Abstract
In this present study I would like to propose the following thesis: at the core of the phenomenon of the world we find the phenomenon of the cosmos. In order to demonstrate this idea, I will expound in detail on the philosophical interpretation of the problem of world in the works of three authors: Husserl, Heidegger and Eliade. Husserl interpreted the phenomenon of the world as a transcendental, intersubjective constitution. In Heidegger’s interpretation the world was first and foremost “being-in-the-world” and as such the existential structure, the mode of being of human existence or “being-there” (“Dasein”). Eliade, in his comparative religious studies, accepted the standpoint of Heidegger’s existential phenomenology. For him, the “sacred” and the “profane” were two distinct fundamental modes of “being-in-the-world”. Eliade conceived of the ancient man’s world essentially as the “cosmos”, as a well-formed order of sacred and profane matters. I will try to show how these three conceptions coincide with one another, forming a single coherent phenomenological structure. I will call the method whereby we investigate the ideal laws of this structure “transcendental morphology”.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Cf. Marosan, ”The Primal Child of Nature – Toward a Systemic Theory of Eco-phenomenology”, 2011. Forthcoming.
- 2.
Loc. cit.
- 3.
Κοσμος = (amongst others:) (1) order, arrangement, composition, composure, (2) world-order, universe, world.
- 4.
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, (New York: Harcourt Inc., 1987), p. 29. “One of the outstanding characteristics of traditional societies is the opposition that they assume between their inhabited territory and the unknown and indeterminate space that surrounds it. The former is the world (more precisely, our world), the cosmos; everything outside it is no longer a cosmos but a sort of “other world”, a foreign, chaotic space, peopled by ghosts, demons and «foreigners» (who are assimilated to demons and the souls of the dead)”.
- 5.
See: Robert Sokolowski, The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution, (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970), pp. 1ff, 10–11. There Sokolowski refers to constitution as the meeting or coincidence of something subjective and something objective. Cf. further: Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 92–93. Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology, (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 164–166, especially: 165.
- 6.
Cf. László Tengelyi, Der Zwitterbegriff Lebensgeschichte, (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1998), pp. 140–146, especially: pp. 145–146. See also: Moran, ”Heidegger’s Transcendental Phenomenology in the Light of Husserl’s Project of First Philosophy”, in Steven Crowell and Jeff Malpas (ed.), (Transcendental Heidegger, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2007), pp. 135–150. Moran, 2002: 197–198.
- 7.
Cf. Nam-In Lee, Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie der Instinkte, (The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993), p. 77.
- 8.
Cf. especially, Peter Andras Varga, The Formation of Husserl’s Notion of Philosophy, 2012, Manuscript.
- 9.
See: Inga Römer, Das Zeitdenken bei Husserl, Heidegger und Ricœur, (Dordrecht, London, Heidelberg, New York: Springer Verlag, 2010), pp. 28ff.
- 10.
On the problem of reduction see in detail: Moran, 2002: 124–163. Lina Rizzoli, Erkenntnis und Reduktion, (Dordrecht, London, Heidelberg, New York: Springer Verlag, 2008).
- 11.
Cf. also: Sokolowski, 2000: 177–184.
- 12.
Cf. Moran, Edmund Husserl: Founder of Phenomenology, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), pp. 18, 123.
- 13.
Herein after referred to as Ideas – the author.
- 14.
Cf. László Tengelyi, Hans-Dieter Gondek, Neue Phänomenologie in Frankreich, (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2011), pp. 9–34.
- 15.
See: Lee, 1993: 18.
- 16.
See: Moran, 2002: 166–168.
- 17.
Lee, 1993: 24.
- 18.
Lee, 1993: 17–28.
- 19.
Lee, 1993: 20.
- 20.
Cf. Hua 39: xxxvii, in footnote 1.
- 21.
Cf. Rolf Kühn, Husserls Begriff der Passivität, (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber Verlag, 1998), pp. 318 ff.
- 22.
Kühn, 1998: 320.
- 23.
“Habitualisierung”, Hua 6: 471, also: “habitualities”, “Habitualitäten”. Cf.: Klaus Held, “Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Life-World”, in Donn Welton (edited), The New Husserl, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 52f., Anthony Steinbock, Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl, (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1995), pp. 47, 205.
- 24.
Moran, 2002: 168.
- 25.
Here I would like to refer to Andrea Carroccio’s excellent paper on “Edmund Husserl on Tradition”; presented at the “61st International Congress of Phenomenology”, Istanbul, Friday, 1st of July, 2011.
- 26.
Lee, 1993.
- 27.
Cf. also: Hua 15: xxxix, ff., Inga Römer, 2010: 86–112.
- 28.
See also: Donn Welton, The Other Husserl: The Horizons of Transcendental Phenomenology, (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2000), pp. 201, 221; Steinbock, 1995: 37, f.
- 29.
See: Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 113f.
- 30.
Cf. Lee, 1993: 186ff.
- 31.
Cf. Ernst Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heidegger, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1970), pp. 240–245.
- 32.
See: Lee, 1993: 149.
- 33.
Mathias Jung, “Die frühen Freiburger Vorlesungen und andere Schriften 1919–1923. Aufbau einer eigenen Philosophie im historischen Kontext”, in D. Thomä (ed.), Heidegger-Handbuch. Leben – Werk – Wirkung, (Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar, 2003), pp. 13–22. o.
- 34.
See also: Hans-Helmuth Gander, Selbstverständnis und Lebenswelt. Grundzüge einer phänomenologischen Hermeneutik im Ausgang von Husserl und Heidegger, (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2001), p. 110.
- 35.
See: Marosan, “Apodicticity and Transcendental Phenomenology”, in Perspectives: International Postgraduate Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2. (Autumn 2009), pp. 89, 91, 92ff.
- 36.
Cf. loc. cit. “If it were, if what belongs to the other’s own essence were directly accessible, it would be merely a moment of my own essence, and ultimately he himself and I myself would be the same.”
- 37.
Cf. Sokolowski, 2000: 154f.
- 38.
See amongst others: Klaus Held: “Heimwelt, Fremdwelt, die eine Welt”, in Phänomenologische Forschungen 24 (1991), pp. 305–337; Steinbock, “Generativiy and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology”, in Donn Welton (ed.), The New Husserl, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 289–325, especially: 296ff.
- 39.
Held, 1991: 308.
- 40.
These texts can be found in the 15th, 29th and 39th volumes of Husserliana.
- 41.
See also: Held, 1991: 323f.
- 42.
Cf. Moran, 2002: 197.
- 43.
See: Georg Misch, Lebensphilosophie und Phänomenologie, (Bonn: F. Cohen Verlag, 1930).
- 44.
Amongst others: Tugendhat, 1970, Buckley, 1992, Hopkins, 1993, Keller, 1999, Crowell, 2001, Moran, 2000, 2002, 2007, Tengelyi, 1998, 2011, just to name a few.
- 45.
As regards the most essential point of Heidegger’s criticism, see: Moran, 2002: 226–238.
- 46.
Cf. also: Moran, 2002: 228.
- 47.
See also: Römer, 2010: 121ff.
- 48.
Römer, loc. cit.
- 49.
See: Moran, 2002: 198f., 208f.; Römer, 2010: 10f., 205f., 220f.; Peter Trawny, Martin Heidegger, Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2003: 15f., 68, 99f.
- 50.
Cf. Römer, 2010: 214f., 220f.; Moran, 2002: 213, 218; Robert J. Dostal, “Beyond Being: Heidegger’s Plato”, in Christopher E. Macann (ed.), Martin Heidegger – Critical Assessments, (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 76–77.
- 51.
See: Moran, 2002: 198; “Some time after the publication of Being and Time, and probably around 1930, though exactly when is a matter of much debate”. See also: Laurence Paul Hemming, “Speaking Out of Turn: Heidegger and die Kehre”, in International Journal of Philosophical Studies 6(3) (October, 1998), pp. 393–423.
- 52.
Cf. Römer, 2010: 220.
- 53.
Cf. William J- Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, (The Hague: Martinus Nijjhoff, 1963), p. xi. Moran, 2002: 26f, 2001f.1.
- 54.
Rüdiger Safranski, Martin Heidegger. Between Good and Evil, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 25.
- 55.
Safranski, 1998: 25f., 71–88. See also George Heffernan, “A Study in the Sedimented Origins of Evidence: Husserl and His Contemporaries Engaged in a Collective Essay in the Phenomenology and Psychology of Epistemic Justification”, in Husserl Studies 16 (1999): 141–157.
- 56.
Safranski, 1998: 49–53.
- 57.
See: Istvan M. Feher, “Religion, Theology, and Philosophy on the Way to ‘Being and Time’: Heidegger, the Hermeneutical, the Factical, and the Historical with Respect to Dilthey and Early Christianity.” In Research in Phenomenology 39:(2009/1): 99–131.
- 58.
Karl Schumann, Husserls Staatsphilosophie, (München/Freiburg: Alber Verlag, 1988), p. 235.
- 59.
Cf. Otto Pöggeler, “Die Krise des phänomenologischen Philosophiebegriffs”, in Christoph Jamme und Otto Pöggeler (ed.), Phänomenologie im Widerstreit. Zum 50. Todestag Edmund Husserls, (Frankfurt am Main, 1989), pp. 255–276; in particular: 257f.
- 60.
Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Anzeige der Hermeneutischen Situation, Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag, 2003, (“Natorp-Bericht”); “Ontologie: Hermeneutik der Faktizität”: GA63.
- 61.
Cf. Moran, 2002: 205–206.
- 62.
Safranski, 1998: 171f.
- 63.
Cf. Römer, 2010: 206–231. The term “metontology” acquired its name from the Greek expression “metabole” (“overturning”) because this ontology implied the turn of ontology away from the ontology of being-there to the ontology of Being in general, of universal nature as such (“das Ganze”).
- 64.
Concerning the transcendentalism of Heidegger, see: Tengelyi, 1998: 140ff., Moran, 2007: 135ff.
- 65.
Cf. Moran, “Heidegger’s Critique of Husserl’s and Brentano’s Accounts of Intentionality”, Inquiry 43 (2007), pp. 39–66. See also: Sokolowski, 2000: 14f.
- 66.
Cf. Römer, 2010: 121ff.
- 67.
See: Moran, 2002: 241f.
- 68.
Translation altered – BPM.
- 69.
In Pierre Keller’s interpretation Heidegger replaces Husserl’s methodological solipsism with an existential solipsism. Cf. Pierre Keller, Husserl and Heidegger on Human Experience, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 145.
- 70.
Cf. Safranski, 1998: 167f, 225ff.
- 71.
See also: Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1991), especially: pp. 140–162.
- 72.
Matthew Calarco, “Heidegger’s Zoontology”, in Matthew Calarco and Peter Attenton (ed.), Animal Philosophy, (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 24.
- 73.
Cf. Graham Harman, Heidegger Explained – From Phenomenon to Thing, (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 2007), pp. 84–91, especially: 90f.
- 74.
Cf. Tengelyi, 1998: 143ff.
- 75.
See also: Harman, 2007: 90–91.
- 76.
See: GA40: 48–53, English [2000]: 47–53.
- 77.
“As soon as this instrumental misinterpretation of the spirit sets in, the powers of spiritual happening – poetry and fine arts, statescraft and religion – shift to a sphere where they can be consciously cultivated and planned. At the same time, they get divided up into regions. The spiritual world becomes culture, and in the creation and conservation of culture the individual seeks to fulfill himself”, GA40: 51, English [2000]: 50.
- 78.
“The spirit as intelligence in the service of goals and the spirit as culture finally become showpieces and spectacles that one takes into account along with many others, that one publicly trots out and exhibits as proof that one does not want to deny culture in favor of barbarism”, GA40: 52–53, English [2000]: 52.
- 79.
Cf. Marosan, 2011.
- 80.
Cf. Karl Kerenyi, Hermes, the Guide of Souls, (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1996).
- 81.
Eliade, 1987: 14ff.
- 82.
Eliade, 1987: 15, 188ff.
- 83.
Eliade, 1987: 202ff.
- 84.
Eliade, 1987: 206f. See also: Karl Löwith, Meaning in History, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1957), pp. 33ff., Jacob Taubes, Occidental Eschatology, (California, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 184ff.
- 85.
Cf. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Books, 2008), pp. 31–41.
- 86.
Eliade, 1987: 211f.
- 87.
Eliade, 1987: 68ff.
- 88.
Cf. Eliade, The Myth of Eternal Return, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1959).
- 89.
Cf. Eliade, 1987: 105f.
- 90.
Cf. Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, 1985, 1988), Vol. I–III.
- 91.
Homer, The Iliad, 445–455; see, Homer, The Iliad, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011: 162. ““I warn you, Dolon do not put thought of escape in your heart/your news may be good, but you have fallen into our hands,/and if we not accept a ransom or let you go free/you will surely return some days to Achaeans’s swift ships,/either to spy on us or to fight us, matching strength to strength/But if you are beaten down by my hands and lose your life,/you will never after this be an affliction to the Argives”//So he spoke. Dolon was about to touch his chin in entreaty,/with his brawny hand, but Diomedes lunged with his sword and/drove it through the middle of his neck, severing both tendons;/and his head rolled in the dust while he was still speaking.”
- 92.
Cf. Patrick Weston Joyce, Ancient Celtic Romances, (London: Parkgate Books, 1997), pp. 385–399.
- 93.
Cf. Aron Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 35ff. 72, 74ff.
- 94.
On ethnocentrism see: William G. Sumner, Folkways, (New York: Ginn, 1906).
- 95.
Cf. Reinhart Koselleck, Future Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 155ff.
- 96.
Cf. Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 1–22, 44–54.
- 97.
Assmann, 1998: 44ff.
- 98.
János Tőzsér-Balogh Zsuzsanna, Much Ado about Nothing: The Discarded Representations Revisited’, Manuscript.
- 99.
Max Scheler, Vom Ewigen im Menschen, (Berlin, Der neue Geist, 1933).
Abbreviations
- GA:
-
Heidegger Gesamtausgabe
- Hua:
-
Husserliana. Edmund Husserl’s Collected Works
- Hua Mab:
-
Husserliana Materialienband
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Marosan, B.P. (2014). Transcendental Morphology: A Phenomenological Interpretation of Human and Non-Human Cosmos. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Phenomenology of Space and Time. Analecta Husserliana, vol 116. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02015-0_23
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02015-0_23
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02014-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02015-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)