Andrea Staiti

Human Culture and The One Structure

Abstract This article presents and discusses Sebastian Luft’s recent interpretation of Husserl’s late phenomenology. Luft argues that Husserl envisioned a hermeneutic phenomenology of the cultural world, thereby articulating a project that can be considered complementary with Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms. Three of Luft’s claims, in particular, are assessed and criticized: (1) the Cartesian Husserl and the life-world Husserl pursue two separate agendas; (2) Husserl’s genetic phenomenology is fundamentally compatible with Paul Natorp’s project of a reconstructive psychology; (3) Husserl’s late work is oriented towards hermeneutical understanding of the world of culture.

The Primacy of the Present: Metaphysical Ballast or Phenomenological Finding?

In this paper I argue that the primacy of the present in Husserl’s philosophy is not an unquestioned ballast inherited from the tradition of metaphysics but rather a genuinely phenomenological discovery. First, I explore the present of things and argue that the phenomenological primacy of the present in this domain should be understood in terms of what Husserl calls “affection.” Strictly speaking originary affection and associative syntheses (as the most basic phenomena for the givenness of things) can only take place in the present or starting from the present. Second, I consider the present in the egological sphere and analyze its primacy for both the transcendental and the personal ego. Finally, I move to the experience of the other and argue that only the perception of the other’s body in the present gives rise to an authentic empathic experience as the experience of the other’s governing in his own body.

New Approaches to Neo-Kantianism

Introduction: towards a reconsideration of Neo-Kantianism Nicolas de Warren Part I. Neo-Kantianism and Philosophy: 1. The Neo-Kantians on the meaning and status of philosophy Andrea Staiti 2. Neo-Kantian ideas of history Alan Kim 3. Neo-Kantianism and analytic philosophy Hans-Johann Glock 4. Eine reise um die welt: Cassirers cosmological phenomenology Nicolas de Warren Part II. Ethics and Culture: 5. Philosophy as philosophy of culture? Christian Krijnen 6. The validity of norms in Neo-Kantian ethics Beatrice Centi 7. Neo-Kantianism in the philosophy of law: its value and actuality Jonathan Trejo-Mathys 8. Neo-Kantianism and the social sciences: from Rickert to Weber Gerhard Wagner and Claudius Harpfer 9. Simmels Rembrandt and The View of Life Karen Lang 10. The binding of Isaac and the boundaries of reason: religion since Kant Peter E. Gordon Part III. Theory of Knowledge: 11. The philosophy of the Marburg School: from the critique of scientific cognition to the philosophy of culture Sebastian Luft 12. Natorps psychology Daniel O. Dahlstrom 13. Cassirer and the philosophy of science Massimo Ferrari 14. Kant and the Neo-Kantians on mathematics Luca Oliva Primary sources Index.

The Ideen and Neo-Kantianism

This chapter examines the criticism of Husserl’s Ideen articulated by the Neo-Kantians Rickert and Natorp. Both lament that Husserl’s method of eidetic seeing is an intuitionistic shortcut that does not justify the knowledge it claims to provide. Natorp also raises doubts about the appropriateness of the eidetic method and phenomenological reflection for the investigation of subjectivity. Its answer this criticism distinguishing between intuition of an essence and knowledge of that essence and by insisting on the necessity of an eidetic investigation of consciousness, and concludes with a discussion of phenomenology’s claim to be the foundational science for philosophy.

Positionality and Consciousness in Husserl’s Ideas I

In this paper I argue that in Husserl’s Ideas I (1913) there is a seeming contradiction between the characterization of pure consciousness as the residue of the performance of the phenomenological reduction and the claim that in the natural attitude consciousness is taken to be an entity is the world. This creates a puzzle regarding the positional status of consciousness in the natural attitude. After reviewing some possible options to solve this puzzle in the existing literature, I claim that the positional status of conscious experiences in the natural attitude is best characterized as unsettled . The act that settles the positional status of conscious experiences (i.e. our manifold Erlebnisse ) is reflection. In reflection, experiences are posited as beings, either in a psychological or in a phenomenological key. I conclude by arguing that the problem of positing is of paramount importance to understand correctly Husserl’s claim that phenomenology is voraussetzungslos .

Commentary on Husserl's Ideas I

This is the first complete critical commentary of Husserls seminal work Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy. Leading international scholars offer a close reading, examining arguments and phenomenological descriptions, connecting them to Husserls earlier and later works, and engaging important secondary sources.

Phenomenal Experience and the Scope of Phenomenology: A Husserlian Response to Some Wittgensteinean Remarks

In this paper I take issue with Wittgenstein’s characterization of phenomenology in his Remarks on Colors (1950). Wittgenstein argues that “there is no such thing as phenomenology, but there are indeed phenomenological problems”, and that if there were such thing as phenomenology it would be “something midway between logic and natural science.” Phenomenological problems would thus be problems concerning exclusively the qualitative dimension of experience. Pace Wittgenstein, I argue Husserl’s work proves that a properly understood phenomenology (1) has a bearing on logic in that it clarifies the status of logical entities and relations; (2) has a bearing on natural science in that it clarifies the status of empirical being in its essential relation to consciousness, thereby grounding its amenability to theoretical research; (3) is a unitary discipline, and not a set of scattered problems.

Introduction: towards a reconsideration of Neo-Kantianism

In the summer of 1914, T. S. Eliot arrived in Marburg from Harvard University to attend a summer course in philosophy before taking up residency at Merton College, Oxford, for a year of study with Harold Joachim, F. H. Bradley’s successor. At the University of Marburg, Eliot met Paul Natorp, who assisted him in finding affordable accommodation and lectured in his course on philosophy. The outbreak of the First World War would cut short Eliot’s stay in Marburg, but not before he had the chance to sketch a portrait of the venerable Neo-Kantian Professor. Natorp strikes a professorial pose, one arm tucked behind his back, the other slung across his waist. With elven ears and bald cranium, the philosopher appears endearing in his otherworldliness. Natorp’s face is hidden behind oval glasses, so large that they seem to constitute a hindrance rather than an aid to seeing reality. Eliot’s sketch can be seen as a visual epitome for how Neo-Kantianism appeared to a younger generation of intellectuals and philosophers who would come of age in the aftermath of a Europe laid waste through the cataclysm of the Great War. Eliot’s amusing sketch is an apt illustration for what Hans-Georg Gadamer, who wrote his PhD dissertation on Plato under Natorp in 1922, characterized as the Neo-Kantian “calm and confident aloofness” engrossed in “complacent system-building.” With slightly more bite, Hannah Arendt charged Neo-Kantianism with drowning philosophy “in a sea of boredom,” thereby offering a softer version of the same hostility that spirited Martin Heidegger’s confrontation with Ernst Cassirer at Davos in 1929. The perception of Neo-Kantianism at Eliot’s alma mater was similarly unflattering. William James lampooned

The Mark of Beginnings. Husserl and Hegel on the Meaning of Naiveté

In this paper I intend to appraise the meaning of naivete in Husserl’s phenomenology against the backdrop of Hegel’s philosophy. I will take my cue from an insightful remark by James Dodd in his recent book Crisis and Reflection. Commenting on Husserl’s famous statement that empirical science is intrinsically naive, Dodd underscores that: “‘Naivete’ is not meant here to be a term of reproach. There is in fact enormous power in naivete, and it should be respected” (Dodd, 2004, p. 55). The goal of this paper is to provide a description of naivete’s power and, in so doing, to articulate the possibility of the respect to be owed to it by philosophy.

Storia, vita e fenomenologia trascendentale nei recenti materiali husserliani

This paper explores some recently published materials from Husserl’s Nachlass. The author argues that they offer resources for a better understanding of Husserl’s view of history. In particular, they prove that Husserl’s reflections on history and the historical world are intended to be radical responses to the schools of Neo-Kantianism and Lebensphilosophie and are only fully intelligible in this context. The bulk of Husserl’s analysis revolves around the notion of a constituting life at the origin of both nature and culture. In this respect, he sides with philosophers like Simmel and Dilthey. However, transcendental life is for Husserl accessible with the aid of the phenomenological reduction and thus suitable for scientific investigation. The upshot of this analysis is the discovery of a complex but non-chaotic interrelation of natural life, transcendental life and history. These are not separate spheres of reality but rather facets of one and the same dynamic of transcendental constitution.