Thaumàzein | Rivista di Filosofia

Introduction: A Phenomenological Geography of the Individual. Possible Paths in the Desert of Aporias

Gualtiero Lorini — 2026-07-07

Une théorie relationnelle de l'individuation au prisme de la générativité : La reprise phénoménologique des concepts d'ontogenèse et phylogenèse chez le dernier Husserl

2026-07-07

The article examines the phenomenological transposition of the concept of ontogenesis in Husserl’s account of subjectivation. It is shown that the use of this concept invites us to place transcendental subjectivity under the sign of becoming, whereas the use of the notion of phylogenesis promotes a dynamic understanding of the intersubjective community, itself placed under the sign of historical becoming. The close association of these two concepts stemming from the life sciences thus produces an historicization of the individuals while also inscribing the processuality of their development in the history of their community and, more broadly, in the history of the community of all living beings. The first part of the paper focuses on procreation and birth as essential milestones of the historicity inscribed within living corporeality itself, a historicity whose consideration transforms the problem of genesis, initially posed at the individual level of the monad, into a problem of generativity, whose scope is immediately intermonadic or intersubjective. It is this reworking of genesis through the lens of generativity, prescribed by the association of the ontogenetic and phylogenetic perspectives, that the second part of the paper examines in order to show that it operates simultaneously at a bio-anthropological level and at a monadic or transcendental level. The result, as the last part of the paper shows, is a relational theory of individuation, within which the notion of inheritance plays a crucial role.

The Yo-Yo of the Ego: Afterwardness in Genetic Phenomenology

Mari van Stokkum — 2026-07-07

This paper develops an account of genetic phenomenology that clarifies the relation between pre-egoic experience, egoic reflection and linguistic articulation. While Husserl characterizes genetic phenomenology as an inquiry into the radically pre-egoic, the thoughts thus discovered are nevertheless invariably my own. The ego is considered here not as the totality of subjectivity, but as an instance that emerges to reflect on the pre-egoic flow. The ego receives passive thoughts after the fact and integrates them into its own sphere of activity, translating loose associations into determinate thoughts. Such retroactive integration of the pre-egoic into the egoic must be distinguished, however, from the kind of afterwardness that operates within passivity itself, without the ego’s intervention. We link these two forms of afterwardness to two mechanisms Freud identified as responsible for the dream-work: secondary revision and the regard for representability. Within the buildup of passive experience, there is already an internal corrective that shapes loose events into a more or less coherent narrative. The transition from pre-predicative intuition to apophantic judgment is then analyzed as an internal transformation of thought rather than its mere external expression. Language plays a constitutive role in this movement by objectifying thought into subject–predicate form. In pre-egoic thought, the ego is not absent but implicit, and must be made manifest. Ultimately, this is less a dynamic of intervention than one in which reflection gathers pre-egoic thought back into itself, so as not to oppose but rather to contain its own opposite.

«Das Dasein ist seine Vergangenheit». On the Historicization of the Phenomenological Subject in Heidegger

Francesco Valerio Tommasi — 2026-07-07

The text aims to focus on the historicity intrinsic to Heidegger’s Dasein in order to show: 1) that it constitutes not only a reversal, but also, at least equally, a coherent radicalization of Husserl’s transcendental subjectivity, and, by way of Husserl, also of Kant and Descartes, and thus of the entire modern tradition; 2) that, even more profoundly than temporality, historicity expresses the very essence of «what we already always are», and is therefore decisive for understanding the way in which Heidegger describes the phenomenological method, insofar as this is rooted in a subjectivity constitutive of sense; 3) that it constitutes a decisive key to understanding the Kehre, which, starting from it, is again a coherent outcome. The historicity through which, in Heidegger, subjectivity receives the legacy of the modern tradition thus leads, in the final analysis, to an abandonment of its foundational role. Subjectivity is itself the result of a constitution of sense that precedes and determines it, and it is being itself that bears the essential character of historicity.

Ricœur e il concetto jaspersiano di «cifra»

Giovanni Pietro Basile — 2026-07-07

Ricœur’s interpretation of Jaspers’ thought endeavors to underscore that this philosophy cannot be confined to a meditation on the inner drama of freedom or a mere analytics of existence, as is frequently purported. Instead, it proffers a contemplation on the status of absolute reality, as revealed by the “ciphers” of transcendence. For Jaspers, metaphysics concerns itself with objects that, in fact, dissolve as objects and are comprehensible only to existence. Ciphers are the language that captures the reality of being in its evanescence. The original ciphers of transcendence are found, on the one hand, in myths and religions, and on the other, in ontological systems. The task of philosophy, in this human language, is to capture the immediate presence of transcendence. Metaphysics thus becomes a hermeneutics of ciphers as the language of being. This conception of metaphysics as a hermeneutics of the ciphers of transcendence, as developed by Jaspers, provides the theoretical foundation for Ricœur’s hermeneutic philosophy, as further elaborated in his subsequent works.

L'artiste comme maillon et comme interlocuteur : Pour une approche dialogique de l'histoire de l'art

Rodolphe Calin — 2026-07-07

Starting from the assumption that modern artists are both unique creators and links in a long historical chain, this article examines the relationship between creation and responsibility towards the past. Contrary to the evolutionary model of art history, inherited from Giorgio Vasari, which conceives of the artist as a link in a long evolutionary chain, the article proposes a dialogical approach inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin: the artist is not only a link, but also an interlocutor, who relates to the works of the past as if they were statements addressed to him, calling for an active response. Mieke Bal subscribes to this perspective; however, her dialogism, based on the present’s reconfiguration of the past through quotation, risks dissolving its otherness by reducing it to a discursive resource. To maintain the consistency of the past that this presentism tends to overlook, the article proposes the concept of “recommencement”, exemplified by the dialogue between Turner and Lorrain: creating means resuming an inaugural gesture in order to assume it differently without dissolving it into a purely discursive resource. The recommencement thus occupies the middle ground between an evolutionary history where the present is determined by the past and a pre-posterior history that reconfigures the past but removes its own consistency.

L'identità come soglia dell'umano. Verso una fenomenologia della relazione

Gianmarco Bezzi — 2026-07-07

This paper explores the theme of identity as the threshold of the human, proposing a phenomenology of relation grounded in the category of the Zwischen and Schwelle. Through an analysis of Scheler and Lévinas, the paper shows that subjectivity does not arise from the autarchy of the ego, but from its an-archic, affective, and testimonial openness to the Other. The human being is apprehended in his constitutive liminality as a being-for-and-with-the-other in which eros and agape intertwine within the Durchdringung between immanence and transcendence. In this perspective, the figure of the witness becomes the hermeneutical key to a “phenomenology of opacity”, wherein the phenomenon manifests itself through the resistance of its very appearing. Thus, human identity is rethought as the threshold between finitude and infinity, presence and alterity, revealing the fundamentally relational structure of existence.

Looking for the I in the Space of Reasons: John McDowell on Personal Identity and Selfhood

Lorenzo Guardini — 2026-07-07

This paper examines John McDowell’s notion of subjectivity (selfhood) to assess its theoretical potential for a deeper engagement with the phenomenological approach. Through a reconstruction of his theses on personal identity and situated, embodied subjectivity within the space of reasons, it shows how McDowell offers an effective response to reductionist or dualist accounts of the subject-world relation. He presents selfhood as an irreducible element for justifying the psychological continuity of mental states, one that thoroughly informs intentional relations with the surrounding environment, both pre-reflectively and reflectively. However, to fully exploit McDowell’s perspective in dialogue with phenomenology, it is necessary to ask whether the promising outlook of naturalizing the space of reasons can emancipate itself from the McDowellian thesis that epistemically relevant content must necessarily possess conceptual form.

How am I not myself? Psychedelic Experience and the Phenomenology of Individuality

Danny Forde — 2026-07-07

The psychedelic experience of ego-dissolution presents a striking paradox: the most radical apparent loss of self is nonetheless reported in vivid detail and frequently described as a disclosure of deeper unity. Contemporary neuroscience explains this phenomenon by the relaxation of high-level priors in the Default Mode Network, reducing the ordinary self to a useful fiction or minimal phenomenal self. This article sides with the first-person reports against such reductive accounts. It retrieves the realist phenomenology of the person developed by Max Scheler, Edith Stein, and Roman Ingarden within the Munich-Göttingen tradition. These thinkers offer a layered, non-essentialist ontology of individuality as a psychophysical, affectively structured, temporally extended unity. A tripartite distinction is introduced between the psychophysical totality, the narrative-reflective ego, and pre-reflective for-me-ness. Graded analysis of psychedelic reports shows that only the narrative ego is suspended, while the vital-affective and first-personal layers become more salient. This pattern fits precisely the stratified ontologies of Scheler (affective strata), Stein (empathic porosity), and Ingarden (founded strata). Psychedelic ego-dissolution thus functions as a privileged limit case vindicating realist phenomenology over both transcendental idealism and neurocognitive eliminativism. The experience discloses, rather than dissolves, the layered reality of the self.

Self, Self-disorder and being-in-the-world

Philippe Cabestan — 2026-07-07

It is said that the fundamental disturbance of schizophrenia is a disturbance of the self or a self-disorder. But what does it mean? To what extent can the self be altered? What is the self? To answer these questions, we must first get rid of the ego or the self as the substantial core of the subject. Thanks to Vincent Carraud, we know now that the ego as a noun is an invention of the philosophy, beginning with Descartes and continuing with Kant, Fichte and Husserl. Thank to Sartre’s essay on the transcendence of the ego, the ego no longer appears as an inhabitant of consciousness and the self as such, unlike the ego, is the first and non-substantial structure of consciousness, called by Sartre the for-itself. This raises the question whether this fundamental structure could be altered in certain forms of madness. Our thesis could be expressed as follow: even in delusion, the consciousness remains an intentional self-consciousness and the human being a being-in-the world. This would therefore mean that, if there are disorders of subjective experience there is, strictly speaking, no possible self-disorder or self-disturbance in schizophrenia.

Soggetto incarnato e dys-apparenza patologica. Fenomenologia e psicopatologia del corpo vissuto

Martina Mauri — 2026-07-07

The article discusses the phenomenological concept of the bodily-self, understood as ecological spatiality, and illustrates how this interpretation can facilitate comprehension of disorders arising within the psychopathological context. The experience of the bodily-self is articulated in the minimal form of selfhood, in the experience of the other and in the experience of the surrounding-world. In order to participate in intersubjective space, the necessary condition is the disappearance of the Leib: the transparency and anonymity of the lived body enables the existence of the other. This standpoint is of particular interest when considering the role of the Leib in psychopathological experience, especially in cases where the body’s structural disappearance shifts to a pathological dys-appearance. In such cases, this loss manifests itself in corporeality, depersonalisation, and embodiment conflict. A comprehensive grasp of these experiences is not only pertinent to the psychopathological domain, but also facilitates the description of experiential levels that would otherwise be inaccessible to analysis.