PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE AND THE

HUMAN CREATIVE CONDITION

BOOK I

ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA

THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

VOLUME LII

Editor-in-Chief:

ANNA- TERESA TYMIENIECKA

The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning Belmont, Massachusetts

For sequel volumes see the end of this volume.

PHENOMENOLOGY OF LIFE AND THE HUMAN CREATIVE CONDITION

Book I

Laying Down the Cornerstones of the Field

Edited by

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

The World Phenomenology Institute

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning

A-T. Tymieniecka, President

~· '' SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Phenomenology of life and the human creative condition 1 edited by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.

p. cm. -- <Analecta Husserliana ; v. 52-54> Papers presented at the Second World Phenoaenology Congress, Sept.

12-18, 1995, Guadalajara, Mexico. "Published under the auspices of the World Institute for Advances

Phenomenological Research and Learning.• !ne 1 udes index. Contents: bk. 1. Layfng down the cornerstones of the field -- bk.

2. The reincarnating mfnd, or, The ontopofetic outburst in creative virtualitfes -- bk. 3. Ontopo1etic expansion in hu1an self -1nterpretat1on-in-ex1stence.

ISBN 978-90-481-4805-9 ISBN 978-94-017-2604-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-2604-7 1. Phenomenology--Congresses. 2. Husserl, Ed•und, 1859-1938-

-Congresses. 3. L1fe--Congresses. 4. Creative abfl1ty--Congresses. I. Tym1en1ecka, Anna-Teresa. II. World Institute for Advanced Phenomenologfcal Research and Learnfng. III. World Congress of Phenomenology <2nd : 1995 : GuadalaJara, Mexfcol IV. Ser1es. B3279.H94A129 vol. 52-54 [8829.57) 142' .7--0C21 97-2276

ISBN 978-90-481-4805-9

Prepared with the editorial assistance of Robert S. Wise

Printed on acid-free paper

AII Rights Reserved © 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998

No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without written permission from the copyright owner.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THE THEME

INAUGURAL LECTURE

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA I The Great Plan of Life: The Phenomenology of Life's Return to the Sources of Western

ix xi

Philosophy 3

PART ONE LIFE, LOGOS, PHENOMENON

LIU QINGPING I Life as Logos and Tao: On Husser/'s Ideas and the Comparative Study of Western and Chinese Philosophies 33

DEBABRAT A SINHA I Logos, Telos and the Lived World: A View in Phenomenological Reflection 57

HoRsT MATT H A I I The Pseudo-concepts Phenomenon and AOrOE in the Phenomenological Philosophies: A Viable Alternative 71

ALEXANDRU GIUCULESCU I The Leibnizian Dimension of Husserl 's Phenomenology 99

PART TWO SELF-INDIVIDUALISA TION OF LIFE:

INGATHERING AND OUTWARD RADIATION

FRANS SOONTIENS I The Intrinsic Value of Life and the Problem of Natural Teleology 117

CARLOS MINGUEZ I Predetermination and Change in Living Beings: A Study Based on Nicolai Hartmann's Contribution 133

v

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

THOMAS E. SPREY I The Self-Individualization of Life: Parallels Between the Generative Principles in Psychological and Biological Development 147

CHRISTEN A. BLOM-DAHL I Emanuel Swedenborg's Physical and Metaphysical Revelation 167

SPAS SPASSOV I Metaphysics and Vitalism in Henri Bergson's Biophilosophy: A New Look 197

PART THREE THE EGO, SUBJECTIVITY, AND THE INCARNATED SUBJECT

FERNANDO MONTERO MOLlNER I El Mito de Ia Subjetividad 209 FRANCISCO LOPEZ-FRIAS I Ortega y Gasset's Executive I

and His Criticism of Phenomenological Idealism 229 MASA YUKI HAKOISHI I Becoming of Ego and the Incarnated

Subject 249 JESUS CON ILL I Reason in Vital Experience in Ortega y Gasset 267

PART FOUR HUMAN CREATIVE VIRTUALITIES RADIATING AT THEIR PEAK

MARLIES KRONEGGER I The Creative Source: Rodin 281 PATRICIA TRUTTY-COOHILL I Visualizing Tymieniecka's

Poetica Nova 303 v. c. THOMAS I Authenticity and Creativity: An Existentialist

Perspective 317 N. A. KORMINE I The Ontology of Artistic Time and the

Phenomenology of Husser! 333

PART FIVE LIFE TIMING ITSELF CREATIVELY THROUGHOUT AND BEYOND

JORGE GARCIA-GOMEZ I A Bridge to Temporality: Phenomenological Reflections on the Presence of Things Past and Future According to St. Augustine's Confessions 341

ANTONIO CALCAGNO I Actio, Passio et Creatio in the Endliche und ewige Philosophie of Edith Stein: A Poetico-Personal Response to the Challenges of Postmodernity 369

IDDO LANDAU I Meister Eckhart on Temporality and the "Now": A Phenomenological-Hermeneutical Interpretation 387

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

DANIEL ZELINSKI I Zen and Tymieniecka's Three Movements of the Soul 397

PART SIX CREATIVE PERMEATION OF VITAL SENSE:

THE AESTHETIC SENSE OF LIFE AND SCIENCE

LUIS FLORES H. I The Imagination as the Origin of Science: Rupture and Continuity with the Quotidian Lifeworld 405

WOJCIECH BALUS I From Mourning to Melancholy: Toward a Phenomenology of the Modern Human Condition 411

JAN M. BROEKMAN I Mimesis, Law and Medicine 419

PART SEVEN ATTUNEMENT OF SAMENESS AND AL TERITY IN THE

CULTURAL AND SOCIETAL NETWORKS OF LIFE

CARMEN LOPEZ SAENZ I A. Schutz: Phenomenology and Understanding Sociology 435

STEPHANIE GRACE SCHULL I A Cultural Archaeology of the Insane Genius 459

VLADISLAV BORODULIN, ALEXEY V ASILJEV AND VITALlY POPOV I Schizophrenia as a Problem of the Theory of Intersubjectivity 475

JOZEF SIVAK I Regne animal et humain: Nature intersubjective 483

PART EIGHT DRIVE TOWARD THE UNITY-OF-EVERYTHING-THERE-IS-ALIVE

ZAIGA IKERE I Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka's Philosophy of Life and the Fostering of Ecological Thinking 507

DANIEL R. WHITE I Spirit in Flames: Toward a Postmodern-Ecological Phenomenology 517

W. KIM ROGERS I On the Mode of Being of Living Beings and Their Environment: Preliminary Ideas for an Ecological Approach in Philosophy 531

INDEX OF NAMES 549

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present volume features in a special thematic perspective a portion of the papers constituting the work of the Second World Phenomenology Congress convened September 12-18, 1995 in Guadalajara, Mexico.

In the Introduction (The Theme) we will present the specific signif­icance of this work. Let us here express warmest thanks to our hosts, Dr. Santiago Mendez Bravo, Rector of the Universidad del Valle de Atemajac, to Dr. Sergio X. Vazquez, President of the Instituto de Terapia Gestalt Region Occidente (INTEGRO), our co-host and co-organizer, and to Dr. Miguel Jarquin Marin, President of the Organization Committee of the Congress, for their generous hospitality which permeated the marvellous atmosphere of friendship and cordiality characterizing our congresses with a unique human warmth, felt and appreciated by all participants.

My thanks go also to my assistant Dr. Tomasz Panz for his attentive and dedicated work in the organization phase of the Congress. The promptitude and carefulness which he brought to this task has certainly facilitated the participation of many scholars coming from afar for the first time to this wonderful country of Mexico. In this respect we are deeply grateful to our Mexican colleagues belonging to the closer or further extended membership of the INTEGRO, especially to Professor Sergio X. Vazquez himself, for having opened their homes to host foreign scholars and show them around - helping them to discover the beauty of Mexico, which we all left with regrets and a yearning to return.

A special note of appreciation has to be offered to both directors of INTEGRO for offering a reception at which the Ibero-American Scholars gathered in order to found a new Society of the World Phenomenology Institute, the Sociedad Ibero-Americana de Fenomenologia. This society being thus founded, we extend our thanks to Professor Dr. Jorge Garcia­Gomez, of Long Island University, for having accepted the responsible post of Secretary General of this scholarly body. The steps to establish it are under way.

Now it is time that I express my great satisfaction with the work done before and during the conference in typing the program, registra-

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X ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

tion, and numerous other tasks by my most dedicated Assistant Editor, Robert J. Wise, Jr. It has been for many participants and myself a pleasure to have him with us, continuing the task he performed before at the First World Congress of Phenomenology which we held at Santiago de Compostela. On these occasions the precious labor he performs behind the scenes for The World Phenomenology Institute is seen in the fore­ground. He has established himself as an active partner of our scholarly pursuits.

He was assisted in the Guadalajara activities by Louis T. Houthakker, our Administrative Assistant who "behind the scenes" keeps our mem­bership and conference participation records and is responsible for the distribution of Phenomenological Inquiry, our review. His faithful dedication is most precious for the Institute's day-to-day progress.

Last but not least, we are grateful to Mr. Wise, Miss Isabelle Houthakker and Mr. Mitchell Seagrave for the copy-editing, proofreading, and indexing work on these volumes, which their attentive care will see through to publication.

A-T. T.

THE THEME

PHENOMENOLOGY WORLDWIDE

Worldwide phenomenology has been revived, and reverberates in innu­merable ideas, reflections, and insights, having acquired a new identity and a new platform in the Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Creative Condition. From its source a century ago the stream of phe­nomenological thought has assidously meandered - cutting its way into novel emphases: the eidetic, the transcendental, the life-world, the body. In this last decade it has been seeking a new set of identifying princi­ples and a new network of associative links. In short it has been seeking a "reincarnation." It is precisely this new life of a reincarnated phe­nomenology that we are going to present in this four-book publication, as unexpected as it may seem.

Indeed, phenomenology, this once powerful philosophical tool and current, has disseminated its inspirational ideas, reflective tendencies, seminal intuitions all over the universe of scholarly pursuit. In the process the original association of these within the context of phenomenolog­ical theories has become diffused so that it is difficult now to distinguish easily just when the adopting of a phenomenological approach to an issue is justified. There is simply no recognized criterion for present day phe­nomenological thought.

There is a tendency to talk about "phenomenologies" rather than "phe­nomenology" as a common denominator of the various theories in which phenomenology abounds, at least in name. Does this diffusion amount to total loss of phenomenological identity? Or of a criterion?

These sharp questions almost lose their edge when we consider the general philosophical climate of today. Succeeding the phenomenolog­ical enthusiasm for certain, indubitable, or, at least relatively valid cognition and faith in its possibility, is a new philosophical atmosphere permeated by a radical loss of philosophical faith - rampant relativism, and the abandonment of any claim to truth, "objective truth," "neces­sary truth," "ultimate truth," indeed even of the "truth of the facts." Even the possibility of raising the question of truth seems to be obliterated. Criterion? Of what?

In the face of this pessimistic wave, I submit that not only the work

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A-T. Tymienieclw (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. Lll, xi-xvii. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

xii THE THEME

of our Congress, but also all the work the World Phenomenological Institute has published in many volumes, over twenty-seven years, with the number of adherents constantly growing, makes it manifest that we have more today than diffuse theories with some pretension, for lack of a better word, to be phenomenologies. I further submit that there is a) a core of common commitment that brings the otherwise disparate and widespread conceptions of research into harmony; b) that there are foci of universal validity which serve as pointers for the association of ideas and their subsequent "networking" with reference to a context as wide as it can be projected; c) a basic faith in the possibility of a valid pursuit and advance in the disclosure of reality and irreality in its concatena­tions; d) most obviously, however, and this is the crucial point for reflection that could claim to be "phenomenological," is the overt or tacit assumption of immediate, direct evidence which lies at the roots of all human experience: direct evidence accompanying states of affairs, objec­tive formation by the mind, emotional complexes, intentional acts, etc. It is with reference to this root-evidence that we may measure the degree of, and the modes of, validity of our thinking, reflecting, feeling and judging. This direct evidence is the source of givenness in its positing acts. It also accompanies all its operations, as Husserl has pointed out. This direct evidence is the guarantee of reality in the praxis of life for all living beings as well as the point to which all mental and spiritual acts of life converge. It carries a power that no devious speculations may uproot without falling into an irremediable chaos.

This commitment to the validity of human experience in dealing with reality, objectively valid for all living beings, as well as to yielding a legitimate access for the probing mind to the reality's nature in order to view its workings and to assess its powers, allows praxis and theory to work in tandem for the progress of human life. It is matched by the human experiential capacity to gain insight into the rules and regulations, laws and reasons upon which reality with the human mind included is suspended, a capacity which I discovered a long time ago to be useful and which I termed "conjectural inference."

Thus, overtly or tacitly it is the conjectural inference which taking off from the differentiating reconstructing of reality by the human mind, becomes the tool of the inquiry into the "hidden," inner workings of Nature, bios, life, cosmos on the one hand, and of the human self-inter­pretative effort in the human spirit, on the other. In short, it is the "natural" tool of the human mind, which relentlessly seeks to calculate

THE THEME xiii

not only the elements of its existence but also its sense, as well as the sense of everything within and without.

This brings us to the central point which human creative virtualities constitute for our common research and which will come out forcefully as such in all the four books of the present publication.

Presenting them, let me first state that since our First World Phenomenology Congress in Santiago de Compostela and the four-book publication of its work, we have witnessed its influence upon the philo­sophical scene at large.

This first Congress manifested a deep seated transformative progress in the phenomenological orbit at work in enunciating some basic new and original points of philosophical reorientation. This Second World Congress of Phenomenology marks a crucial step in advance over the previous one. These original ideas which emerged there in their pristine freshness were in the Second Congress already cornerstones of a novel field of inquiry. We witness now a complete tum-over of the philosophical priorities and, through the novelty and originality of the new guiding ideas, a reincarnation of phenomenology in the philosophy of life. In fact, instead of (what the pessimistic minds would expect) vastly disseminated and loose-end research, we have gathered from the Second World Congress a rich harvest, palpitating with ideas and philosophical vigour. Older and younger scholars from all around the world brought a treasury of insights, ideas, conceptions; and, remarkably enough, this widespread variety situated within the field of the phenomenology of life and of the Human Creative Condition naturally threw some anchors, and delin­eated some common lines of encounter toward each other, such that a meeting of minds could yield a further nourishment.

Let me point out that this new orchestration of philosophical ques­tioning which allows the reorganization, the re-shuffling, the re­interpretation of the classic mind, is due to two main perspectives into which phenomenology of life - and by the same stroke the organiza­tion of the Second World Congress and of these present four books -falls: first, the unravelling of the inner workings of life which opens an entirely new field of research; second, the revealing of the creative virtualities of the Human Condition. They open together this new field I am talking about.

Precisely four cornerstone ideas are bringing about a complete trans­formation of the "scenery" of phenomenological pursuits, as well as philosophical pursuits at large. They are the cornerstones of a "new

xiv THE THEME

order"; of a new formulation and distribution of questions, a projection of a new "field" because they are superseding the classic assumptions of traditional philosophy cultivated in classical phenomenology following the philosophical tradition.

I mean here in the first place, the priority of the creative act of the human being over the cognitive intentional act. Second, there is the revealing of the human Creative Condition as being pivotal in tracing the specific human powers, which undercuts the previously assumed cen­trality of transcendental consciousness and the strictly human-conditioned intentional system. Third, there is the realization that the creative act of the human being is the meeting ground for all human endeavors: vital action, sociability, artistic work, spheres of the human spirit, all domains of cognitive pursuit (scholarly work, etc.), and hence the spread and order of our work in all realms of human endeavor - cognitive, practical, artistic such as we may witness in the present work. Fourth, and the foremost idea, is the key-principle opening this new horizon of the phenomenology of life, that of the ontopoietic self-individualiza­tion of life.

It is in this essentially dynamic, evolutive progress of life as the cosmic event that one of its phases emerges as the Human Creative Condition; creativity is the radical formative novum within the entire expansion of life's functions. It is the creative transformation of life operated in the crystallization of the Human Condition that projects our human universe; that offers the human creative act as its Archimedean point. The first volume of this four-book publication of the Congress brings out these cornerstones. This is introduced by the study of A-T. Tymieniecka. Indeed, her visionary idea of "the Great Plan of Life" is exfoliated against the background of the new field. This vast, all-encom­passing, limitless field is the territory of the profound, otherwise "hidden" workings of life ranging between the cosmos, whose horizons escape us, and the universe of the human spirit. "The plan" emerges more clearly in some circuits and more dimly in others as the above enunciated cor­nerstones determine. Though the field of life has undefined and maybe undefinable parameters, the bold proposition of the "Great Plan of Life" is not as strikingly against common sense as it may appear to the philoso­phers of the current pessimistic wave, or to those who seek grounding for their loftier aspirations in the imaginary idea of Being separated, in itself, from beings and from the reality as it is lived and being experi­enced. On the contrary, its idea is of paramount urgency. The enormous

THE THEME XV

progress of the inquiries of the life-sciences and the other sciences along with the falling apart of our more tangible probings into the workings of the spirit, leaving the human being without a firm foothold for his/her individual understanding of his "place" and "role" and "destiny," call for an attempt to seek an overall network within which human beings can situate their existence amidst those of the rest of living beings. Moreover, and it is more strikingly from the side of the life sciences as such that the outcry comes, there is an urgent need for finding at least the outline of a basic, foundational blueprint which brings together all the main operations of the inner workings of life being investigated but so far only as disparate fragments. It is these two exigencies, the call for the underlying blueprint of life, on the one hand, and the call of the human spirit for an understanding of life in its cohesion that underlie my proposal of the "Great Plan of Life."

It is within the perspective of the second exigency that we focus upon the Archimedean point that is THE CREATIVE EXPERIENCE of the human being in its primogenital work of establishing the specif­ically human functioning of drawing from the reservoirs of the Human Condition.

Let me repeat what I have voiced so frequently, that within the evo­lutive advance of the forms of life, or types, the phase in which the Human Condition is introduced by the incessant drive of life forces constitutes such a striking moment, the advent of a functional transfor­mation and augmentation of life's individualizing forces, that the very significance of life acquires totally new, original modalities. Indeed it is this surging of the creative virtualities of the Human Condition within the evolution of life that allows the operational life-systems to enlarge their operational instruments and skills, to expand them and foster further means for processing the wealth of material projected ever anew by the now emergent Imaginatio Creatrix as it sets to work. The function of this specifically novel creative life-station within the ongoing stream of life plunges deep and gives us a full measure of the creative trans­formation of vital functioning that brings about the universe of the human spirit. It is to this "plunge" into the creative forge, which the fine arts and literature have the privilege of typifying in a most essential way, that we will devote Book Two.

The creative expansion of life's significance into the specifically human modalities of "culture" is yet another perspective in which our work is to be viewed. Morality, ethics and cultural differentiation on

xvi THE THEME

the one hand, and the meanders of individual integration with and attune­ment to the human group, on the other, with its loss of links by which to participate in and retrieve it, the good and evil as points of oscilla­tion in the evaluating of human relations ... all this will be treated in Book Three.

However, a most important perspective which encompasses all this research and which has been present throughout our own work these past years, a striking perspective which phenomenology of life has opened, together with the work of the World Phenomenology Institute, has revealed the cornerstones enumerated above. It has deepened and gathered momentum since our first world congress. These serve as new points of departure for the phenomenological quest after the final reason of things. This perspective has profoundly affected the approach of scholars to the classic phenomenological authors. Their attention being awoken now to the phenomenology of life, has discovered hitherto unob­served points left out in previous lines of interpretation and which now come out forcefully in the new vision founded on our cornerstone ideas. As a matter of fact, for some time now examination of Husser I 's late writings and notes have shown that he himself had seen the fulfillment of his endeavors in a "scientific phenomenology of life" (see A-T. T.'s introduction to Vol. L of Analecta Husserliana). Ideas concerning life and focusing upon human life are to found in Max Scheler and numerous phenomenological authors such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (cf. Arion Kelkel, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. L). The idea of life in its bio­logical sense is to be found in Conrad Martius (cf. A-T. Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. LVII). Thus a new interpretative perspec­tive enriches our inquiry. Special attention is due to Ortega y Gasset and his follower Julian Marias, who both gave voice to a philosophy of life proper on their own account. But most strikingly there is a reason for a new reading of Edmund Husserl. I propose a thorough reinterpre­tation of Husserl himself, one that is not prompted by his own statements about his findings, but by analysis of the genius which he unfolded. Such a reinterpretative analysis is initiated, such that the main tenet of the phenomenology of life, namely the life's self-individualizing principle, is seen lurking through the Husserlian analytic net (cf. A-T. Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. L). Numerous examples of this new inter­pretation of the classics of phenomenology have been published in our Analecta Husserliana volumes in response to the topics of the phe­nomenology of life which were proposed. These new foci of interpretation

THE THEME xvii

will attract our attention throughout these four volumes, but a special attention is devoted to them in Book Four.

One could say that the great renewal of philosophical reflection and thinking which occurred in the second half of this century due to the revitalizing influence of philosophical sensibilities through existential thought, personalism, the philosophical anthropologies of Plessner and Scheler, the phenomenological psychiatry of Binswanger, hermeneu­tics, semiology and the like is now bearing ripened fruit- these influences having now been incorporated into their proper place within the phe­nomenology of life, the new field of inquiry. Underlying them all lies, in fact, the field of the Phenomenology of Life and of the Human Creative Condition.

Indeed, radiating from the center of human creative virtualities being crystallized in the human sphere of inner life as well as in human coex­istence with others, the co-creation of the self with respect to the Other WHO IS co-creating himself eradicates the modem solipsistic assump­tions opening a perspective upon the deep-seated trans-actional weavings of the specifically human world of existence: the polis, citizenship, rights and obligations in interplay between the self and the other.

It is with the Human Condition as actualized in the unfolding central self-individualizing agency (cf. A-T. Tymieniecka, Analecta Husserliana, Vol. L) of the self-hood in the networks of trans-actional as well as personalized experiential empathy and reaction in the oscillation between the self and the other that the studies of the Fourth Book are concerned. The final section of the volume is devoted to the contribution made to this inter-human conundrum of life forces by the productions of the "higher" sphere of the human spirit, that is by culture.

It is not possible in this brief introduction to do more than outline the main perspectives of the new field for philosophy that is the Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition. The reader is invited to see that philosophy at work in detail as it proposes itself in the content of the books.

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA