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19th & 20th May 2011 CONFERENCE PROGRAMME Thursday, 19th May, Room: Arundel 1B
09:30- 11:00 11:00-11:15 Registration & Coffee Plenary Session Welcome- Welcome by organizers and Dr. Paul Davies (Reader in Philosophy, Deputy Head of School of History,
Art History and Philosophy, and Director of Student Support for School of HAHP).

11:20-12:40

Session 1 Issues in Early Heidegger


Chair: Christos Hadjioannou

Speaker 1: Aaron Wendland (Oxford University, UK) Title of paper: Discourse and Disclosure: Language as the House of Being in Sein und Zeit Speaker 2: Juan Hernandez (Warwick University, UK) Title of paper: The place of an independent reality in Heideggers early transcendental philosophy

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12:40- 13:40 13:40- 15:00

Lunch
Session 2 Modernist delimitations of Phenomenology
Chair: Gabriel Martin

Speaker 1: Ari Korhonen (University of Helsinki, Finland) Title of paper: Humanism or Metaphysics: Derrida on the Kantian End of Phenomenology Speaker 2: Matthew Bennett (University of Essex, UK) Title of paper: The Beginnings of Phenomenology: did Nietzsche do phenomenology?

15:00- 15:20 15:20- 16: 40

Coffee Break Session 3 Issues in Late Heidegger


Chair: Alistair Duncan

Speaker 1: Tobias Keiling (Freiburg University, Germany) Title of paper: The Death and the Place of Phenomenology-On Heideggers The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking Speaker 2: Andreea Parapuf (Radboud University, The Netherlands) Title of paper: From Phenomenon to the Phenomenal Character of the Event 16:40-17:00 17:00- 18:20 Coffee Break Session 4 - Embodiment and Realism
Chair: Aaron Wendland

Speaker 1: Jasper Van de Vijver (University of Antwerp, Belgium) Title of paper: Embodiment and transcendence. Being in place through the body
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Speaker 2: Lorcan Whitehead (Essex University, UK) Title of paper: Trying not to Remain Objective 18:30- 18:40 Closing Remarks

Drinks at IDS Bar (on campus)

Friday, 20th May, Room: FRISTON 113


8.30- 9:00 9:00- 10:20 Registration and Coffee Session 1 Phenomenology and Art
Chair: Arthur Willemse

Speaker 1: Tim Huntley (Sussex University, UK) Title of paper: An indolence about existing: In the sink and deathly torpor of theatre Speaker 2: Tavi Meraud (Potsdam University, Germany) Title of paper: Phenomenologys End: The Beginning of Art 10:20- 10:30
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Coffee Break
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10:30- 12:10

Keynote Speaker Professor Charles Guignon (University of South Florida, USA) Title of Paper: Becoming a Person: Hermeneutic Phenomenologys Contribution
Chair: Dr. Michael Lewis (University of Sussex)

12.10 13.20 13.20 14.40

Lunch Break Session 2 Heidegger and other philosophers


Chair: Zoe Sutherland

Speaker 1: Dimitri Kladiskakis (Sussex University, UK) Title of paper: Heidegger and Marx: a dialectic on practicality Speaker 2: Abraham J. Greenstine (Duquesne University, Pittsburg,
USA)

Title of paper: Aristotles Metaphysical Alternative to Heideggers Fundamental Ontology 14:40- 14:50 14:50- 16:10 Coffee break Session 3 - On historicity and temporality
Chair: Murat Celic

Speaker 1: Keith Whitmoyer (New School for Social Research,


New York, USA)

Title of Paper: Untimeliness and Transcendental Phenomenology Speaker 2: Peter Varga (ELTE University, Hungary) Title of paper: The Historicity and Endgltigkeit of Phenomenology: The Case of Husserl
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16:10- 16:30 16:30- 18:30

Coffee Break Keynote Speaker Philosophy Society of the University of Sussex Professor Robert Bernasconi (Pennsylvania State University) Title of Paper: The Phenomenology of Racial Types in Nazi Germany: Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss's Debt to Husserl
Chair: Dr. Paul Davies (University of Sussex)

18:30-18:45 18:45- 20:00 20.30-

Best Paper Prize and Closing Remarks Drinks at IDS Bar (on campus) Dinner at tba

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Abstracts of Graduate Speakers


Name: Aaron Wendland, DPhil candidate at Oxford University, Somerville College Email: aaron.wendland@some.ox.ac.uk Title: Discourse and Disclosure: Language as the House of Being in Sein und Zeit Abstract: In an attempt to illustrate the extent to which language is the house of Being in Sein und Zeit, this paper begins with an examination of the complex and confusing discussion Heidegger actually produces on discourse and language in his magnum opus. This complexity and confusion stems from the fact that Heidegger appears to be working with two competing conceptions of discourse in Sein und Zeit: namely, a pragmatic-instrumentalist approach, which treats language as grounded in a prior, practical understanding of the world that is articulated in discourse, and a linguistic-constitutivist point of view, which sees language as a condition for any understanding of the world whatsoever. Whilst analyzing Heideggers writings on discourse, this paper criticizes the pragmatic model for conflating discourse with Heideggers technical use of understanding and failing to appreciate the extent to which language constitutes our world, whereas the linguistic explication is scrutinized for trivializing the distinction Heidegger makes between discourse and language and adopting a thin conception of linguistic phenomena. Against the aforementioned interpretations, this essay defines discourse as a distinct communal norm that governs Daseins expressive and communicative practices and opens up her world. Briefly, the idea is that Daseins ability to communicate with others enables her to take a stand on her existence and thereby understand something as something. On this reading, discourse refers to the transcendental conditions of repetition and recognition that make communication and worlddisclosure possible, but in concrete terms Daseins capacity to communicate and disclose the world is a function of her natural language. And insofar as discourse underwrites Daseins use of language but language itself is the site of world-disclosure, language is already the house of Being in Sein und Zeit.

Name: Juan Pablo Hernndez, PhD candidate at the University of Warwick Email: J.P.Hernandez@warwick.ac.uk Title: The place of an independent reality in Heideggers early transcendental philosophy Abstract: The question whether Heideggers philosophy in Being and Time involves either some form of idealism or realism, or on the contrary overcomes the Cartesian presuppositions that give rise to such doctrines has been the source of heated and unrelenting debate for many years. This problem is deeply related to the questions of how we are to understand the phenomenological-transcendental character of Heideggers enterprise, and how exactly this approach is supposed to address traditional metaphysical concerns. I identify two main types of interpretation on the basis of a distinction between world-directed and self-directed approaches originating in the literature on transcendental arguments (Strawson, Stroud, Cassam). The first type of reading claims that Heideggers theory has metaphysical ambitions

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and involves a form of idealism (Okrent, Blattner, Hans-Pile, Holfman), whereas the second reads Heideggers enterprise as exclusively concerned with Daseins conditions of intelligibility (Dreyfus, Spinosa, Philipse, Cerbone, Carman). I find both approaches wanting and argue that although the second and more accepted reading is theoretically and exegetically more solid than the first, it ultimately misconstrues Heideggers picture of the relation between intelligibility and entities. This reading typically perceives a problem regarding the compatibility of Heideggers thinking with realism, and attempts to provide a solution. I argue that such perception and the attempted solution are expressions of a failure to overcome the Cartesian picture Heidegger criticizes. By drawing attention to certain passages and emphasizing important similarities with John McDowells rejection of Cartesianism I propose an interpretation of Heideggers philosophy according to which the conditions of intelligibility are to be understood as granting direct access to the way things are in themselves, thereby making idealism untenable and a proof of realism pointless, while exorcising any threat of restoring a noumenonal reality. I conclude with some remarks on how this interpretation, in its similarities with McDowells philosophy, provides a novel way of understanding the relation between Heideggers concepts of phenomenon and entity, and therefore also the role of phenomenology in his early thinking.

Name: Ari Korhonen, PhD Candidate at the University of Helsinki Email: ari.korhonen@helsinki.fi Title: Humanism or Metaphysics: Derrida on the Kantian End of Phenomenology Abstract: The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, how the early thought of Jacques Derrida can be conceived as an articulation of a certain Kantian end of phenomenology. As it is well known the thought of Derrida is often understood as a critic of phenomenology and as a part of the post-phenomenological thought. From this point of view, the thought of Derrida is something that simply comes after the end of phenomenology. However, as this paper aims to demonstrate, this criticism presented by Derrida has to be seen as an operation within a certain historical situation. As Derrida himself wrote, the project of his early thought was to resist the metaphysics of presence in its different forms, and by presenting the readings of Husserl to defend the position of philosophy. For example, in his introduction to the Husserls Origin of Geometry, Derrida demonstrates how the ideality of an object consists in the intertwining movement of signification which can not be taken as a present object. According to Derrida, the Husserlian phenomenology deconstructs the presence of ideality and shows how the unity of meaningful world is not present but only in the unity of movement. However, in this way Derrida demonstrates how also Husserl chooses a metaphysical way. Husserl keeps the human ratio as the horizon of the movement of signification. As Derrida writes in his The Ends of Man, the necessity which links the thinking of the phainesthai to the thinking of the telos is evident in the Husserlian phenomenology. The aim of this paper is to offer a reading of early texts of Derrida and show the argument concerning the end of phenomenology: even though Husserl deconstructs the presence of meaning, he thinks this movement always within the essence of man as its horizon and its telos. In this way the end of phenomenology is always a Kantian one, an end to come.

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Name: Matthew Paul Bennett, PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Email: ari.korhonen@helsinki.fi Title: The Beginnings of Phenomenology: did Nietzsche do phenomenology? Abstract: Characterising the distinctive features of phenomenology has proved notoriously difficult both for retrospective histories of phenomenology and for those canonical phenomenologists about whom histories are written. One approach we could take to delimiting phenomenology would be to definitively identify those in the history of philosophy who did practice phenomenology. An extensional definition of phenomenology, if achieved, would go a long way to help determine what is characteristic of the phenomenological method. This paper will contribute to such a task by assessing the suggestion made by some that Nietzsche is a candidate for our list of phenomenologists. A relatively small but by no means insignificant collection of Nietzsche readers including Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Keith Ansell-Pearson and Peter Poellner have claimed that Nietzsche should be read as a phenomenologist. These readers have argued that Nietzsche is a phenomenologist insofar as he replaces first philosophy with (non-naturalistic) psychological observations and he suspends the natural attitude. In order to assess the validity of the claim that Nietzsche was a phenomenologist, I will suggest that this reading is committed to two further claims about Nietzsche. First, the phenomenologist reading must maintain that Nietzsches psychology is a study of how the world appears to consciousness. Second, it must maintain that Nietzsche eschews accounts of the generation of phenomena in favour of accounts of the content of those phenomena (what Husserl might have called noemata) and the structures necessary to consciousness (what Husserl might have called noesis). I will suggest that were these things not true of Nietzsche, then it would not make sense to label him a phenomenologist. I will also give reasons to doubt (though not necessarily insurmountable objections to) both of these further claims of the phenomenologist reading of Nietzsche.

Name: Tobias Keiling, PhD Candiate at Freiburg University, Germany Email: tobias.keiling@philosophie.uni-freiburg.de Title: The Death and the Place of Phenomenology-On Heideggers The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking Abstract: The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking (1964), one of Heideggers last lectures, may be said to his philosophical bequest. Through his discussion of Hegels and Husserls determination of the matter of thinking, Heidegger deliberates the fate of phenomenology at the proclaimed end of philosophy. In opening up philosophy so as to attend to the matter of thinking (identified as subjectivity), both phenomenologists exhibit an approach still relevant for what Heidegger calls the task of thinking: to understand what it means to determine a matter of thinking responding to what calls to be thought. Thus tasked, phenomenology remains the possibility of thinking corresponding to the claims of the matter of thinking. Phenomenology persists as a possibility precisely because philosophy ends. In such a way, classical phenomenology is redefined by its very end. To determine this opening redetermination, I wish to elaborate on two ideas: the first is Heideggers claim that the end is to be understood as a gathering place, like the tip of a spear concentrating its force to a single point. The end of phenomenology would accordingly gather its different historical shapes and

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reveal their common thrust not as their last, but as their first and utmost possibility. Following John Sallis, I wish to relate this mention of the utmost possibility of philosophy to his account of Beingtowards-Death in Being and Time, where death is determined as the utmost possibility of Dasein. Heidegger is intent to show how death is constantly present in authentic beingif an analogy can be drawn, can it be said that what Heidegger describes later is the persistent awareness of phenomenology for its death, dying, as Heidegger feared, by becoming cybernetics? And if so, how does this relate to the thinking of place announced in The End of Philosophy... ?

Name: Andreea Parapuf, PhD Candidate, Radboud University Nijmegen Email: a.parapuf@phil.ru.nl Title: From Phenomenon to the Phenomenal Character of the Event Abstract: In this presentation I would like to address the main question of the conference is there an end of phenomenology and what would be the reasons and the criteria for setting such boundaries by focusing on one particular case: the transformations that take place in Heideggers philosophy in the move from the phenomenological and hermeneutic ontology to the post-phenomenological moment known as Ereignis-Denken. I propose to look at Heideggers case as an exemplification of how the task of phenomenology remains alive and guides a non-phenomenological or post-phenomenological philosophy. It is broadly acknowledged that starting from the 1930s onwards, Heidegger famously gave up both phenomenology and hermeneutics, the two crucial methods of Being and Time. In this paper I seek to challenge the view according to which the new approach of the thinking of the history of being (seinsgeschichliches Denken) makes the end of the hermeneutic phenomenology unavoidable. The goal of this presentation is to show and to investigate the presence of a number of phenomenological and hermeneutic elements in the non-phenomenological or post-phenomenological thinking of Ereignis. I will proceed by pointing out a number of similarities between the task of phenomenology in Being and Time and a number of remarks that we can find in later texts or lectures of Heidegger. The elements that I will compare are: a) the definition of logos in Being and Time with the description of logos and legein in the 1951 lecture entitled Logos (Heraklit, Fragment 50). b) the second element that I will investigate is the idea of das Sichzeigende, a term which, surprisingly enough, describes both the phenomenon in Being and Time and the thing itself (die Sache) or being as Ereignis in Heideggers later works. What do these similarities tell us about the specific nature of the relation between the method and the object of phenomenology?

Name: Jasper Van de Vijver, PhD Candidate at University of Antwerp Email: jasper.vandevijver@ua.ac.be Title: Embodiment and transcendence. Being in place through the body Abstract: In my talk, I would like to explore the seemingly commonsensical question Where is here? from a phenomenological perspective. I will sketch the problem by introducing the views of Husserl and Heidegger on this issue.

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According to Husserl, the embodied subject constitutes the absolute center of its field of experience, which is orientated around the I. Being here thus comes down to being where the body is: being always in the middle of things as the zero-point of orientation. This being-here is absolute, in the sense that I can never not be here; it is impossible for me not to experience the world from this absolute here-point. Heideggers phenomenology of spatiality implicitly but all too clearly constitutes a criticism of Husserls. Whereas Husserl stresses the embodied character of the here- point as the place from which we relate to the things around us, Heidegger holds that we always already transcend it towards the world, and that we never really experience our body as the place where we are. Heidegger polemically states that when we say here, we do not refer to ourselves or our body as a zero-point, but to the there of the particular situation we are engaged in. According to him, our body is not the nearest, but the most distant from us. I argue that both approaches have something to offer and do not exclude one another. Being here is indeed being-in-place, as Heidegger highlights. However, it is clear that this place can only be given through an embodied point of view, as Husserl holds. I will argue that what is important here is that this point of view is itself perceptually absent. The body is not identical with the here, but gives way for the places which are opened up by it.

Name: Lorcan Whitehead, PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Email: ljwhit@essex.ac.uk Title: Trying not to Remain Objective Abstract: In the opening section of Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty offers a critique of the constancy hypothesis which represents his idiosyncratic enactment of the famous phenomenological reduction. The constancy hypothesis offers tacit support for the notion of an objective world prior to experience, by claiming to bridge the gap between that world and our experience of it. However, it encounters problems when faced with ambiguous phenomena which do not neatly match up with the stimuli that supposedly give rise to them. Because the constancy hypothesis cannot adequately account for such phenomena, Merleau-Ponty insists that it must be rejected, along with the notion of an objective world prior to experience that it is designed to support. Instead, Merleau-Ponty insists that the perceptual world must be seen as primary, and the objective models offered by scientific and analytic reflection as being derived from it. This critique, and the claim for the primacy of the perceptual world, will be familiar to most students of Merleau-Ponty. However, the consequences of his claim for the essential ambiguity of perceptual experience have not been fully appreciated by most commentators. For Merleau-Pontys claim for the primacy of the perceptual world makes his notion of ambiguity far more radical than the idea that we can simply approach things in different ways. This is because he claims that the perceptual thing is itself constituted in the hold which my body takes upon it (PP 373). Thus ambiguity is not a mere feature of perspectives, but a fundamental aspect of things themselves. In this paper, I will suggest that taking seriously this radical notion of ambiguity is the real lesson arising from Phenomenology of Perception; and that doing so ought to have profound consequences for our understanding of notions such as objectivity, rationality and truth.

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Name: Tim Huntley, PhD Candidate at the University of Sussex Email: tinderbox19-05@yahoo.co.uk Title: An indolence about existing: In the sink and deathly torpor of theatre Abstract: When Levinas writes that the fatality of the tragedy of antiquity becomes the fatality of irremissible being we might assume him to mark a movement from a theatre of essences to a theatre of existence. Although Levinas certainly troubles over the inescapability of our being, his comments on theatre in Existence and Existents (1947) suggest a form that differs from the representational approach one might find under a phenomenological analysis of theatre's adumbrations. Levinas' contention is that theatrical performance should be distinguished from the 'self-possession of a beginning'. Existence is a particular continuity that, once begun, can be broken, whereas the life of theatre cannot be interrupted. As such, theatre, for Levinas, is little more than a game. Discussion of theatrical performance cannot prolong the theatrical event and so phenomenology might almost exhaust theatre's aspectival potential. The conclusion, risk, and therefore the unpardonable thing about theatre, is that it can sink into nothingness. I will suggest that although theatre is granted no access to the metaphysical concerns of his project, Levinas nonetheless leaves a slender opening which remains in the theatrical space after the performance's end. I will argue that the notion of the end in theatre might have a more troubling continuity than Existence and Existents allows. It is this very sense of continuity, I will argue, that Levinas imports as metaphor into his account of the inescapable perpetuity of the drama of existence and which might arguably be returned to and considered on the stage. I will consider whether the finite span of theatrical performance might not be dissimilar to the account of indolence that Existence and Existents offers. This would be an intemperate form of indolence that embraces its own finality, not as a fatality but as an urgent drive towards its inescapable ending.

Name: Tavi Meraud, Masters student Universitt Potsdam Email: another.neologism@gmail.com Title: Phenomenologys End: The Beginning of Art Abstract: In the generation of phenomenologists immediately following Husserl, there were several aestheticians, philosophers who produced significant texts that tried to bring phenomenology together with aesthetic concerns. More recently, however, there has been sporadic but ever growing interest in understanding what Husserl himself had to say about aesthetics, in particular the claims of his 1907 letter to the poet Hofmannsthal. The sensational claims of the letter have either been examined in light of its famous recipient or in the service of philosophybut, as Husserl himself implieswhat of art as philosophy?

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My paper, too, begins with this letter, but the intention is not to construct yet another phenomenological aesthetics, but rather to argue that aesthetics, and concerns about art, is the important descendent of Husserls phenomenology. First, I follow Husserls fascination with the artist, who he believes to be uniquely privy to the eidetic insight, via her experience of Phantasie, that is otherwise only available through abandoning the natural attitude and bracketing the world, i.e. the reduction. Phantasie can be understood as the propaedeutic to the reduction at heart of Husserls phenomenology and its transcendental consequences. In brief, I establish an account of how art, both the practice and experience of, can itself be understood as a primordially critical examination of perception and consequently world constitution in the same sense that Husserl envisioned his phenomenology to be. Hence my suggestion that art picks up right where Husserls phenomenology ends, i.e. Husserls own struggle to constantly defend his phenomenology against accusations of it being idealism. Thus, to close, I briefly discuss some ways in which art carries on the torch, which Husserls phenomenology lit, by examining a selection of art practices that might have transcendental implications. Art is, I want to argue, the transcendental clue, which leads to the transcendental investigation that is phenomenology, that Husserl mentions in 150 of his 1913 Ideen zu einer reinen Phnomenologie.

Name: Dimitrios Kladiskakis, PhD Candidate at the University of Sussex Email: D.Kladiskakis@sussex.ac.uk Title: Heidegger and Marx: a dialectic on practicality. Abstract: Both Marx and Heidegger have founded their theories on the inseparability between man and his surroundings. In the case of Heidegger, the point of entry for the exploration of the question of being is a departure from the Cartesian understanding of the subject and object. Namely, in 'Being and Time' Heidegger introduces the concept of the 'ready-to-hand', that is, things as they are immediately and nonreflectively used, and at the same time envisions man as inseparable from the world. For Marx, on the other hand, it is productive activity that defines man as a historical being, and therefore, the relationship between man and what is immediately useful is similarly emphasised. In this paper, I will attempt to draw parallels between these two approaches. In detail, I will argue that Marx's conception of productive activity as marking the beginning of human history, and therefore as the birth of historical man himself, can be seen as complimentary to Heidegger's exploration of practical everyday life as a primary mode of being. In particular, I will proceed to focus on the primacy of the concept of 'equipment' and 'production' as these appear in Heidegger's 'Being and Time' and Marx and Engels' 'German Ideology' respectively, and look into the possibility of a conceptual unification of the two notions. The paper will therefore begin with a dialectic which will outline the aforementioned concepts of 'equipment' and 'production' and emphasise their importance to the understanding of the human ontological situation. After this assertion, a constructive dialogue will be attempted between the two, based on the primacy of practical activity, and finally a critical conclusion will discuss the possibilities of a concrete synthesis and elaborate on its consequences.

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Name: Abraham Jacob Greenstine, PhD Candidate at Duquesne University Email: greenstinea@duq.edu Title: Aristotles Metaphysical Alternative to Heideggers Fundamental Ontology Abstract: Heideggers Being and Time changed the landscape of phenomenology by bringing the question of the meaning of being to the forefront of philosophy. However, he enters into this question by taking up a particular kind of being, namely Dasein, and thus most of Being and Time engages in an interpretation of Dasein. Despite this, Heidegger insists that this project is fundamental ontology, and not a sort of anthropology. I want to argue that in Being and Time Heidegger (semi-consciously) follows a path which is suggested, but not taken, by Aristotle in the Metaphysics. In the Metaphysics Aristotle says that there are four meanings of being, namely the accidental, the true, the figures of predication, and the actual/potential (!.2). However, Aristotle only takes up being as the true twice: he first addresses and discards it in !.4. It next comes up at ".10, after the thorough analyses of being as substance and as actuality; here Aristotle surprisingly says truth is the #$%&'()() (strictest or most governing) meaning of being. Interpretations of Metaphysics have typically ignored this passage of the text, but Heideggers Being and Time takes up being as true as the guiding thread of fundamental ontology (cf. VI.44). However, I want to argue for a new reading of ".10 which interprets #$%&'()() as referring to our human state; hence in this reading being as the true is better known to us, but not better known simply (cf. *.2). This interpretation illustrates that phenomenology has been implicitly dominated by being as the true, which Heidegger takes up explicitly in his analysis of Dasein, and also shows that this is misguided. However, it would be nave to simply return to a ready-made Aristotelian ontology or theology. Instead, I want to suggest that we need to reawaken the overlooked aspect of Aristotelian metaphysics as the sought science (*.2).

Name: Keith Whitmoyer, PhD Candidate at New School for Social Research Email: whitmoyerk@gmail.com Title: Phenomenology of Perception, Untimeliness and Transcendental Philosophy Abstract: This essay argues that Phenomenology of Perception develops an account of temporality that attempts to extricate the project of transcendental phenomenology from what one might call the philosophy of timeliness. While such a philosophy makes a claim to being on time by presupposing a certain sense of the a priori and evidence, a sense designed to guarantee the unmediated contact between thought and world and thereby secure an eternal and apodictic ground for philosophy, MerleauPontys pivotal text offers a philosophy of lateness that attempts to recover the temporal thickness of transcendental philosophy and which thereby recognizes the constitutive opacity and transcendence of the ground it seeks to elaborate. By examining Le sentir, Le cogito, and La temporalit, we see that Merleau-Pontys account of temporality plays a crucial role in elaborating the themes of sense-genesis, evidence, and the a priori. By bringing his account of temporality as the autoconstitutive passage of an coulement, flow, and an clatement, explosion, to bear on these themes, Merleau-Ponty attempts to show that the secure transcendental ground sought by the philosophy of timeliness is impossible. In other words, the philosophy of lateness recognizes the impossibility of coinciding with the conditions of possibility for experience and for philosophy and thus recognizes its task as unfinalizable and

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incomplete. It is in this sense, then, that Merleau-Ponty will famously remark that the phenomenological reduction cannot be completed and that the task of a radical inquiry is, as he says referencing Husserl, a perpetual beginning. Moreover, in Brouillon dune rdaction, Merleau-Ponty notes that lateness defines philosophical interrogation, which is too late for knowing the nave world which was before it (MerleauPonty, 1996, 358). Phenomenology of Perception therefore already introduces a revision of transcendental philosophy that is further developed in his later work.

Name: Peter Andras Varga, PhD Candidate at ELTE-University Budapest Email: skuteos@gmail.com Title: The Historicity and Endgltigkeit of Phenomenology: The Case of Husserl Abstract: One of the most intriguing features of phenomenology, in comparison with other philosophical movements, is its special relation to its founding father, Edmund Husserl. It is universally agreed that phenomenology was made possible by a decisive breakthrough initiated by Husserl; yet almost every phenomenologists, even Husserls closest associates, tried to overcome him. Phenomenology is the history of Husserlian heresies: Husserl is both continuously rejected and rediscovered. This ambivalent relation is apparently rooted in Husserls idea of philosophy that is thought to be unable to accommodate phenomenology as a living philosophy. As I believe that there is a significant discrepancy between Husserls own idea of philosophy and what was imputed to him by the subsequent generations of phenomenologists; I argue that a revisiting of Husserls ideas on the historicity and Endgltigkeit of phenomenology might prove relevant for our present understanding of phenomenology and its ends. First, I explore a historical episode that shows Husserls awareness of the fragmentary character of his oeuvre and its implications. In the late 1920s Husserl corresponded with Misch, who supervised the critical edition of Diltheys literary estate. Husserl reflected on its editorial principles, which, at a closer look, reveal surprising resemblances to our modern framework used when reading historical authors like Husserl. The study of Husserls letters shows that he was far from propagating an immutable philosophia perennis and that he was conscious of the problem that the history of philosophy poses for the independent thinker. This problem came to the fore during Husserls preparation of the Crisis. I propose an interpretation of Husserls Crisis and its context from this angle. The crucial point is that Husserlian phenomenologists are able to learn from the history of philosophy without surrounding their special commitments. In order to support this interpretation, I focus on Husserls analyses of various interpretive communities. In sum, Husserls phenomenological philosophy could be closer to the historical approach to philosophy than usually assumed; and the way of doing phenomenology through the study of history might give a genuine chance for reinvigorating phenomenology while revisiting Husserl again.

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