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Is There a “Copernican” or an “Anti-Copernican” Revolution in Phenomenology?

  • Alexander Schnell
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Abstract

This chapter raises the question - based on the works of Marc Richir and Dominique Pradelle (in particular) - of if and how phenomenology deals with an “anti-Copernican” revolution, considering that the motif (which is initially Kantian) of a “Copernican” revolution seems to have gone through some modifications that reflect a certain deposition of the constitutive role of the subject. Its fundamental thesis is that a certain dimension “beyond” the Copernican revolution does not reestablish a “Ptolemaic” realism but rather opens a dimension “beneath:” beneath the subject and the object where a mutual relationship between an a-subjective constitutive power and a pre-empirical foundational being can take place. This dimension “beneath” means that the alternative does not concern a “pre-Copernican” realism, on the one hand, and an “idealism” - which leaves in the shadows the relationship between the transcendental method and an ontological perspective - on the other, but rather puts forward a constructive circularity between the transcendental constitution and an ontological foundation. It follows that “normativity” is not achieved on the basis of pregiven objectivity - because it would imply a petitio principia - but draws upon the “pre-immanent generativity.”

Abstract

This chapter raises the question - based on the works of Marc Richir and Dominique Pradelle (in particular) - of if and how phenomenology deals with an “anti-Copernican” revolution, considering that the motif (which is initially Kantian) of a “Copernican” revolution seems to have gone through some modifications that reflect a certain deposition of the constitutive role of the subject. Its fundamental thesis is that a certain dimension “beyond” the Copernican revolution does not reestablish a “Ptolemaic” realism but rather opens a dimension “beneath:” beneath the subject and the object where a mutual relationship between an a-subjective constitutive power and a pre-empirical foundational being can take place. This dimension “beneath” means that the alternative does not concern a “pre-Copernican” realism, on the one hand, and an “idealism” - which leaves in the shadows the relationship between the transcendental method and an ontological perspective - on the other, but rather puts forward a constructive circularity between the transcendental constitution and an ontological foundation. It follows that “normativity” is not achieved on the basis of pregiven objectivity - because it would imply a petitio principia - but draws upon the “pre-immanent generativity.”

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Table of Contents v
  3. Husserl, Kant, and Transcendental Phenomenology 1
  4. Section I: The Transcendantal and the A priori
  5. The Meaning of the Transcendental in the Philosophies of Kant and Husserl 23
  6. The Ethics of the Transcendental 41
  7. The Phenomenological a priori as Husserlian Solution to the Problem of Kant’s “Transcendental Psychologism” 57
  8. On the Naturalization of the Transcendental 83
  9. Kant, Husserl, and the Aim of a “Transcendental Anthropology” 101
  10. Section II: The Ego and the Sphere of Otherness
  11. Transcendental Apperception and Temporalization 127
  12. “The Ego beside Itself” 143
  13. Kant and Husserl on Overcoming Skeptical Idealism through Transcendental Idealism 163
  14. “Pure Ego and Nothing More” 189
  15. Towards a Phenomenological Metaphysics 213
  16. The Transcendental Grounding of the Experience of the Other (Fremderfahrung) in Husserl’s Phenomenology 235
  17. Section III: Aesthetic, Logic, Science, Ethics
  18. Aesthetic, Intuition, Experience 259
  19. Synthesis and Identity 279
  20. Questions of Genesis as Questions of Validity 303
  21. Philosophical Scientists and Scientific Philosophers 333
  22. A Phenomenological Critique of Kantian Ethics 359
  23. Section IV: Transcendental Philosophy in Debate
  24. Is There a “Copernican” or an “Anti-Copernican” Revolution in Phenomenology? 391
  25. Back to Fichte? 411
  26. “An Explosive Thought:” Kant, Fink, and the Cosmic Concept of the World 439
  27. Eugen Fink’s Transcendental Phenomenology of the World 455
  28. Amphibian Dreams 479
  29. Husserlian Phenomenology in the Light of Microphenomenology 505
  30. Index of Persons 523
  31. Subject Index 527
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