth as exile, secondly, of the sea and the desert, and finally of the earth as asylum. The multilayered topology of escaping is reconstructed in the interdisciplinary field of spatial theory, of etymology, literature and political philosophy. By examining its spatial-philosophical characteristics, escape emerges as a dynamic phenomenon that can reshape essential concepts and inverse traditional categories of politics. For that reason, escaping determines a philosophically “inverted world” and consequently constitutes an essential source for the future development of cultural-political systems.

In Lacan’s perspective, the cogito is unable to account for the separation between desire and language for the individual. The fundamental difference pertaining to the signifier (signifiant) makes it impossible for the enunciation (sum) to ever coincide with what is enunciated (sense). Therefore no final knowledge of self, being and reality (réel) is possible within the framework of the imaginary-symbolic life-world. This analysis, which is decisive for the therapeutic process, is then confronted with a radical-phenomenological critique that questions Lacan’s presuppositions about alterity from the perspective of a primal and transcendental life (Lebendigkeit), a confrontation that ought to bear fruit for the dialog between psychoanalysis and phenomenology.

The foundational basis of the cinematic moving image is camera movement, which occurs not only in the image but also, and from the first, as the image. This essay approaches off-screen camera movement through phenomenological description of the gestalt structure of its four interrelated onscreen forms: the moving image as an intentional and composite “viewing view/viewed view”; the moving image as “qualified” by optical camera movement through subjective modes of spatiotemporal transcendence; the movement of subjects and objects in the moving image as seen by a world-directed camera; and the spatial movement of the camera, whose perspectival vision affirms its status as an embodied, if anonymous, “quasi-subject,” whose visually perceptive motility responds to its world in visibly expressive mobility. Throughout, the essay develops Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s claim that the cinema is, perhaps, the phenomenological art par excellence, given that its “technical methods” correspond to an “existential” and phenomenological “mode of thought.”

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 central thesis of this article is that film is directing and directed kinaesthesis understood as an opening of world beyond the relation of “subjective” and “objective”. Thus the analysis does not focus on the recipients of a movie but on the origins filming finds in specific ways of experiencing, that is, in the living bodies of the persons who decide on the perspective of a take by using the camera’s body. Moved by its filmmakers, the body of the camera is directed as the product of its authors, and is directing insofar as it establishes a world by its own means. The article explains basic forms of opening world by kinaesthetic processes in general (1), and applies this investigation to the corpus of film (2). Finally, the results of these analyses will be put in concrete terms by relating them to basic film features and a few samples of movies (3).