Announcements

From the series ‘60/60 the best of SPCh’ (3) [60 most interesting publications from 60 years of SPCh]

2025-01-18

  • Józef Tischner: Structural issues of reflection and immanent insight in the light of some of Edmund Husserl's theses [Studia Philosophiae Christianae 2(1966)1, pp. 205-257].
  • Link to the text: https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/journals/384/issues/41627.
  • It is one of the first publications of Józef Tischner, published after he received his doctorate (1963), and is also his only, albeit extensive, article published in SPCh (in addition, he published two reviews). The work is devoted to a structural analysis of the acts of reflexive cognition and immanent insight. Its starting point is the basic theses of the theory advanced in some outlines by Edmund Husserl in his Transcendental Phenomenology. As the author announces in the Introduction, "The work has a critical-constructive character. That is to say, it has as its goal that Husserl's solutions, which do not appear to be sufficiently justifiable, should be contrasted with as far as possible justifiable positive solutions. In the search for a solution of this nature, I refer in part to some of the theses of the founder of phenomenology, which I develop using his own methods of phenomenological analysis and description" (p. 205). The critical group includes all theses resulting from the rejection of some of Husserl's views that Tischner found unsatisfactory. Here we have critical theses concerning the attempt to establish what reflexive cognition consists of; a critique of the claim attributing to reflection an absolutely iterative character; a critique of the description of the objectification of experience by the act of reflection; a critique of the claim that the act of immanent perception is not self-contained in relation to its object; and a critique of Husserl's belief (implicitly maintained) that the act of reflection is temporally instantaneous. Within the construction section, Tischner, firstly, is concerned with describing the nature of reflexive cognition. According to this description, it is part of the essence of the act of reflection that the direction of its cognitive intention is predetermined by its sign content, in such a way that what is at stake is always the grasping of ‘what is mine’ in the broadest sense (there is an egotistical moment of possession in the sign content of the act). He goes on to address the distinction between acts of pure reflection, in which the sign content is not uniquely determined in all respects, and acts of reflection, in which the sign content is uniquely determined. Acts of reflection are indeed ‘iterative’, but the possibility of regression into finitude is in principle precluded by the absolute self-consciousness of acts of reflection as experiences of an act of a particular kind. This is due in particular to the thetic moment of the act of reflection, ‘functioning in entanglement’ and united with the specific ‘existential force’ of the act. The phenomenological description reveals the particular situation of immanent perception in acts of reflection that are not immanent perception: the immanent perception in question functions in these acts as a fundamental component, although its intention is not ‘explicitly’ given. Sometimes immanent perception ‘objectifies’ our experience, imposing on it the form of an ‘external’ object. Such ‘objectification’ occurs especially in acts of reflection, which are distinguished by an explicitly given sign content. The group of positive results of the study carried out is completed by the revelation of the temporal continuity of at least some acts of reflection, especially acts of immanent perception. It is worth recalling this publication also for the reason that the Senate of the Republic of Poland has established 2025 as the Year of Rev. Prof. Józef Tischner.

  • SUMMARY: Part I. §1. Husserl's general conception of reflection. §2. The construction of immanent insight. Part II. R. I. Critical analysis of the basic theses of the general theory of reflection. §1. The essence of the act of reflection. §2. The iterativity of reflection and the nature of the thetic moment. R. II. Critical analysis of some elements of the theory of immanent observation. §1. From the problematic of ‘objectification’. §2. A contribution to the problem of immanence. §3. Immanent perception and the temporal character of experiences.
This website uses cookies for proper operation, in order to use the portal fully you must accept cookies.