Generative Phenomenology

In this paper I discuss in a critical manner what I believe to be some of the more interesting contributions of Anthony Steinbock’s book Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl. I will thus refer mainly to his clarification of the constitution of familiar and alien objects or states of affairs through appropriation and transgression. In connection with this I will try to put forward some of the advantages and implications of a phenomenological approach to the problem of historicity in terms of generativity.  However, I will also discuss some of the limitations and problems of Steinbock’s approach. I believe that most if not all of these problems are related to his understanding of the relationship between static, genetic and generative phenomenological methods. Therefore I will devote some lines to discuss this issue and to rethink some of Steinbock’s main theses under the light of another way of understanding the relationship between these methods as well as the task of the philosophical inquiry proposed by phenomenology.

È nell’ambito di un’analisi fenomenologica della vita di una soggettività umana nella sua esistenza finita e contingente—alla quale la sofferenza, la malattia e la morte sembrano imprimere il marchio dell’assolutamente irrazionale—che la questione liminare (Grenzproblem) del realizzarsi o attuarsi della ragione, vale a dire di Dio quale principio “assoluto”, nell’umanità si impone alla riflessione husserliana. A essere in gioco è il senso della nostra esistenza (“greggi inutili e mal nati”, secondo la dura espressione di Ariosto nell’Orlando furioso, Canto XVII, 3).

This paper sketches a new approach to the critical-theoretic problem of reification understood as a normatively problematic form of naturalizing or dehistoricizing entification. Entification in general is approached phenomenologically in terms of the mythic outer horizonality of the lifeworld, and reification is shown to stem from the dichotomy be-tween nature and history which, along with a corresponding dichotomy between myth and reason, is characteristic of Enlightenment rationality. Dereification necessitates overcoming these dichotomies, and this implies a critical embrace of myth and mythopoesis in the sense of instituting more normatively appropriate lifeworld horizons. While classical Marxism and radical social theory have typically adhered to the standard model of Enlightenment thought, with the result that the critique of naturalization backfires by reinforcing the dichotomy between nature and history, Luxemburgian spontaneism, rethought through a phenomenology of embodied enaction, is shown to offer a more viable way of understanding reification and its solution.

Please cite published version (https://metodo-rivista.eu/pub-260885).

This article aims at elucidating Habermas’ critique of the phenomenological method while clarifying his own conception of the Lifeworld as a normative, homogenic, comprehension of the process of subject constitution and language. In order to do so, a review of the Husserlian understanding of the Lifeworld in the Crisis, as well as the later steps for a provisional, generative, conception of Lifeworld will be provided, along with an attempt to recast the debate between the sociological and hermeneutic appropriation of the lifeworld in Alfred Schutz which motivate Habermas to turn away from a phenomenological perspective. The article closes with elements for a phenomenological critique of Habermas’ concept of the Lifeworld.

Online International Conference "The Future As a Present Concern" (2021)

Before becoming a subject in philosophical and political studies, transgenerationality is a genetic or generative approach that reflects upon the 'process of becoming' of phenomena and their constitutive systems, and conceives this as a process that occurs over the generations. This term refers to transgenerational inheritance of epigenetic markers from one organism to the next or the psychological term, which asserts that behaviours of trauma can be transferred in between generations. Questioning generative phenomenology in the contemporary scenario means embracing the legacy of the concept of 'generation' in the history of philosophy and also exploring its potential for different fields of knowledge, such as politics, ethics, education. The first meaningful occurrence of the concept is in Aristotle's Περὶ γενέσεως καὶ φϑορᾶς (On Generation and Corruption), wherein γένεσις means that things come into being from not being through causes, or that everything is generated purely through alteration. In 1924, Heidegger claimed that in research into history we find unclarified phenomena, such as that of generations, of the connection between generations. As he wrote, the historicity of Dasein grounded in the possibility according to which any specific present understands how to be futural (GA 64). In the Heideggerian philosophy of time and in the Arendtian phenomenology, we find a connection between the project of education and the revolutionary power of the future (Hodge, 2015; Loidolt, 2018, Parekh, 2008). In recent years transgenerational approaches contributed to philosophy by providing ethical frameworks based on the analysis of the contemporary world as well as on the prediction about the future of the Earth and the fate of globalized humanity (Andina, 2020; Nixon, 2020). The aim of this paper is to present transgenerationality as the obligations to future generations, but also the call of present-day humanity has an historical challenge to education.