Phenomenological Metaphysics – Registration open for BSP Online Course

With Dr Bence Peter Marosan – Online: Zoom – Four Sessions over four weeks with catch-up recordings. In October 2024.

Phenomenological Metaphysics
Course Leader: Dr Bence Peter Marosan (Budapest Business University)
Dates: 6 / 13 / 20 / 27 October 2024 (Sundays)
Time: 5.00-6.30pm (GMT)
Location: Online (Zoom)

According to Husserl, the ultimate source of every legitimate knowledge is originally presenting intuition (Anschauung). Yet, throughout his entire career he attempted to address the fundamental question of traditional metaphysics – such as immortality of the soul or existence of God – in a phenomenologically legitimate manner. Prior to Eugen Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation from 1932, Husserl already had the idea of “phenomenological constructions”, that is to say, perform indirect constructions based on evident intuitions and insights – trying to get closer to the answers to the above-mentioned questions.

“Metaphysics in a new sense”, articulated within the framework of phenomenology, was an essential part of phenomenological endeavours after Husserl. In this way, we can find it in Heidegger, especially between 1927 and 1935, when he attempted to elaborate such a phenomenologically based metaphysics. In Heidegger, phenomenological metaphysics aimed at the clarification of the fundamental categories of existence. Heidegger, on the other hand, also thematized the main questions of traditional metaphysics, but only from the viewpoint of faith, as an existential position of the believer.

This latter point served as a fundamental point of orientation for the classical authors of French phenomenology, who regarded both Husserl and Heidegger as crucial source of phenomenological method and view. Dominiques Janicaud criticized theologically oriented representatives of French phenomenology (such as Lévinas, Henry, Ricoeur, Marion) for committing phenomenologically illegitimate transgressions, but the criticized authors (Marion for example) claimed, that they formulated their ideas on the horizon of pure immanence, and thus they attempted to avoid any dogmatical metaphysical failures.

During the course we will have a closer look at such metaphysical endeavours in phenomenology.

Find out some more about BSP2024OC3: Phenomenological Metaphysics – https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-online-courses-2024-3/