Intentionality and Givenness in French Phenomenology: M. Henry and M. Merleau Ponty

Year 2017, Issue: 29, 65 - 81, 30.10.2017

Emre Şan

https://doi.org/10.20981/kaygi.342182

Cited By: 1

Abstract

My guiding research hypothesis is as follows: the significant progress made by the phenomenology of immanence (according to which no worldly hetero-givenness would be possible without subjectif self-givenness) and by the phenomenology of transcendence (which states that no subjectif self-givenness would be possible without worldly hetero-givenness) are not distinguished so much by the positing of new problems as by the reformulation of “the question of the ground of intentionality” that fueled the entire phenomenological tradition. It is striking that despite the different solutions they offer, these two approaches have the same critical orientation regarding phenomenology (they characterize intentionality by its failure to ensure its own foundation), and they have the task of testing phenomenology in a confrontation with its various outsides such as “Invisible”, “Totality”, “Affectivity” or “Le visage” which escape the Husserlian concept of experience determined by the consciousness and its correlative noetic-noematic structure. This pathos of thought which is proper to the French phenomenology wants to go further than what remains unquestioned in Husserl (presence determined in the solid figures of intuition and objectness), and in Heidegger (presence determined as phenomenon of being). This new phenomenological movement reorganize and revise the method of classic phenomenology and deal with a certain experience of “hyper-phenomenon” or “counter-phenomenon” which is an event of appearing that establishes itself by itself.

Keywords

Intentionality, Givenness, Phenomenon, Michel Henry, Merleau-Ponty

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