Roman Ingarden’s Egology and Cartesianism

"The article focuses on the problem of egology in the thought of Roman Ingarden, a conception that offers a creative and critical response to Husserl’s egology and converges with the historical conception of the ego in Descartes. It analyses the problem in two stages based on two important texts by Ingarden: Controversy over the Existence of the World and Man and Time. Starting with reflections on the status of pure consciousness, Ingarden recognises the pure ego as something solely abstract compared with the worldly and irreducible real ego. From there his reflections on the ego move on to the problem of its substantiality, specific temporality as well as the role and experience of the body to finally produce a philosophy of existence with ethical and personalistic overtones. In this way Ingarden recreates the egological journey in Descartes, who, searching for the foundation of knowledge, identified subjectivity as the union of body and soul and saw its fulfilment in the ethical experience of generosity. Keywords: egology, ego, Cartesianism, Ingarden, Husserl, substantiality, temporality, human existence, realism. "

‘Ethics is transcendental’ (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.421)

In this paper I offer a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein's claim that ‘ethics is transcendental’ (TLP 6.421). Initially, I set out to offer said interpretation by resorting to both Wittgenstein's understanding of ethics and his understanding of the transcendentality of logic—which entails taking Wittgenstein as endorsing a Kantian understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’. This leads to the claim that ethics is transcendental insofar as it is the condition of a certain ethical experience. Nevertheless, this interpretation involves some inadequacies due to certain incompatibilities between the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the aforementioned Kantian understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’. I identify the peculiarities of Wittgenstein's understanding of the notion ‘transcendental’, and on this basis, I set forth a novel interpretation of 6.421. Specifically, I argue that ethics is transcendental insofar as it is internal to or constitutive of a certain mystical view: viewing the world sub specie aeterni as something valuable.

Ética y testimonio. Ideas para una fenomenología integral del "Ethos"

El Ethos es el fenómeno de la moralidad en su sentido más amplio. El presente trabajo –de naturaleza programática– esboza la idea de una fenomenología integral del ethos capaz de pensar, evitando toda forma de reduccionismo, sus diversos niveles de sentido. Procedemos en cinco pasos: en primer lugar, sostenemos que las experiencias humanas fundamentales –en particular la experiencia ética– son del orden de la contingencia y que, en consecuencia, sus verdades no se dejan captu-rar por el análisis fenomenológico-transcendental. En segundo término, presentamos la noción de experiencia ética, a la que describimos como la experiencia del contacto traumático de la Ley en su cuádruple carácter: singular, universal, verdadero, y contingente. En tercer lugar, vía la lectura del ensayo de Derrida Violencia y metafísica. Ensayo sobre el pensamiento de Emmanuel Levinas, ponemos en cuestión la tesis de la supuesta preeminencia de la fenomenología –en tanto que idealismo transcendental– respecto del discurso ético. En cuarto término, introducimos la noción de testimonio (en sentido ético) como la modalidad narrativa, “pre-filosófica”, capaz de expresar de la manera más fiel el sentido de la experiencia ética. Por último, distinguimos cinco niveles fundamentales del ethos y, sobre esta base, señalamos algunas de las tareas específicas de una fenomenología integral del ethos.The Ethos is the phenomenon of morality in its broadest sense. Our programmatic essay sketches the idea of a comprehen-sive phenomenology of the ethos capable of thinking –non-reductively– its different layers of meaning. We proceed in five steps: first, we claim that fundamental human experiences –in particular, ethical experience– are contingent in nature and that, as a consequence, their truths cannot be grasped by a phenomenologico-transcendental analysis. Second, we describe the notion of ethical experience as a traumatic experience of contact with the Law in its quadruple character: singular, universal, true, and contingent. Third, through a reading of Derrida’s Violence and Metaphysics. An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas, we question the alleged preeminence of phenomenology –as transcendental idealism– over ethical discourse and praxis. Fourth, we introduce the notion of (ethical) testimony as the kind of “pre-philosophical” narrative able to convey most faithfully the meaning of ethical experience. Finally, we distinguish five fundamental layers of the ethos and, on the basis of these distinctions, we identify some of the specific tasks of a comprehensive phenomenology of the ethos.

Imagining Cinema: ‘Cinempathy’ and the Embodied Imagination

Imagination has been the focus of much philosophical inquiry in recent decades. Although it plays an essential role in linking emotional engagement with ethical experience, imagination has received comparatively little attention in film-philosophy. In this article, I argue that imagination plays an essential role in linking emotional engagement with moral-ethical experience. Drawing on phenomenological, cognitive and aesthetic perspectives, I focus on perceptual imagining and suggest that an account of embodied cinematic imagination — encompassing both perceptual/sensory and propositional/cognitive imagining — is especially relevant to theorizing cinematic experience. The interplay of first-person empathic and third-person sympathetic perspectives (‘cinempathy’) is another essential feature of our emotional and ethical engagement with cinema. By synthesizing ‘bottom-up’ sensory, affective responses to audiovisual images, with ‘top-down’ cognitive processes associated with mental simulation, an account of embodied cinematic imagination can explain how emotional engagement and ethical responsiveness work together in our experience of audiovisual narratives.

Khrystyyansʹka moralʹ i kolektyvnyy etychnyy dosvid u suchasnomu ukrayinsʹkomu khudozhnʹomu dyskursi

The article in question deals with the fact that contemporary art discourse under the influence of Christian ideas reflects Ukrainian mentality and spirituality, represents profoundly symbolic information on every individual’s outlook, priorities of his/her existence and criteria for assessing the morality of deeds. The study considers current issues of cultural identity and national Christian ethics of Ukrainians, the dichotomy of biblical ethical mandates and collective ethical experience recorded in literary works. Taking into account individual samples of literary works, the interpretation of biblical moral postulates from the perspective of collective ethical experience has been examined. The process of modifying biblical images in current secular context has been described. It has been taken into consideration that appealing to biblical parallels is an effective way to draw attention to urgent national issues.

The other side of freedom: On the sociality of ethics

The social character of ethics is best revealed by exploring the complex dynamics linking individuals’ freedom to moral requirements. In this article, we consider James Laidlaw’s influential proposal that an anthropology of ethics makes freedom central to what is distinctively ethical in human life, but we argue that it unduly restricts the proposed scope of anthropology. This account of freedom is both overly cognitive, focusing on reflection, viewed as involving distance, decision, reasoning and doubt, and too individualistic, downplaying the importance of freedom’s normative background and excluding from consideration many documented forms of ethical experience. We propose instead an alternative, more open-ended conceptualization of freedom, distinguishing a concept of freedom that differs from its widely varying conceptions, and drawing on ethnographic material from the Hunza Valley in Northern Pakistan and elsewhere to illustrate multiple ways in which the constitution of selves and normative constraints impinge on one another.

Metaphysical and Lived Time of the Social

In this chapter we add another layer to the various qualities of the social, a quality which, in our view, is the most important element of the social—the ethical. Or more aptly, the experience of the ethical. A social is cognized through an affectual, ethical relationship along with its other perceptual modes. The special character of this experience is what marks out the uniqueness of the human social. Thus, our fundamental experience of the social is ethical. Belongingness that characterizes the everyday social is primarily an ethical experience. We then go on to discuss Narayana Guru and the idea of equality, and the idea of inter-generational equality which is presupposed in caste dynamics. These everyday experiences create a sense of social time and we explore the implications of this for an ethics of the social.

Toward a Model of Distributed Affectivity for Cinematic Ethics

Many contemporary applications of theories of affect to cinematic ethical experience focus on its consequences for empathy and moral allegiance. Such approaches have made advances in bridging phenomenological and cognitivist approaches to film-philosophy, but miss the importance of complex affects that problematize empathy and moral judgment. For example, the rendering of trauma in Aimless Bullet (Hyun-mok Yu, 1961) involves aesthetic shifts that reframe its depiction of postwar experience and build a complex emotional picture of sociopolitical conditions that affect individual and community life. In this article, I argue that to understand the ethical significance of complex cinematic emotion we can develop an account of how affective-aesthetic affordances establish distributed spaces for dynamic affective engagement. To do this, I draw upon theories of scaffolded mind, classical Indian rasa aesthetics, and phenomenological aesthetics. This hybrid account will allow us to articulate the ways that film can help us comprehend the ethical significance of complex affective situations.