Although James and Schutz provide us with the most insightful investigations of multiple realities that we come across in philosophical, psychological and sociological literature, hardly any critical studies have addressed James’s and Schutz’s conceptions of multiple realities alongside each other. This paper fills this gap. The paper demonstrates that James and Schutz were concerned with the same set of issues in their respective accounts of multiple realities. It further shows the different ways in which James and Schutz understood multiple realities (...) and how they conceptualized the fundamental levels of reality’s constitution. It also provides a critical analysis of Schutz’s allegation that James’s analysis is psychologistic, arguing that this accusation is ungrounded and that Schutz’s epoche of the natural attitude in fact bolsters James’s analysis of belief. The paper concludes with a set of reflections on the heterogenous nature of paramount reality, bringing into question James’s and Schutz’s assumption that each reality is inwardly coherent, although incompatible with each other. (shrink)

The following investigation aims to determine the historical origins of the phenomenology of pain. According to my central thesis, these origins can be traced back to an enthralling discussion between Husserl and two of his most important teachers, Brentano and Stumpf. According to my reconstruction of this discussion, while Brentano defended the view that all feelings, including pain, are intentional experiences, and while Stumpf argued that pain is a non-intentional feeling-sensation, Husserl of the Logical Investigations provides compelling resources to resolve (...) the polemic between his teachers by showing how pain can be conceived as a pre-intentional experience. According to my argument, this largely forgotten discussion is of significance not only because it enriches our understanding of pain, but also because it modifies the phenomenological conception of consciousness. Thus in the concluding section, I show why the Husserlian resolution of the controversy between Brentano and Stumpf is of importance for our understanding of the central phenomenological theme—intentionality. (shrink)

The article discusses the uncertainty of legal definitions of aviation safety and and aviation security, the implementation of which often result in certain restrictions of human rights. In the article, a hypothesis is made that, despite usually treated as well-known concepts, safety and security are not so clear and well-defined, often leaving the reader to guess at their precise meaning. The aim of this article is to identify the core features that characterise aviation safety and aviation security and could disclose (...) their legal content when assessing their comparative weight in relation to the protection of human rights. Supported by holistic approach from different perspectives (socio-cultural, historical, etc.), the phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis allowed providing an in-depth understanding of various meanings of safety and security concepts. An overview of the existing linguistic peculiarities of the use of the terms ‘safety’ and ‘security’ with an emphasis on the importance of determining the context in which they are used as primary evidence of their meaning is followed by the analysis of the common features and differences between the concepts of safety and security that supplements the discourse on the dilemma of combining subjective and objective, relative and absolute perceptions of safety and security. The research from the view point of normative jurisprudence reveals the polysemy inherent in aviation safety and aviation security, especially in terms of the values they represent, suggesting the conclusion that legal definitions of ‘aviation safety’ and ‘aviation security’ should in part be treated as a sort of ad hoc definitions, which have to be developed (clarified) in each particular case. (shrink)

In this article the paradoxical role of legal science in legal practice is discussed. On the one hand, legal scientists do not agree on the criterions of the scientific character of legal science. On the other hand, even in the legal cases that are especially complicated it is possible to arrive at theoretically unquestionable decisions. The author of the article concludes that legal practice is based on fundamental theoretical insights; however, in legal practice these insights are used more intuitively than (...) reflectively. Therefore, the aim of the article is to rationally reconstruct these theoretical insights with reference to the ideas of modern schools of legal philosophy. For this purpose the ideas of the theory of natural law are discussed. It is concluded that in legal practice two provisions of natural law are applied: legal decisions ought to be reasonable and must include existential ends (basic values). The evolution of the legal positivism is discussed in the article and it is concluded that legal positivism offers the criterions of the scientific character of legal science by framing the procedural rules of the democratic process of lawmaking. These rules anticipate such conditions: consensus concerning decision making; equal participation of all members of legal discourse confirming normative decisions; the acceptability of consequences after the realisation of normative decisions; the possibility to reaffirm normative decisions, if necessary. The ideas of virtue jurisprudence are discussed and it is claimed that virtue jurisprudence as a criterion of the scientific character of law proposes such theoretical position: the decisions concerning human rights must supply the value system (hierarchy) and the virtues which are formed and justified in the long legal tradition. The article represents the use of these criterions of the scientific character of legal science by Jurgen Habermas to debate about legal prohibition of the improvement of the human genome by using modern technologies of genome engineering in the Convention of Human Rights and Biomedicine (Oviedo, 1997). (shrink)

The article deals with the question how transnational corporations can bear direct responsibility for human rights abuses they commit by analysing the deficiencies of the current international legal background with respect to human rights and transnational corporations, and the solutions offered by national and regional legal tools. By establishing that current international law is incapable of reducing or compensating for governance gaps, the case law analysis shows that the litigation system under the Alien Tort Claims Act in the United States (...) and ATCA-like litigation possibility in the European Union present a feasible alternative to international law in the field of human rights protection when abuses are committed by transnational corporations. (shrink)

This paper develops a phenomenological approach to the concept of pain, which highlights the main presuppositions that underlie pain research undertaken both in the natural and in the sociohistorical sciences. My argument is composed of four steps: only if pain is a stratified experience can it become a legitimate theme in both natural and sociohistorical sciences; the phenomenological method is supremely well suited to disclose the different strata of pain experience; the phenomenological account offered here identifies three fundamental levels that (...) make up the texture of pain experience: pain can be conceived as a prereflective experience, as an object of affective reflection, or as an object of cognitive reflection; and such a stratified account clarifies how pain can be a subject matter in the natural and sociohistorical sciences. Arguably, the natural and sociohistorical sciences address pain at different levels of its manifestation. While the natural sciences address pain as an object of cognitive reflection, sociohistorical sciences first and foremost deal with pain as a prereflective experience and as an object of affective reflection. (shrink)

The fundamental goal of this paper is to clarify the importance of Husserl’s reflections on destiny (Schicksal) in the context of his post-WWI ethics. In the first section, I sketch Husserl’s reflections on war in his private correspondence. In the second section, I show that, in his post-WWI research manuscripts on ethics, Husserl conceptualized various forms of meaningless suffering under the heading of destiny. One of the main questions of Husserl’s post-WWI ethics can be formulated as follows: in the dark (...) horizon of senselessness, how is an ethical life possible? In the remaining sections, I show that Husserl’s reflections on this question led him to deformalize his earlier ethics and motivated him to ground his ethics of reason in an ethics of love. In the third and fourth sections, I sketch Husserl’s two fundamental answers to this question, the first of which concerns his phenomenology of love, while the second one – his phenomenological metaphysics in general, and his phenomenological teleology, in particular. While for Husserl, these answers are complementary, after clarifying Husserl’s view on the conflicts of values, I conclude with some reflections on the importance of not overlooking that these answers are analytically distinct. (shrink)

The paper is guided by three goals. First, it shows that the methodological standpoint of classical Husserlian phenomenology provides us with reliable tools to resist the grand narratives that proliferate during times of war. Second, it demonstrates that phenomenology provides much-needed methodological support for hermeneutically-oriented reflections on war. Third, it shows how the gruesome reality of World War One introduced a practical turn in Husserl’s phenomenology by forcing Husserl to rethink the relation between phenomenology and metaphysics. Tracing the development of (...) phenomenological metaphysics in Husserl’s Fichte lectures, Kaizo articles and private correspondence, the paper shows that, in response to war, Husserl deliberately chose not to engage in straightforward reflections on war, but instead to write about the prospects of peace. Reflections on cultural renewal necessitated him to rethink phenomenology as practical philosophy. The entanglement of praxis and theoria in Husserlian phenomenology relies upon the establishment of a metaphysically-grounded conceptual bond that ties reason to love and faith, which in its own turn suggests that a human being is not merely animal rationale, but also animal amans and animal religiosum. Ultimately, the possibility of cultural renewal relies upon a metaphysical broadening of Husserl’s conception of philosophy as rigorous sciences. (shrink)

My goal is threefold. First, building on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenology of the imagination, I will argue that phantasy is a specific type of intentional experience, which intends its objects as neutralized presentifications. Second, I will turn to dreams and argue that non-lucid dreams are unconscious phantasies, which cannot be conceived in the above-mentioned way. This realization will bring us to the third task. When recognized as the most extreme form of unconscious phantasy, dreams compel us to raise anew (...) the fundamental question: what is the nature of phantasy experience? According to the perspective I will here develop, phantasy is a specific field of experience that lies between two extremes: the fully translucent mode of the as if consciousness and the thoroughly opaque mode of absorption. Most of our phantasies, both conscious and unconscious, voluntary and involuntary, are lived somewhere between these two extremes. (shrink)

I argue that imagination has an inherently paradoxical structure: it enables one to flee one’s socio-cultural reality and to constitute one’s socio-cultural world. I maintain that most philosophical accounts of the imagination leave this paradox unexplored. I further contend that Paul Ricoeur is the only thinker to have addressed this paradox explicitly. According to Ricoeur, to resolve this paradox, one needs to recognize language as the origin of productive imagination. This paper explores Ricoeur’s solution by offering a detailed study of (...) reproductive and productive imagination in the framework of poetic imagination. My analysis subjects Ricoeur’s distinction between reproductive and productive imagination to a critique that relies upon the principles of classical phenomenology. According to my central thesis, the imaginative powers of language are themselves rooted in perception. This thesis broadens the scope and significance of Ricoeur’s solution by enabling one to resolve the paradox of imagination not only at the level of language-based imagination, but also at the level of dreams and daydreaming as well as at the level of non-language based art. No less significantly, this thesis enables one to open a fresh dialogue between phenomenology and hermeneutics. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Pain is the first book-length investigation of its topic to appear in English. Groundbreaking, systematic, and illuminating, it opens a dialogue between phenomenology and such disciplines as cognitive science and cultural anthropology to argue that science alone cannot clarify the nature of pain experience without incorporating a phenomenological approach. Building on this premise, Saulius Geniusas develops a novel conception of pain grounded in phenomenological principles: pain is an aversive bodily feeling with a distinct experiential quality, which (...) can only be given in original first-hand experience, either as a feeling-sensation or as an emotion. Geniusas crystallizes the fundamental methodological principles that underlie phenomenological research. On the basis of those principles, he offers a phenomenological clarification of the fundamental structures of pain experience and contests the common conflation of phenomenology with introspectionism. Geniusas analyzes numerous pain dissociation syndromes, brings into focus the de-personalizing and re-personalizing nature of chronic pain experience, and demonstrates what role somatization and psychologization play in pain experience. In the process, he advances Husserlian phenomenology in a direction that is not explicitly worked out in Husserl's own writings. (shrink)

The paper deals with an issue of philosophical methodology, taking into account Wittgenstein’s critical remark that philosophy (metaphysics), in its modus operandi, imitates science. The thesis of the paper is that such approach is wrong because the peculiarity of philosophical thinking cannot be adequately conceptualized in terms of formal logic. This is shown by the analysis of three cases (Plato, Aristotle and Descartes), i. e. three classical metaphysical projects dedicated to the discovery of “the first principles”.

This paper examines Georg Lukács’s conception of rei????ied subjectivity under capitalism. I claim that Lukács’s transition from his ethical pre-Marxist notion of the reified subject, to his early-Marxist understanding of capitalist reification of the subject contains the elements of a potential Lukácsian anti-critique of any epistemic or normative reinterpretation of his theory of reification. In particular, the shift in Lukács’s conceptualization of the thinglikeness of objects implied in his dialectical social theory points to a historically precise interpretation of the subject’s (...) reification. The paper also suggests that Lukács’s project of dereification is rooted in the affective experience of reified subjects.Cet article examine la conception lukacsienne de la subjectivité réifiée en régime capitaliste. Mon propos est de montrer que le passage de la notion éthique pré-marxiste du sujet réifié à une compréhension marxiste précoce de la réification capitaliste du sujet chez Lukács contient des éléments d’une critique lukacsienne potentielle de toute réinterprétation normative de sa théorie de la réification. Le tournant dans la conceptualisation lukacsienne de l’apparente « choiséité » des objets, implicite dans la dialectique de sa théorie sociale, fait signe vers une interprétation historiquement précise de la réification du sujet. L’article suggère également que le projet lukacsien de la dé-réification est enraciné dans l’expérience affective des sujets réifiés. (shrink)

Situating phenomenological reflections on nostalgia within a historical context, I argue that Kant's temporalization of nostalgia remains incomplete. Bringing into question the widespread assumption that the object of nostalgia must be the past, I argue that nostalgia can be spoken of in three fundamental ways: as nostalgia for the past, for the present, and for the future. I further clarify the relation between the three forms of nostalgia here distinguished, and some other nostalgia that have been addressed in the literature. (...) I conclude with a contention that a characteristic feature of present-day nostalgia is that it is more often lived through not only as nostalgia for the past but also as nostalgia for the present and for the future. (shrink)

Este artigo tem como objetivo situar a pesquisa contemporânea sobre a dor e delimitar as diferentes metodologias aplicadas na análise deste tema. O objetivo deste estudo é argumentar contra a posição que defende que o naturalismo e o construtivismo social são os únicos possíveis pontos de partida no campo da pesquisa da dor. Pretende-‑se mostrar que essas duas correntes se baseiam em pressupostos cuja explicação filosófica requer uma fenomenologia da dor. Dado que esses pressupostos dizem respeito ao conceito de dor, (...) tentarei oferecer uma visão crítica de algumas conceções estabelecidas, além de apresentar o que chamarei de definição fenomenológica de dor. (shrink)

The United Nations has shown recurrent inability to respond to international threats caused by severe human rights violations and thus failed to perform one of its main function—preservation of international peace and security in the world. This evidenced gaps in the United Nations, caused mainly by the veto right in the voting system within the Security Council and limited powers of the General Assembly. The international community gave a twofold answer to this problem: radical humanitarian intervention and the recent concept (...) of the responsibility to protect. The main problem with regard to humanitarian intervention is its legality—its compliance with the prohibition of the use of force. The responsibility to protect does not clash with the prohibition of the use of force, but its legal implications are rather vague—being intensively discussed in the international forum, the responsibility to protect has not yet appeared in any legally binding international document. This article discusses the legal significance of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect, and aims to determine how they affect, if at all, the regulation of the use of force in the international relations, as well as how they respond to the issue of large scale atrocities in the world. (shrink)

The study analyses the issues of protection of national minorities from the perspective of international law. The study consists of three parts. In the first part, the author reveals the understanding of a national minority on the basis of objective and subjective features. This part focuses on such problematic issues as national minorities and citizenship, non-dominant position of a national minority. The second part of the study concentrates on international minorities as subjects of international law. The author analyses international legal (...) subjectivity of national minorities. A question is raised whether the rights of national minorities are individual or collective rights. The third part of the study focuses on the analysis of normative basis for the protection of national minorities. The author notes that the monist system exists in the Republic of Lithuania regarding the relation of international and national law. Under this system, the international treaties ratified by the Lithuanian Parliament (Seimas) are seen as an indivisible part of the legal system of the Republic of Lithuania. Therefore, the Convention for the Protection of National Minorities is an international treaty that is directly applicable in the legal system of the Republic of Lithuania. The fourth part of the study focuses on the question whether Lithuania should become a party to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Although this issue is complex and includes the problems of political, economic, legal and other nature, the author focuses on the legal analysis of the problems related to the participation in the Charter. It is emphasised that the Charter is not the only document that ensures the linguistic rights of national minorities. Under the Law on International Treaties of the Republic of Lithuania, while considering participation in the Charter, the right of treaty initiative should be implemented, and the question of efficiency of the treaty must also be solved. (shrink)

This volume is the first book-length analysis of the problematic concept of the ‘horizon’ in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, as well as in phenomenology generally. A recent arrival on the conceptual scene, the horizon still eludes robust definition. The author shows in this authoritative exploration of the topic that Husserl, the originator of phenomenology, placed the notion of the horizon at the centre of philosophical enquiry. He also demonstrates the rightful centrality of the concept of the horizon, all too often viewed (...) as an imprecise metaphor of tangential significance. His systematic analysis deploys both early and late work by Husserl, as well as hitherto unpublished manuscripts. Opening out the question to include that of the origins of the horizon, the book explores the horizon as philosophical theme or notion, as a figure of intentionality, and as a signification of one’s consciousness of the world—our ‘world-horizon’. It argues that the central philosophical significance of the problematic of the horizon makes itself apparent in realizing how this problematic enriches our philosophical understanding of subjectivity. Systematic, thorough, and revealing, this study of the significance of a core concept in phenomenology will be relevant not only to the phenomenological community, but also to anyone interested in the intersections of phenomenology and other philosophical traditions, such as hermeneutics and pragmatism.​. (shrink)

Husserl is the philosopher who transformed the geological metaphor of sedimentation into a philosophical concept. While tracing the development of Husserl's reflections on sedimentation, I argue that the distinctive feature of Husserl's approach lies in his preoccupation with the question concerning the origins of sedimentations. The paper demonstrates that in different frameworks of analysis, Husserl understood these origins in significantly different ways. In the works concerned with the phenomenology of time consciousness, Husserl searched for the origins of sedimentation in the (...) field of subjective experience, and more precisely, in impressional consciousness. By contrast, in the later works concerned with history, he maintained that the origins of sedimentations lie in the field of historical past that stretches beyond the reach of individual experience. Building on the basis of these resources, I argue that the Husserlian concept of sedimentation has three distinct components of senses: static, genetic, and generative. In the static sense, sedimentations are modifications of retentions and necessary conditions of recollection. In the genetic sense, sedimentations are necessary for the formation of types, habits and moods, and as such, they shape present experiences. In the generative sense, sedimentations refer to what consciousness inherits from the historical tradition. (shrink)

The paper explores the meaning of the phenomenological concept of sedimentation in the framework of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. The analysis I offer suggests that Merleau-Ponty initiates a transition from the constitutional problematic of sedimentations that we come across in Husserl’s phenomenology to the analysis of existential sedimentations. Merleau-Ponty accomplishes this transformation by binding the Husserlian conception of sedimentations with the Heideggerian conception of facticity. The distinction Merleau-Ponty draws between originary sedimentations and secondary sedimentations is especially important, for it allows one to (...) claim that Merleau-Ponty recognizes all experiences as sedimented. Against the background of this realization, I offer a reevaluation of Merleau-Ponty’s cryptic remarks in the Phenomenology of Perception regarding the “original past,” also described as “a past that has never been a present.” I argue that these are metaphors for originary sedimentations. In place of a conclusion, I suggest that especially when the concept of sedimentation is universalized, we come to recognize its inherently paradoxical nature. In the final analysis, besides being a genetic concept, sedimentation is also a limit problem and a limit phenomenon. (shrink)

The paper aims to develop a phenomenology of pain on the basis of the insights introduced in Husserl’s phenomenology. First, I suggest that pain is given to intuition as an indubitable and a bodily localizable experience. Since these two characteristics are incompatible with each other, I argue that the experience of pain is paradoxical. Second, I contend that philosophy of pain provides six ways to resolve this paradox: semiological, causal, associationist, representational, perceptual, and phenomenological. Third, my central goal is to (...) develop the phenomenological resolution and to show that it culminates in the realization that the subject of pain is neither the disembodied consciousness nor the physiological body but the lived-body, conceived as the field of sensings. Fourth, I offer a phenomenological account of the structure of pain experience. I suggest that this structure could be characterized as the already appropriated body’s inner protest against its constitutive appropriation. (shrink)

Although the need of freedom is definite, the concept of individual freedom, while being interpreted with legal terms, causes not only theoretical, but also practical problems. The observed two extremes of freedom are defined as any human self-expression as well as the license, where the state power is generally attributed to disregard personal freedom. In this article the freedom of expression and state enforcement jurisdiction dichotomy are addressed by discussing positive and negative conceptions of freedom and the relationship between the (...) interpretations of political liberalism and Kant and Hegel‘s philosophies. This paper aims to prove that the positive liberty is the assumption of the negative liberty. The paper based on Hegel‘s philosophy shows that freedom is the characteristic of human nature to seek identity. It is also argued that human identity can take many forms and, therefore, a person has a number of inherent rights and liberties. It is human psycho-physical identity that provides the right to life and health care; human creative identity, providing the right to privacy and freedom of occupation; human moral identity, which provides the right of dignity, and the moral autonomy of person’s social and political identity, providing the political and social rights and freedoms. This article concludes that while a person uses the given rights with integrity and the state is limiting people’s arbitrariness, there is no conflict between the freedom and state violation. (shrink)

Here I distinguish three fundamental ways in which the naturalistically oriented science of pain has critically engaged phenomenology. The science of pain has either denied any role phenomenology could play in scientific pain research, or it has aimed to correlate phenomenological findings with neurological processes, or it has pursued a genuine dialogue with phenomenology, yet only insofar as phenomenology is conceived in line with the principles of static methodology. I argue that genetic phenomenology of embodied personhood offers a fourth and (...) most promising way to pursue a dialogue between phenomenology and the science of pain. By drawing a distinction between the naturalistic and the personalistic attitudes, genetic phenomenology invites one to reinterpret the neurological conceptions of pain as modifications derived from a more basic understanding of pain experience. (shrink)