Daniela Verducci

The Human Creative Condition Between Autopoiesis and Ontopoiesis in the thought of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

The appearance of the first two volumes of the book series Analecta Husserliana, in 1971 and 1972 respectively, did not evoke particular sensation in the philosophical academy: it seemed that they simply sought to fulfill the need of numerous afficionados of the Husserlian method of philosophy to find a stable place for communication and discussion, since the historical Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und phanomenologische Forschung had been out of print for forty years. In reality, the outlook of the founder and editor, Anna-Teresa Tyminiecka, was much wider and more radical. In fact, in her mind, the recent history of phenomenology demonstrated a series of exigencies and opportunities that could not be left unaddressed, without dissipating and ending the new philosophical vitality that had matured.

A Metamorphic Logos for Post-metaphysics. From the Phenomenology of Life

The deconstructive work that marked the twentieth century benefited thought. Jacques Derrida’s attempt to translate linguistically and semantically the Heideggerian invitation to the Destruktion of the concepts of metaphysics produced the essential result of pointing out the discards, voids, fractures, discontinuities, aporias, the ideological and “actantial” structures of the texts of the metaphysical tradition, passing beyond their intrinsically manifest and wanted unity. In fact, the deconstructionist strategy works to deprive authority of the function of system that absorbs everything by reduction to identification with itself, in order to assert otherness and difference, previously “unthinkable” in the Western philosophical tradition.

Life, Spirit, Work

From the first pages of Erkenntnis und Arbeit, dedicated to examining the possibility of interwoven links between cognition and work,1 Max Scheler affirms almost without hesitation the presence in the modern era of a model of “intimate connection between science and the technical-mechanized form of production of goods,” or “a systematic and internal connection between work and cognition within our society.”

La Phénoménologie de la vie et la Philosophie Selon Max Scheler

La valeur d’innovation radicale, pour l’histoire de la philosophie moderne, des tentatives de certains philosophes comme Nietzsche, Dilthey et Bergson, qui, au seuil du XXeme siecle, en se reclamant de la vie, voulaient s’engager dans des parcours speculatifs en profondeur et qui s’aventurerent dans la zone d’ombre au-dessous de la ligne de clarte permise a la raison de la philosophie des Lumieres et a son esprit mecaniste, ne pouvait pas echapper a un regard penetrant comme celui de Max Scheler, tout tendu a saisir dans le relatif les traces de l’absolu.1 En effet, Nietzsche, Dilthey et Bergson, contrairement a beaucoup de leurs predecesseurs, ne concevaient pas la philosophie de la vie en tant qu’application du savoir philosophique aux affaires des pratiques quotidiennes, ni en tant que facon theoretique de traiter les problemes de la vie organique entrouverts par la biologie moderne. Au contraire, en se tournant vers la Lebensphilosophie, ils voulaient rendre la plenitude de la vie a la philosophie de leur temps, qui etait devenue une speculation morte. C’est pourquoi ils se prodiguerent a chercher et a retablir des liens oublies, en partant du sous-sol de la raison scientifique et mecaniste, engagee a imposer des lois constantes a la fluide surface du devenir: ce n’est que de ces liens que pouvait se reveler a nouveau la veritable nature vitale de la philosophie, qui n’est pas une simple technique explicative et dis-organique.

The World Phenomenology Institute’s Eco-Phenomenology

This paper presents the acceptance of the word “eco-phenomenology” that is specific to the World Phenomenology Institute, resulting from the research in the phenomenology of life of its founder, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, carried out for over 40 years. Her most conclusive discovery was the ontopoietic logos of life, the productive and ordering force that is at the base of cosmic becoming and that forms human existence, leading them all to their transcendent destination. From the standpoint of the World Phenomenology Institute, ecology can be considered and practiced in its germinal condition that is from the perspective of the self-individualization of life, the basic instrument of ontopoiesis that draws on the cosmic dependencies and constitutes the human mind and human development.

On Communicative Being in Postmodern Times

The urgency of the anthropological question of communication stimulates the attempt to pose again the metaphysical issue and to repeat the endeavor to “save the phenomena”, now that the philosophy of being of tradition seems to be at its last stage and unable to convey the transition toward the broadening of the horizon of meaning, which the new unknown mental, affective and practical experiences of Postmodernity, and even the new entities and procedures of the technological artificial-being urge. From the phenomenology of life of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka significant steps have been already achieved toward the realization of a graft of a new subjectivizing metaphysics on the old objectivizing metaphysics.

Communicative Virtues of A-T. Tymieniecka’s Phenomenology of Life

It did not seem truly possible that Nietzsche’s expectations could be met: that being and becoming could converge in one λόγος/logos and that the latter in turn, freed from both the confines of monism and the reductionism of dualism, could unfold in the previously unknown metamorphic form, which is able to draw together (=λέγeιν/legein) the entities that change and become, in the infinite multiformity of their states, passages, forms and conditions. Yet this is precisely what the phenomenology of life is able to announce: the search for the principle of all things has been reanimated and has begun again to dare to know, according to the Kantian motto: “Sapere aude!”. Between the animate and inanimate, the human and non-human, and the numerous polarities that have crystallized in the modern course of thought, the new ontological hermeneutics made possible by the ontopoiesis of life is building new logoic bridges that open Post-Modernity to a new Enlightenment. The work of intuitive re-sowing of the terrain of Husserlian phenomenology that A-T. Tymieniecka has carried out for 40 years, and which culminates in the development of the phenomenology of life, has in fact manifested the metamorphic logos in the creative acts of the individual living human being; it presides over every inorganic, organic and conscious make-being. From this communicative discovery the precious possibility of a new inquiry of philosophia prima arises.

Differentiation of the Logos

Ever since her first book in the Logos and Life series (1988), Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka has undertaken a new critique of reason. According to A.-T. Tymieniecka’s phenomenological descriptions, not only human existence is placed within the unity-of-everything-is-alive, but the human creative condition stays as well within the unity-of-everything-is-alive. Two main results are so achieved: first, re-establishing contact between the transcendental phenomenological consciousness and its vital foundation in the living beingness/living agent and second, demonstrating the intrinsic creative force of the acts of the human living being. Therefore, the living human being through its invention and creation does not at all close the possibilities of life, as Scheler held; on the contrary, “it expands them into possible world of life”, for through the creative modus of human functioning there occurs a metamorphosis of the vital system of Ontopoiesis. The moral sense lies at the core of such a metamorphosis as well as the quest prompted through it is a mode of becoming but of an absolutely “spontaneous” becoming, one that does not follow a preprogrammed sequence to be accomplished but is “freely” projected becoming building on the accomplishments of each actor. It is here that a Great Metamorphosis of the Logos of Life can take place, by which the finite and its ontopoietic logic transmute into the infinite.

The Life of Being Refound with the Phenomenology of Life of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

In the heart of the more objectivistic line of Rationalism, Leibniz planted an ontological seed of vital spontaneity that would bear fruit three centuries later in the reflective conversion of Husserlian phenomenology into the one subjective/objective field of research of the Erlebnisse and of the Sachen selbst. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka carries out and gives structure to these ideas of philosophical solidarity between spirit and life, both pursuing the subjective road in empathizing with the profound intentionality of her masters, Leibniz and Ingarden in primis, and applying herself to the objective level to give rise to a phenomenology of phenomenology, through which she intends to realize an intuitive re-seeding of phenomenology itself. The surprising result of this phenomenological work has been the discover of the ontopoietic logos of life, which runs through and pervades every sphere of being, from the physical to the metaphysical level, with its expansive and evolutive dynamic of impetus and equipoise. Thus Tymieniecka threw open the ancient Parmenidean concept of being as a “mass of well rounded sphere” to the spectacle of being that gushes and runs in history, as if surging from an inexhaustible spring.

Work and Economics in Max Scheler

Many accomplishments have been ascribed to the philosophical brilliance of Max Scheler: he directed Husserlian phenomenological inquiry to the field of morality, values and feelings, proposing a philosophy of religion which opened doors to new possibilities; he contributed significantly to the development of philosophical anthropology; he founded the sociology of knowledge. 1 However, the attention Scheler devoted to the theme of work has gone almost unnoticed. Even though Scheler explicitly considered the subject of “work” philosophically, Karl Lowith denies that Scheler’s comments on this topic have any philosophical value, considering them required tributes to the sociological point of view.2 Ludwig Landgrebe, a student of Husserl, outlines the intrinsic historical difficulties involved in phenomenology without making any reference to Scheler.3 At the same time, Manfred Riedel finds the Schelerian treatment of work in Arbeit und Ethik lacking on the level of linguistic analysis and thus of little use.4 Only Marcuse gives a bit of praise to Arbeit und Ethik.5