REASON, LIFE, CULTURE

PART I

Phenomenology in the Saltics

ANALECTA HUSSERLIANA

THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH

VOLUME XXXIX

Editor-in-Chief

ANNA- TERESA TYMIENIECKA

The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and LearningBelmont, Massachusetts

REASON, LIFE, CULTURE PARTI

Phenomenology in the Baltics

Edited by

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

The World Phenomenology Institute

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Leaming

A-T. Tyrnieniecka, President

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

REASON, LIFE, CULTURE PARTI

Phenomenology in the Baltics

Edited by

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA

The World Phenomenology Institute

Published under the auspices of The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Leaming

A-T. Tyrnieniecka, President

SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reason. life. culture : phenoaenology in the Baltics / edited by Anna -Terasa Tymieniecka.

p. cm. -- (Analecta Husserliana v. 39) "Publlshed under the ausplces of World Institute for Advanced

Phenomenologlcal Research and Learning." Includes index. ISBN 978-94-010-4823-1 ISBN 978-94-011-1862-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-1862-0 1. Phenomenology--Congresses. 1. Tymieniecka. Anna-Teresa.

II. World Institute for Advanced Phenomenologlcal Research and Learnlng. III. Serles. B3279.H94A129 voI. 39 [B829.5l 142' .7 s--dc20 [142'.7l 92-22158

TSBN 978-94-010-4823-1

Printed on acid-free paper

AII Rights Reserved © 1993 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1993 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1993

N o part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

THEME / Assessing the Full Role of Reason: Manifestation viiof the Edifice of Life

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Xl

INAUGURAL LECTURE

ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA / Metaphysics of Manifestation:Reason in the Individualization of Life, Sociability, Culture 3

PART ONE: RATIONALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS

MAIJA KULE / Silence as a Cultural Phenomenon 13CALVIN O. SCHRAG / Phenomenology and the Consequencesof Postmodernity 23

A. ZVIE BAR-ON / Reason and Reasoning: Husserl's Way 33GENNADY CHEPOVETSKY / Transcendental Reality: PositiveExpression 41

KARLIS RUTMANIS / The Phenomenological Being ofRationality 51

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER / "Man Strides along the Solar System... ": Human Existence in the Poems of Anise Koltz 63

PART TWO: PERSONALITY AND THE INNER SELF IN THE

MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE

LARISA CHUHINA / Emotional A Priori and Moral-Metaphysical Meanings of Max Scheler's Phenomenology 87

MIECZY SLAW PAWEL MIGON/ The Notion of "The Person"in A-T. Tymieniecka's Thought 107

WOJCIECH JERZY BOBER / Personality and Culture:Phenomenology and Phenomenological Anthropology 117

v

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

MARY-ROSE BARRAL / Critique of Reason in Tymieniecka's"The Three Movements of the Soul" 127

KRYSTYNA GORNIAK-KOCIKOWSKA / The Inner Moral Self inTymieniecka's Vision 139

MARA RUB ENE AND ANDRIS RUBEN IS / Morals and Ethicsin Phenomenology: The Moral Sense of PhenomenologicalPhilosophy 155

PART THREE: RATIONALITY AND VALUATION

MIHALY VAJDA / Reason and Culture 173HELENA GOURKO / Values in Cognition and Evaluation 181LEONID STOLOVICH / Value as a Phenomenon: Variants of thePhenomenological Understanding of Values 193

MIECZYSLAW PAWEL MIGON / The Phenomenology of Manin Max Scheler's Thought 205

ALFREDS POLIS / The Mentality of Morality: Phenomenologicaland Psychiatric Approaches 217

PART FOUR: RATIONALITIES IN THE SOCIETAL AND

CULTURAL LIFE

ROSEMARIE KIEFFER / Life, Reason and Culture in the LyricalProse of the Luxembourg Poet Edmond Dune 229

ALEXANDER PIGALEV / Reason and the Utopian Models ofCulture: The Utopian Theme in Husserl's Thought from aTheological Point of View 245

WOJCIECH JERZY BOBER / Seeing and Reasoning in Jean-PaulSartre's Ontology 255

VIKTOR MOLTSCHANOV / Reason, Phenomenology, Pluralism 261MARA STAFE C KA / The Phenomenology of Absurdity 273HELENA GOURKO / Heideggerian Hope 283

INDEX OF NAMES 289

THE THEME

ASSESSING THE FULL ROLE OF REASON:

MANIFESTATION OF THE EDIFICE OF LIFE

Is not the immeasurably extended edifice of life, which holds togetherin the midst of intrinsic turmoils, a flagrant manifestation of reason?Expanding in myriad modalities, radiating in gamuts of rationalities,the Logos of Life appears to those who pierce through the maze of"matter", of "phenomena", of the experiential labyrinths and contor­tions of the human mind, as the crucial factor in the gigantic play offorces which in its constructive plans finds an outlet in the relativelyminute but innovative project of Life and Nature. Counteracting against"post-modern" tendencies, we propose to exfoliate it. The manifesta­tion of the works of the Logos in the edifice of life constitutes one ofthe meta-physics that the phenomenology of life and of the HumanCondition indicates. It has been prepared for by our previous investi­gations and offers the next step.!Emphasizing the role of the human intellect, the so-called mathe­

matical rationality in its theory and practice, modern times have broughtabout an unprecedented development in human civilization. However,this unfolding of the potentialities offered by translucent intellectualreason appear to have found a limit to their exploitation. In the last fewdecades reason, mind, rationality seem to have reached a breaking pointin their hitherto undisputed sovereignty.The emergence of innumerable novel human rationalities in scien­

tific theory and in its practical applications has caused a distortion incommunication between the sciences and, outgrowing the hithertodominant attitudes of human beings toward life and death, the humancondition, the human situation on earth and the prospects of cosmicsurvival, have given rise to bewilderment and puzzlement resulting inseveral types of vitally significant questions.2

The first series of questions continuing the traditional investigationof reason can be considered as still belonging to modernity: questionsconcerning the factual verifiability of data offered by various manifes­tations of human cognition; questions scrutinizing the criteria of cognitionfavoring some manifestations over others and attempting to reduce oneto the other, etc.

vii

viii THE THEME

The second series of questions led to numerous attempts at a critiqueof reason - the human faculty of reason being understood as the sourceof all rationality.Finally, in the last few decades, a radical doubt about reason, ratio­

nality, the human mind culminating in the absolute rejection of theplausibility of reason has emerged. Although this latest, "post-modern"attitude toward reason stands upon weak and swaying legs, it has inspiredvarious types of relativism and enjoys increasing attention.Those who eagerly lend their ear to easy sophisms do not see how

the negation of all rationality leads their reflection into a narrow, narrowtunnel, dark and without exit. No wonder that those who enter it are asif blind-folded and overlook the absurdity of their situation. This absur­dity is blind to the presence of life within and around us; it is blind tothe living reality, to the world - as if both life and the world did not meanarticulating, ordering rationality. Can we in the fullness of philosoph­ical experience suspend - be it for a fraction of an instant - the livingmoment? This instant is an integral element of a gigantic schema forthe articulating of life: time means becoming, change, coming to be,growth, fulfillment in fruition. passing away, spread through events,experiences. processes. durations, that is to say patterning of innumer­able rationalities.The wholesale negation of principles, and with it of all the serious­

ness of the philosophical enterprise. nay an abandonment of its vocation- leaving the human being without a compass and without a footholdin reality - which we witness today as "post-modernism". provokes usto continue the investigation into reason which we have already accom­plished in our onto-poiesis of life. 3

Indeed, in the self-individualization of beingness we have found therational skeleton of life's progress; it appears as the collector, and inturn distributor. of proficient energies, forces, synergetic powers intothe constructive mechanisms and designs of life's progress; a springboardfor the philosophical investigation of the Logos of Life in practice. Wewere able to find access to this central agency of the Logos comingfrom the cosmos and reaching through Nature into the palpitating heartof life and the human mind. because in seeking a starting point forphilosophical investigation we bypassed the much discussed and disputedhuman cognition and gave an absolute priority to the creative act ofthe human being. thus reaching the Human Condition. This latter, anincubator gathering all the natural forces for specifically human

ASSESSING THE FULL ROLE OF REASON ix

individualization-in-existence (which means the origination and pro­cessing of the human mind), offers us an incomparable vantage pointto see, on the one hand, the grand panorama of the gigantic rationali­ties of Nature spreading before us - of the system of life, of the cosmiclaws manifested in the exuberance and the plethora of living beings, crea­tures. On the other hand, we see, as from the center, the stream ofspecifically human rationalities gushing forth from each human beingand spreading into the common pools of the various cultures, vibratingin ever renewing superabundance of forms, colors, feelings, reflections,plans, projects and struggles to accomplish them.Having thus far opened up and brought to light the inner workings

of the Logos of Life, we may rise to the vision of its manifestation inthe edifice of life. It is the Logos which manifests itself through theworkings of life while it informs synergies and proficiencies, projectsarticulations, purposive joints, processional links; while it devises rele­vances within the forces, strivings and 'substances'; while it projectsdesigns, trajectories, organisms and techniques for the ever renewingprogress of the grandiose game of life. It is the Logos of Life whocoordinates this game and its rules with the framework of cosmic forces,at the one extreme, and leads to the orchestration of the human eruptioninto Bios, at the other.This gigantic game played by the Logos of Life is neither inferred

nor deduced, neither sensed nor imagined, neither theoretically hypoth­esized nor practically ascertained. It is manifested in the vision whichgoes beyond the facts of experience and thought; it dwells in all ofthem; it draws upon all of them; it is carried by all the practices of life.Comprising them all it manifests their intrinsic life of reason.We will at this stage of our inquiry into reason and rationality survey

them in their various sectors.

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

NOTES

1 Cf. by the present writer, Logos and Life, Books I and II (Analecta Husserliana Vols.XXIV and XXV, Dordrecht: K1uwer Academic Publishers, 1988).2 Cf. by the present writer, "The Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Conditionin Communication with the Human Sciences", in A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), ThePhenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition (Analecta Husserliana Vol. XIV,Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1983).

x THE THEME

3 Cf. by the present writer, "The First Principles of the Metaphysics of Life Chartingthe Human Condition", in A-T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Morality within the Life- and SocialWorld (Analecta Husserliana Vol. XXII, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1987);and her other studies in this series.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This collection of essays stems from lectures given at the XXVthInternational Phenomenology Congress held by the World Phenome­nology Institute in collaboration with the Institute of Philosophy and Lawin Riga, Latvia 25-28 September, 1990. I want in the first place to expressour heartfelt thanks to our co-organisers, Mrs. Maija Kille and ProfessorDr. Janis Veijs, director of the Institute of Philosophy and Law, for theirexpert and careful preparation of the local arrangements.The Institute being under the auspices of the Latvian Academy of

Science, we had the privilege to be received personally by Dr. JanisLielpeteris, President; and we are thankful for the generous hospitalityoffered to the participants by the Academy, the lavish receptions whichall the participants thoroughly enjoyed, and the warm collegial atmos­phere which dominated our gathering.We could not fail to be moved and intellectually stimulated by the

enthusiasm of our Latvian colleagues, who, in this period in which hopesfor the freedom of mind were glimmering in the longlasting darknessof the past, considered phenomenology and our conference "a windowopening upon the world". We are thankful to them and to all the scholarsfrom East-Central Europe - or "Baltic States" as we like to call them- for their joining us gleefully in this first foray of independentphilosophical reflection in this geographical area, which was a signalof the triumph of the human spirit.We are also grateful to Professor Nelli Motroshilova, Moscow, for

her participation and wholehearted support. Isabelle Houthakker andRobert Wise, who edited the papers of this volume with great care andexpertise, deserve our thanks.

A-T.T.

xi

MaijaKiileontheshoreoftheBalticsea.

EllaBuceniece,MaijaKiile,RimmaTelcherova,CalvinO.SchragandAnna-TeresaTymienieckaatoursecondBaltic

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