The Sense of Things

This book proposes a new interpretative key for reading and overcoming the binary of idealism and realism. It explores the way human consciousness unfolds through the relationship between the I and the world-a field of phenomenological investigation that cannot and must not remain closed within the limits of its own disciplinary boundaries. The book focuses on the question of realism in contemporary debates, ultimately dismantling prejudices and automatisms that one finds therein. It shows that at the root of the controversy between realism and idealism there often lie equivocations of a semantic nature. By returning to the origins of modern phenomenology this study mines the Husserlian concept of transcendental idealism. Following this path, and neutralizing the extreme positions of an acritical idealism and a naïve realism, the book proposes a "transcendental realism": the horizon of a dynamic unity that embraces the process of cognition and that grounds the relation, and not the subordination, of subject and object. The close reading of this reciprocity offered here allows one to surpass the limits of the domain of knowing, leading one to fundamental questions about the ultimate sense of things and their origin.

Auteur
Angela Ales Bello is Professor Emeritus of History of Contemporary Philosophy at Lateran University in Rome and past Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. She is the President of the Italian Center of Phenomenological Researches (Rome) affiliated to the World Phenomenological Institute, Hanover, U.S.A. and Director of the Research Area dedicated to Edith Stein and Contemporary Philosophy at the Lateran University. Her research is directed towards the German Phenomenology in relationship to other contemporary philosophical currents according to a historical and theoretical approach.

Contenu

Introduction: On the Controversy Between Idealism and Realism.- Part 1: Epoché, Decision, Motivation.- Chapter 1: Method and Decision.- Chapter 2. Decision and Motivation.- Part 2: Why the Transcendental? Chapter 3. Knowledge of Things.- Chapter 4. The Human Being as Subject and Object of Knowledge. The Human Being as Subject and Object of Knowledge.- Chapter 5. The Co-Relation of the I and World.- Part 3: The Sense of Things: From Logic to Ontology.- Chapter 6: The Path to Ontology.- Chapter 7: From Ontology to Phenomenology and Vice Versa.- Chapter 8: Ontology From Formal Logic and Transcendental Logic.- Chapter 9: Formal-General Ontology of the Life-World.- Chapter 10: Ontology Spoken in Many Ways.- Part 4: The Genesis of Knowledge and the Foundation of the Sciences.- Chapter 11. The A Priori of the Life World.- Chapter 12. Science and Life.- Chapter 13. The Foundation of the Sciences.- Chapter 14. Toward a New Transcendental Aesthetic.- Part 5: The Sense of Things: Hyletics, Anthropology, Metaphysics.- Chapter 15: What is Hyletics?.- Chapter 16: From Hyletics to Anthropology.- Chapter 17: From Hyletics to Metaphysics.- Part 6: Transcendental Idealism Revisited.- Chapter 18: Contrasting Reasons.- Chapter 19: An Examination of the Excursus on Transcendental Idealism.- Chapter 20: Animating Apprehension in Kant, Husserl and Stein.- Chapter 21: The Formation of the Spatial Object Chapter 22: The Question of Existence.- Chapter 23: What is Transcendental Idealism?.- Part 7: Phenomenology as Transcendental Realism.- Chapter 24: Genesis of the Notion Transcendental Idealism.- Chapter 25: Transcendental Idealism as Transcendental Realism.- Concluding Synthesis.- Notes.- Bibliography.