Research in Phenomenology
August 25, 2026
Daniel Reid Smyth
Abstract Hermann Schmitz offers one of the most extensive descriptions available of embodied space, characterizing it as pre-sensorial, indivisible, and surfaceless yet capable of disclosing absolute locations. Schmitz nevertheless anchors the felt body’s absolute location in temporal irruption rather than in the ability for lived space to ground itself in rest. This article argues that...
Research in Phenomenology
August 25, 2026
Jonathan Owen Clark
Abstract This essay concerns two distinct topics in Husserlian phenomenology. The first is “image consciousness” [ Bildbewusstsein ], which concerns the experiential nature of our encounters with pictures and other depictive objects. The second is “historicity” [ Geschichtlichkeit ], which refers to how human subjects, prior to any detailed knowledge of history, are in some sense always already...
Research in Phenomenology
May 12, 2026
Dermot Moran
Abstract In this paper, I examine Husserl’s conception of the self as both an identical I-pole ( Ichpol ) for-all experience and as a developing, unfolding unity whose self-explication is its history. As Husserl proclaims in the Cartesian Meditations § 37, “time is the universal form of all egological genesis.” He further states: “The ego constitutes itself for itself in, so to speak, the unity...
Research in Phenomenology
May 12, 2026
Espen Dahl
Abstract Being born is an undeniable fact of every human life, yet it seems that one’s birth evades any direct phenomenological access. Motivated by this problem, this article proceeds in three main steps. It first examines the problem of birth from the first-person perspective, where birth appears as both presupposed and inaccessible. The second step reverses the perspective by approaching...
Research in Phenomenology
May 12, 2026
David Inczauskis
Abstract This paper argues for the continued relevance of general, transcendental structures – especially Hannah Arendt’s concepts of natality and plurality – within critical phenomenology. Contrary to recent thinkers like Guenther, Oksala, Herrmann, and Marder, who critique the general as inherently oppressive and/or irrelevant, I propose that general conditions can provide a foundation for...
Research in Phenomenology
February 21, 2022
Lilian Alweiss
4 citations
Abstract This paper takes Zahavi’s view to task that every conscious experience involves a “minimal sense of self.” Zahavi bases his claim on the observation that experience, even on the pre-reflective level, is not only about the object, but also has a distinctive qualitative aspect which is indicative of the fact that it is for me. It has the quality of what he calls “for-meness” or...
Research in Phenomenology
2008
Alia Al‐Saji
42 citations
Abstract Merleau-Ponty's reference to "a past which has never been present" at the end of "Le sentir" challenges the typical framework of the Phenomenology of Perception, with its primacy of perception and bodily field of presence. In light of this "original past," I propose a re-reading of the prepersonal as ground of perception that precedes the dichotomies of subject-object and...
Research in Phenomenology
1981
William L. McBride
Abstract"The conception of 'lived experience' marks my change since L'Etre et le Néant ... L'Etre et le Néant is a monument of rationality. But in the end it becomes an irrationalism, because it cannot account rationally for those processes which are 'below' consciousness and which are also rational, but lived as irrational. Today, the notion of 'lived experience' represents an effort to...
Research in Phenomenology
1980
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
3 citations
9 The nature of perception* Maurice Merleau-Ponty A new study of perception seems justified by contemporary developments in philosophical and experimental research: - by the appearance, notably in Germany, of new philosophies which call into question the guiding ideas of critical thought, until then dominant in psychology as well as philosophy of perception; - by developments in physiology of...