Volumen 22-23 (2011): Heft 1 (October 2011)

In this paper, I propose a reassessment of Brentano’s most important writings on consciousness. My starting point is the formulation of two theses on consciousness that Brentano expresses at the very beginning of the second chapter of the second book of his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, which constitute the foundation of his theory of primary and secondary objects. My working hypothesis rests on the principle of the unity of consciousness, which is the key to most problems generally associated with Brentano’s theory of consciousness. In the second part of my paper, I examine three of these problems, namely, the problem of duplication, that of infinite regress, and that of complexity. In the last part of my paper, I propose an analysis of the principle of the unity of consciousness that takes into account Brentano’s writings after the publication of his Psychology, in 1874, and I briefly appraise the impact, on the atual debates regarding Brentano’s theory of consciousness, of the modifications that Brentano has subjected his theory in several lectures and manuscripts published posthumously.

Our goal is to reflect about heidegger’s conception of finitude. We analyse some features of heidegger’s works before Sein und Zeit, particularly notion of Dasein and the es gibt. The other moment of our reflection is the relation between world, finitude and time. We finalize writing some criticai remarks, recalling the philosophy of Heraclitus and the complicity between logos and Sein.

This article puts forward the following thesis: the legitimation of school subjects stems from an acknowledged epistemic field, from a science in its broadest sense. The more school subjects deviate from the science from which they originate the more they become weaken and disfigured. A focus on the Estado Novo period in Portugal allows for a particular understanding and emphasis placed on the context which legitimises Philosophy as a school subject in middle school. Thus, this article examines the avenues followed by Philosophy as a school subject in this particular historical period, accounting for and explaining the link between educational and instructional plans, the interference of ideology and education policy, and the transformation of school into an instrument of political, ideological education.

In this paper, I stress the importance of Luís Cabral de Moncada for the resettlement of the Philosophy of Law in the Portuguese university. I focus my attention on the overthrown of Positivism, and, as a consequence, on the reintroducing of axiological and ethical issues in the foundations of positive law. In so doing, I consider the relevance Phenomenology had for Moncada’ s theory of law, namely the theory of eidetic insight, and, particularly, the phenomenology of values. Moncada’s appropriation of some phenomenological themes and concepts was developed in a close contact with Husserl, Scheler, and Nicolai Hartrnann.

Delfim Santos was not a phenomenologist, but his interest concerning phenomenological issues was more than an accident. Familiar with the philosophy of the Vienna Circle, but above all strongly influenced by Nicolai Hartmann, Delfim Santos sees in Husserl’s phenomenology (mainly in Ideas I) the recognition of several kinds or regions of objectivity, each with its peculiar regional essence. At the same time, he looks at the theory of intentionality as acknowledging the necessary relation between any realm of reality that requests thinking activity, and reality itself recognize by thought regarding its ultimate layers of sense. But in this paper, we also show that while addressing existential issues, Delfim Santos came to the careful study Heidegger’s Being and Time; man appears to him as a being determined in his terrestrial life-course by transcendence and, consequently, as in the case of the German philosopher, as belonging to a zone of reality inaccessible to traditional ontological categories. At last, we trace the marks of Merleau-Ponty (as well as Gestalt-psychology) in Delfim Santos’ pedagogical works, particularly in the way he characterizes human action and its relations to physical-chemical stimuli that act not as a cause, but as a motive or occasion for meaningful behavior.

The paper studies the contribution of Joaquim de Carvalho, a teacher at the University of Coimbra in the first half of last century, to the phenomenological movement in Portugal. Its importance is not restricted to the introduction he had prepared for the Portuguese translation of The Philosophy of rigor as science. He used the lessons of Edmund Husserl to build a critique of Hegelian and positivist conceptions in his work History of Philosophy. It also draws on phenomenology to treat problems such as homesickness. All these aspects of the project as publisher of phenomenology in Portugal, especially in education.

This paper addresses the meaning and importance of Alexandre Morujão’s work for the reception of husserlian phenomenology in the Portuguese university. It gives also an overall view of his philosophical activity and interests, either as a university professor and researcher, or as a translator of philosophical works. The paper tracks also some of philosophical influences, sometimes hidden in the author’s published works, such as the influence of the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gassett. Regarding phenomenology (and especially husserlian phenomenology), the paper shows that Alexandre Morujão’s work tried to highlight the following three main themes: 1) the radical character of phenomenological attitude, as the science of origins and as a unitary theoretical connection of propositions grounded in ultimate evidences· 2) the ensuing radical awareness of the phenomenological Ego, not only as a pole of identity but above all as a set of habits, i.e. a series of synthesis passively persisting in his own personal life; 3) the relation of transcendental subjectivity to the life-world, as the world of intuition and immediate experience, and the ultimate ground of meaning.

Gustavo de Fraga was one of the most influential Portuguese phenomenologists. He had a deep understanding of the Husserlian as well as of the Heideggerian phenomenology. One of his major concerns was the connection between these thinkers, and the resettlement of metaphysical questions some step beyond the works of both. In so doing, Gustavo de Fraga took an original stance in the field of Phenomenology, combining conceptual and poetic experiences of thought.

In this paper, I present the main traits of the phenomenological thinking of Abranches de Soveral. I start with the work of his master Miranda Barbosa explaining the criticisms he address to the Husserlian phenomenology. I show Soveral’s approach to phenomenology is framed by the conceptions of Barbosa and the problems that, for him, phenomenology cannot answer in an accurate way. In this context, I present the fundamental tenets of Soveral’s rejoinder to his master, showing how phenomenology can be rearranged in order to formulate and to answer “the fundamental problem of knowledge”.

Theologian-philosopher, Júlio Moreira Fragata, has defended in 1954 his graduation (degree) as a doctor at the Gregorian University, his thesis entitled The Phenomenology of Husserl as foundation of the Philosophy. Among this author’s varied works, this one is the work which we had set out, given its importance for the phenomenology in Portugal. Besides, our study is aimed to be a pedagogical support and for the least exercised in these subjects, it is a light introduction to the phenomenological thought.

Divided in two parts: <<Fragatian Presentation ‘of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology>> and «Some considerations on the fragatian conception ofEdmund Husserl’s phenomenology>>, this text still intends to explain that the true foundation of the philosophy, for the author, is the phenomenology, this means, the direct observation of that which shows itselfto the conscience through the evidence of the things, in spite of his theological concerns.

Maria Manuela Saraiva was one of the rare authors that, in the Portuguese philosophical panorama, was devoted to the study of Husserl, namely in what she concemed the statute of the imagination versus aesthetic conscience or artistic universe. Starting with the analysis of their texts on Husserl and Ingarden, we will end considering the eventual aesthetic innovations in Husserl’s work, that is to say from the Logical Investigations to the Formal and Transcendental Logic, going trough the phases imposed between the first and the second volumes of the Ideas. Surpassing the ambiguity of the husserlian language, and given the absence of an aesthetic thought of the master of Göttingen, we will see now the work of art can break out, pure, in itself, beyond the primacy of the perception and by the modification of neutrality.

Fernando Gil’s last philosophy, as exemplified in The Conviction, deals with the distinction between belief and conviction, as well as with the common features they both share. Such distinction relates to other distinctions: and ideology and truth, etc. Fernando Gil’s main aim is the explanation of intricate connections between the epistemic and the epistemological that is the relations the subject entertains with his beliefs and the relations those entertain with reality. In other words: his enquiry deals with the place of the subject in knowledge.

While not a phenomenologist, Fernando Gil was highly interested in some aspects of Husserl’s work. One of these aspects was Husserl’s theory of evidence. ln a notable book entitled Traité de l’évidence, he developed a throughout theory of evidence, paying close attention to the most important insights Husserl exposed his works. Gil’s theory of evidence is at the same time rooted in Phenomenology and extended beyond it in as much as he locates the first dimension of evidence ma primitive stratum hallucinating aesthesia from desire. Accounting for evidence as threefold process, going from aesthesia to presence, and then to the intellectual grasping of an individual object, the most interesting feature of his theory is the of evidence as a hallucinating process, encompassing all strata of sensitive, perceptive, and conceptual life.

Fernando Gil’s last philosophy, as exemplified in The Conviction, deals with the distinction between belief and conviction, as well as with the common features they both share. Such distinction relates to other distinctions: ground and foundation, ideology and truth, etc. Fernando Gil’s main aim is the explanation of the intricate connections between the epistemic and the epistemological levels, that is between the relations the subject entertains with his beliefs and the relations those beliefs entertain with reality. In other words: his enquiry deals with the place of the subject in knowledge.

Only the excess is enough. This is our title about the relationship between João Paisana and philosophy. The main theme is phenomenology and hermeneutics, in particular the philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger. João Paisana’s reflection about these authors is very important and capable to introduce novelties. Moreover, his last writings about the concept of experience and communication, is also a very sound one. Politics, and the notion of cultures, is another vertex of his philosophy. Who knows João Paisana can recognize that there is no gap between life and philosophy.

This study covers Vergílio Ferreira’s fiction and essays to show the that phenomenology had in both. Vergílio Ferreira even declares ata certam pomt in his literary and essayist trajectory that the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology was large in his work and especially noticed retrospectively. He who for a long period declared himself a Hegelian who had moved on to existentiabsm via unhappy consciousness will link Hegel to Husserl’s phenomenology revealing a trajectory justifying the coherence of his work.

In this paper I will focus on Adolf Reinach’s work A Priori Foundations of Civil Law. Reinach, a member of the so-called “Circle of Göttingen”, formed around Edmund Husserl, sought in this work to apply phenomenology, understood as a doctrine of essences, to the problem of the constitution of legal norms. Surprisingly, however, his starting point is an analysis of the promise – whose legal status is weak, appearing only in some civil codes (as the Portuguese), in expressions such as “promise of sale” – and the Verbindlichkeit it establishes between the one who makes the promise and the person who is promised something. Between promise and its fulfilment Reinach establishes a logical relation of cause and consequence, although he claims a different status for his legal formalism from that of Kant’s. In this paper I will address not only Reinach’s starting point, but also his claim to ground the Science of Law on objective legal formations, which can be intuited in the same way numbers or physical objects are intuited.

In the most recent debate of phenomenological as well as analytical provenance, Husserl’s reflection, although pioneer regarding ethics, seems to suffer of a general depreciation enrooted in his supposed excess rationalism.

The husserlian ethics would remain subjected to the dominance of a logico-objectifying reason, which appears to be the fundamental dimension of intentionality. The wide range of life-experiences would then be crushed by the hegemony of objectifying acts. Are we really sure? Our contribution will rather consist in raising the originality of Husserl’s method which lastly to reconcile two seemingly contradictory requirements: the autonomy of ethical and its dependence towards logical reason. We shall notice thus a progressive dissociatoon from Brentano’s teaching leading to an overall revision of intentionality. If anything such as rationalism exists in Husserl’s thinking, it can only be asserted on the condition of a radical criticism of the concept of “representation” – from where, as we shall see, emerges a newly articulated relationship between “object” and “value”.

The justification of Natural Law is a very controversial issue, not only after the Positivist’s rebuttals, but since its very anthropological foundations in the early modern age. In this paper, I try do give an account of Natural Law and natural rights in terms of a phenomenological description of the background of normative intentionality. Taking a genetic stance, I go from the positive norm and the intentionality that constitutes it to the underling pregiveness that supplies the condition of its possibility. I exhibit it as the experience of the live-world, and I analyze it as an intersubjective world, where persons are given as equals and worth-counting. This is the very root of the concept of human dignity. Starting from it, I develop an account of the sense and content of the concept of Human Rights as a set of eidetic laws creating the framework for authentic human relationships.

The clarification of the relation between norm and value was historically one of the main philosophical concerns of the phenomenological current of the movement known as Philosophy of Values. One of its major characters, Nicolai Hartrnann, in his bookEthik, argues in favor of almost identifying one with the other. For him, the “ideal ought-to-be” (the one indifferent to the way reality is) already belongs to the nature of values, since they have an inherent tendency towards reality. In this communication, I’ll criticize this thesis based on the meaning of the concepts involved.

The author deals with philosophical ethos in its practical function. After the First World War Husserl not only considers the structure but also the function of phenomenology. A meditation on this function, with regard to the history of philosophy, is his primal task in the Freiburg years. Thus the possibility of developing a rigorous phenomenology of practical reason becomes the basis of phenomenology. The importance of Husserl’s characterization of life in terms of striving is stressed as a key motive in the turn from static to genetic phenomenology. It is argued that instinctive life is inserted in a cultural development that shapes a theoretical side providing content to our primal tendencies as well as the identity of individuals. A decisive point in genetic phenomenology is the passage from instinctive animality to human life. This development rests on a pretheoretic affectivity that colors life as a sort of subconsciousness underlying all our activities. It is the originary stratum through which we approach the world. The article goes on to high-light the importance of Husserl’s concept of culture and specifically of his practical concept of culture which is made up of life-regulations and without which an ideal and a technical culture are devoid of a ground. Finally, the author considers life-regulations as a key problem to be dealt with by phenomenology first in the emotional and then in the practical level.