Volume 25 (2012): Edizione 1 (October 2012)

I discuss, from a phenomenological point of view, the distinction between judgments and norms. I stress the limits of the husserlian canonical analysis in order to rightly account for the sense and content of normative intentionality. Based on some Kelsian insights, I draw a clear distinction between judgments and norms, criticizing some classical trends coming from Husserl himself that consider norms as a kind of intentionality founded upon objectifying acts. However, taking distance from Kelsen, Kaufmann, and Cossio, I stress that the ought-proposition (Sollsatz) cannot be a good rendering of the sense-content of norms, based on the phenomenological distinction between the intentional matter and the quality of intentional acts. Finally, I propose my own account based on the concept of ‘ductive force’. I stress that the ductive force of norms cannot be identified witb simple coercion. [ show that there is, even inside the juridical sphere, a variety of ductive forces, going from sheer coercion to council and recommendation. To end, I stress the centrality of the concept of “ductive force” for a phenomenology of the social world.

The “flusserian” phenomenology regards itself as a process, a strategy and, sirnultaneously as a criticism: it would be named an “interrogative phenomenology” or paraphenomenology whose researches are authentic points of “repere”, features that distinguish boundaries and establish paths, connecting them in referential webs that creatively construct a describing and interpretative map of our experience such as it really is. Thus, it is a phenomenology supported by hermeneutics, being its purpose onto-existential. The proposed analysis, from the problematic core of the phenomenological questioning, is that of grabbing the attention to something always expressed and, quite often, ignored or indifferent: a reftection on the gesture. This possible philosophy of the gesture enables the understanding of the relationship of a society/civilization in which the abyss between real and virtual was nullified, where it is possible to think things (Dinge) and the non-things/non-objects (Undinge), as much absurd as this last expression may seem. More important, though, is the openness to the understanding of a new emerging human condition and the strangeness of a society ruled by non-historical criteria: the entrance to the so called post-history.

I present and discuss in this paper Husserl’s investigation of the genesis of the modem conception of empirical reality as carried out in his last work The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. The goal of Husserl’s genetic investigation was to uncover the rnany layers of constitution that frorn the life-world (the Lebenswelt) the modem scientific conception of Nature was originated and to point out the need to ground the scientific project of rnodemity in the life-world so as to overcome the “alienation” that, for him, characterized the “crisis” of European science. I, however, approach his analyses from a different perspective. The problem that interests me here is the applicability of mathematics in the empirical science. My airn is to assess Husserl’s treatment of this question in order to see whether it can be sustained from a strictly scientific perspective. My conclusion is that it cannot. What Husserl takes for the “crisis” of science is inherent to the best scientific methodology. Nonetheless, Husserl’s analyses offer irnportant insights that I incorporate in what I believe to be a more satisfactory treatment of the problern concerning the role of mathematics in the ernpirical science.

In this basically expository paper we discuss the role oflogic and mathematics in researches concerning the ontology of scientific theories, and we consider the particular case of quantum mechanics. We argue that systems of logic in general, and classical logic in particular, may contribute substantially with the ontology of any theory that has this logic in its base. In the case of quantum mechanics, however, from the point of view of philosophical discussions conceming identity and individuality, those contributions may not be welcome for a specific interpretation, and an altemative system of logic perhaps could be used instead of a classical system. In this sense, we argue that the logic and ontology of a scientific theory may be seen as mutually inftuencing each other. On the one hand, logic contributes to shape the general features of the ontology of a theory; on the other hand, the theory also puts constraints on the possible understanding of ontology and, respectively, on possible systems of logic that may be the underlying logic ofthe theory.

The present work is an attempt to bring attention to the application of several key ideas of Husserl ‘s Krisis in the construction of certain mathematical theories that claim to be altemative nonstandard versions of the standard Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. In general, these theories refute, at least semantically, the platonistic context of the Cantorian system and to one or the other degree are motivated by the notions of the lifeworld as the pregiven holistic field of experience and that of horizon as the boundary of human perceptions and the de facto constraint in reaching limit-idealizations. Moreover, 1 try to give convincing reasons for the existence of an ultimate constitutional ‘vacuum’ of a subjective origin that is formally refiected in the application of a notion of actual infinity in dealing generally with the mathematical infinite.

Walter Benjamin pointed out the affinity of cinema and architecture, and argued unexpectedly that tbese art forms are both essentially tactile arts. The tactility of the material art of building is not difficult to grasp, but the idea that a cinematic projection could result in fundamentally tactile experience certainly meets objections. However, the philosophical as well as neurological studies ofthe past few decades in perception, emotion, and thought, as well as in artistic expressions, suggest that these two arts, or poetic images at large, address ali our senses, including our synthesizing existential sense, all at once. The arts communicate through the “fiesh of the world”, to use a notion of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The acts of perception, feeling, thinking, and memorizing cal! for the reality and sense of embodiment. We identify ourselves unknowingly with constructed architectural spaces as well as projected cinematic situations with our empathetic capacity. So, Benjamin ‘s argument could be re- -formulated: cinema and architecture are embodied atis in which the externa! and the internal are fully intertwined and fused. “The world is wholly inside, and 1 aro wholly outside myself’, as Merleau-Ponty enigmatically argues.

I sketch an analysis of observing as a particular attitude one can take regarding the surrounding world. I stress some particular features of observation, like the cancelling of the vital engagement. in the world, and the delight that pure observation involves. Then I move to a description of figurative consciousness and its image-world. In the final part, 1 try to show how watching movies displays a new type of observation, based on the empathic connection with the characters, the emergence of a virtual body, and a self-decentered life, where the ego is not an onlooker, but something like an “ in-looker”.

A close analysis of the specifically cinematographic procedure in Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Dream’ Crows reveals it as an articulated and insightful philosophical statement, endowed with general relevance conceming ‘natural’ perception, phenomenological Erlebnis, mechanical image and aesthetic rapture. The antagonism between the Benjarninian lineage of a mechanical irreducibility of the cinematic image to anthropocentric categories, and the Cartesian tradition of a film-philosophy still relying on the equally irreducible structure of the intentional act, be it the one of a deeply embodied and enworlded counsciousness, in accounting for the essential structure of film and spectator (and their relation), i.e., the antagonism between the decentering primacy of the image and the self-centered primacy of perception, cannot be settled through a simple Phenomenological shift from occularcentric, intentional counsciousness to its embodyment ‘ in-the-world’ as yet another carrier of intentionality.

Still it remains to be explained what is it in the mechanical image that is able to so deeply affect the human flesh, and conversely, to what features in the human bodily experience is its mechanical other, the fascinating image, so successfuly adressing? It should be expected from the anti-Cartesianism of both the early and the late Merleau- Ponty the textual support for an approach to the essential condition of passivity in movie watching, that would be convergent with Benjamin. The Chapter ‘Le sentir’, in Phénoménologie de la perception, will offer us the proper guide to elucidate what we are already perceiving and conceiving in Kurosawa’s film, where the ex-static phenomenological body of the aesthetical contemplator ‘ enters the frame’ like the Benjaminian surgeon enters the body and like the painter - and always already like our deepest levei of ‘sensing’, previously to any act of cousciousness - ‘just looses himself in the scene before him’. The Polichinello secret of cinema watching is nonetheless too evident to be seen, and that is where Phenomenological description and reduction are still required.

This paper addresses Husserl’s theory of image consciousness and phantasy, which, along with remembering, constitute three kinds of presentification, a sort of intuitive intentional relational different from perception. In the second place, the paper tries to highlight the significance of «neutralizatiom> - as a means to access the world of phantasy - for the understanding of the origin of the aesthetic attitude. Finally, the paper discusses the kind of spacial relations that arise from «neutralizatiom>, in contrast with life-world experience of space, and how those relations can be exemplified in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Rear Window.