Affection in perception does not exhaust itself in a single subjective act of turning-towards (Zuwendung) an object. Husserl’s analyses of the propagation of affection in perception (in Hua XI), which have not been systematically or thoroughly thematized up until now, offer a much more complex picture of affection, which this article brings to the fore. The affective power distributes itself irregularly in perception. The differentiation of perceptual field into foreground and background (first section) prepares the field for the investigation of the distribution of affections (second section). This investigation leads from lower to higher levels of constitution, from simple to complex relations, and from sensations of the lived body to egological factors. In the third section, three directions of propagation of affection and, collectively, six modes of affective awakening are thoroughly analyzed. I end with a discussion of a recent critique of Husserl’s “abstract” approach to affection, which seeks to offer an insight into how a complete theory of affection would look like.

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.

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.

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 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).

The paper attempts to propound a new understanding of the experience of the world and others on the basis of a radical phenomenology of the body, as it is revealed in the originary impressibility as affect and desire. This impressibility shapes every relation to beings and others due to the unity of an originary life that founds individuation before any temporal difference, having ethical consequences for a plural communality, which can no longer be characterized by means of mere abstract processes of objectivation.

Selfhood, personal identity and singularity are philosophical concepts which undergo a profound change in Levinas, who is led by three main propositions to transform them. The first of these propositions could hardly be simpler: I am myself and no other. The second proposition is more surprising, but it can lay just as well a claim to self-evidence: I remain myself without becoming another even if I do not remain the same as I were. Finally, the third proposition is not only baffling, but almost scandalous: The fact that I am myself and no other cannot be deduced from my identity with myself; it is rather the outcome of my relationshipwith the Other or, more precisely a consequence of what is described by Levinas as my substitution for the Other. These three propositions are inquired into and commented upon in the paper. It is shown, thereby, how a singularity without identity is conceived of by Levinas.

This paper aims to offer a new and alternative perspective on the basic idea of Levinas’s philosophy. My claim is that the latter can be more appropriately understood not as a contribution to a new way of thinking about ethics or the realm of the ethical as such, but rather toward the theory of normativity. The goal of Levinas’s reflections on alterity is to exhibit the normativity that is in play in all modes of understanding. Levinas tries to understand how intentional beings are normatively bound by one another. This paper tries to give answers to the questions of (1) why Levinas addresses questions of alterity, (2) what is distinctive about these questions according to his way of thinking, and (3) why one should consider Levinas’ thought from the perspective of the articulation of a theory of normativity.

According to Henry, in Husserl’s analysis of time the retentional intentionality of the “now” implies that you cannot have the sensation of its pure reality. This inner-phenomenological criticism can be generally transferred to the relationship between time and life, since temporality, as the most inner structure of the world of becoming-outsideitself, does not allow any affective self-appearance of life. Finally, this aspect has critical consequences for the existential structure of care, which must be suspended as “transcendental illusion” of the ego, in order to do justice to the immediacy of an immemorial birth in life.

Although Levinas’ “il y a” does not directly correspond to Heidegger’s conception of being, his criticism of Heidegger’s temporal ontology is nevertheless justified. With the reduction of every meaning (and being) to its temporal constitution, Heidegger excludes any possibility of transcendence beyond time. The problem of overcoming the radical finitude and historicity of meaning, which is ethically motivated, brings Levinas to the age-old question of metaphysics. However, taking Heidegger’s thought seriously, Levinas is forced to look for an entirely new understanding of the metaphysical quest.