The world was first introduced to the expertise and originality of Japanese scholars in phenomenology in Analecta Husserliana Vol. IX (1979). The third generation of Japanese scholars, belonging to the newly-founded Merleau-Ponty Japanese Circle, are now presented. Following Merleau-Ponty's tendency, the studies collected here seem to make a fresh phenomenological start in relation to classical Husserlian phenomenology, turning deliberately towards the concrete', the wild world', flesh', embodiment', natural signs', primal nature'. The rule of intentionality, natural language is...

This book offers readers a critical assessment of transcendentalism, defined as the understanding of consciousness structured as a system of a priori laws of the mind. It shows how the work of philosophers such as Kant and Husserl informed later thinkers.

In the first part of The Divine in Husserl and Other Explorations a description is provided of Husserl s method in order to explain how he deals with the question of God from a philosophical perspective. The results from this investigation are compared with the main contributions of the philosophers of the past.

The second part focuses on the theme of religion as developed by Husserl in order to grasp the meaning of religious lived-experiences. Through an archeological excavation Husserl teaches us how to go to the bottom of the sacred and the divine in order to pinpoint...

There is no greater gift to man than to understand nothing of his fate, declares poet-philosopher Paul Valery. And yet the searching human being seeks ceaselessly to disentangle the networks of experiences, desires, inward promptings, personal ambitions, and elevated strivings which directed his/her life-course within changing circumstances in order to discover his sense of life. Literature seeks in numerous channels of insight the dominant threads of the sense of life, the inward quest, the frames of experience in reaching the inward sources of what we call destiny inspired by experience and...

Philosophy, art criticism and popular opinion all seem to treat the aesthetics of the comic as lightweight, while the tragic seems to be regarded with greater seriousness. Why this favouring of sadness over joy? Can it be justified? What are the criteria by which the significance of comedy can be estimated vis a vis tragedy? Questions such as these underlie the present selection of studies, which casts new light on the comic, the joyful and laughter itself. This challenge to the popular attitude strikes into new territory, relating such matters to the profundity with which we enjoy...

Identifying quickly illusion with deception, we tend to oppose it to the reality of life. However, investigating in this collection of essays illusion's functions in the Arts, which thrives upon illusion and yet maintains its existential roots and meaningfullness in the real, we might wonder about the nature of reality itself.

Does not illusion open the seeming confines of factual reality into horizons of imagination which transform it? Does it not, like art, belong essentially to the makeup of human reality?

Papers by: Lanfranco Aceti, John Baldacchino, Maria Avelina Cecilia...

During its century-long unfolding, spreading in numerous directions, Husserlian phenomenology while loosening inner articulations, has nevertheless maintained a somewhat consistent profile. As we see in this collection, the numerous conceptions and theories advanced in the various phases of reinterpretations have remained identifiable with phenomenology.

What conveys this consistency in virtue of which innumerable types of inquiry-scientific, social, artistic, literary may consider themselves phenomenological?

Is it not the quintessence of the phenomenological quest, namely...

The controversy of flux and stasis as the groundwork of reality of Greek ancient philosophy reached its crux in the all encompassing doctrine of the logos by Heraclitus of Ephesus. It centers upon human soul in its role with the cosmos. Philosophy of the Occident corroborating Greek insights with the progress of culture in numerous interpretations (Kant, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur...), presented in this collection has neglected the cosmic sphere. While contemporary development of science revealed its grounding principles (papers by Grandpierre, Kule and Trutty-Coohill) the...

Situated at the crossroads of nature and culture, physics and consciousness, cosmos and life, history intimately conjoined with time continues to puzzle the philosopher as well as the scientist. Does brute nature unfold a history? Does human history have a telos? Does human existence have a purpose?

Phenomenology of life projects a new interrogative system for reexamining these questions.

We are invited to follow the logos of life as it spins in innumerable ways the interplay of natural factors, human passions, social forces, science and experience through interruptions and...

Prompted and ever diversified by the specifically human interrogative logos, scientific inquiries seek a common system of links in order to mutually confirm and rectify their results. Coming closer and closer to phenomenology, the sciences of life find the common ground of the reality in the ontopoiesis of life.

Could it not be that the interrogative logos of science, participating in human creative inventiveness will bring together also the divergent scientific methods in a common network? A network which comprises natural processes, societal sharing-in-life, and existential...