S. FRANK’S IDEA OF “LIVING KNOWLEDGE” IN ALL-ENCOMPASSING UNITY IN THE CONTEXT OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH OF FOUNDATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Abstract

The article deals with the question of the possibility of implementing phenomenological project, which is aimed at understanding of the whole content of experience constituted by consciousness. To achieve the goal of transcendental philosophy – a clear understanding of oneself as the subjectivity functioning as primarily source – E. Husserl moves from description of things of the intuited surrounding world (life-world) to the analysis of successively lower layers of the sense accomplishments. In doing so, he faced the impossibility to describe how the primal hyletic configurations that determine the unity of the absolute flow of consciousness form in the process of passive genesis. Husserl’s analyses of passive synthesis points to the openness of consciousness to alterity. The “alterity” of original unities means that they not only do not require the ego’s activity, and therefore seem to be alien to consciousness, but are really alien to it. Paradoxically, while being other to consciousness, primordial unities play a key role in its organization, making possible the structure of the “living present”. Husserl’s account of consciousness as receptive to what is alien to consciousness creates a basis for comparing his ideas with the ideas of S. L. Frank. The Russian philosopher argues that a foundation of “transcendental objects” is a “concrete super-temporal allencompassing unity” as absolute being, outside the relation, to which consciousness would be impossible. The article proves that the recognition of dependence of consciousness on the pre-conscious layer of subjectivity opens the way of solving the problem of the structureforming grounds of conscious.