Postdoctoral project (in English)

Postdoctoral Research Project in Philosophy

The phenomenological problem of matter








Fields covered: Phenomenology, Metaphysics, History of Ancient Philosophy,
Philosophy of Physics.





1. Introduction: the phenomenological approach to the problematic of matter

The concept of matter has played an ambivalent role in the
phenomenological tradition, right from its start in Husserl's thought.
Arguably, phenomenology was able by its effort to redefine the meaning of
matter to clarify its own approach of philosophical problems in opposition
to other competing currents such as Gestalt psychology, Neo-Kantianism, or
logical positivism (in particular in the Vienna Circle); but by a reversal
effect, this new take on matter was meant to expose phenomenology to an
internal problematic that became in many ways central to its own future
developments.
On the one hand indeed, against naturalism and all the derived forms
of sensualism, but also against a certain kind of empirical realism of
Kantian inspiration, the phenomenological appeal to matter was designed to
establish that the given, in so far as it is necessarily ruled by the
conditions of descriptive analysis, is entirely structured and formed by a
human openness which is essentially "meaning giving". In the Husserlian
framework, such an openness must be conceived on the ground of
consciousness and its lived experiences (Elebnisse). Thus, with the theory
of intentionality, as Husserl shapes it, one can define matter as "content"
(Inhalt), always specific to an act of consciousness, and it is the latter
that yields beforehand the formal framework within which matter qua content
gets integrated. A model of this philosophical move can be found in the
Logical Investigations, where Husserl assimilates the material laws
pertaining to the field of regional ontologies to "material categories"
(materiale Kategorien) that must be discovered and thought as "a priori
synthetic laws and necessities" (synthetisch-apriorischen Gesetzen und
Notwendigkeiten)[1]. Clearly, the theory of "material a priori" seems to
engage phenomenology on the way of a radicalization of the Copernican
Revolution initiated by Kant (for Kant on the contrary matter was always
given a posteriori in experience), since the goal is now to drive the whole
sphere of the given under the complete jurisdiction of meaning, via its
multifold constitution through the intentional acts of consciousness. In
this perspective, the meaning of matter seems to be solely functional and
relational, in comparison to the different modes by which phenomenality
structures itself, and these modes all consecrate the primacy of form,
itself referable to the meaning giving acts of consciousness. Indeed, the
method of eidetic variation applies even when one wants to discover
material essences: for example, by making vary different experiences of
colored objects, it is possible to put forward through description the
components of the material essence of color, for example that any
comprehension of a colored object must take place through a perception of
space. The synthesis of spatial extension and color constitutes a material
a priori (or a material essence) which, in contradistinction to formal a
priori (or formal essences), does not pertain to the forms and structures
of objectivity in general, but rather to the forms and structures of
various grounded regions of objectivity, or "regional ontologies" (in this
example, the material a priori of color is a structure of objects given in
the physical world, distinguished from the field of mathematical
idealities, or from the sphere of psychological states, etc.). The main
point here is that with the distinction between different layers of
"aprioricity" (formal, material), Husserl does not deny the fact that each
material a priori has to be given from within an intuitional noetic act
that comprehends it as a kernel of meaning, i.e. as a form, be it as it
were – and paradoxically – a material form. Such a paradox shows how
necessary it is for Husserlian phenomenology to renew with a mainly
functional characterization of the form-matter relationship, in conformity
with a long tradition of thinking that goes back to Aristotle.
On the other hand, however, the reality of matter also creates a
problem for phenomenology and its attempt, central to its approach, to
clarify the status of "the given". Indeed, for "the things themselves" to
be given, it is not only necessary that there should lie at the heart of
phenomena a "referential structure", according to which anything that
appears should be transitively directed towards a "subjective" pole capable
of gathering and uncovering its meaning. The fact of "givenness" also
testifies to an irreducible dimension of ontological exteriority without
which the given would inevitably degrade into a mere production or
intentional modification internal to the sphere of consciousness. In this
perspective, it seems that matter is called to play an essential role on
another scale, i.e. as a privileged touchstone for the phenomenological
discourse, whose concern must be to make sense through its descriptions of
a contact point between consciousness and the world, and even in some cases
of a stumbling block by which consciousness first encounters the given,
receives it before seizing it, experiences passively the materiality of
phenomenal being as a raw fact, before all objectification. But the
resurgence of a pre-objective and pre-predicative dimension of matter,
which becomes in Husserl the privileged theme of his genetic phenomenology
(the emphasis on the hyletic components of experience is here at stake),
creates a problem regarding the status of subjectivity itself, insofar as
the idealistic turn of transcendental phenomenology had, quite to the
contrary, preferred to insist on consciousness as an absolute and self-
sufficient source of meaning. In so far as matter both resists being fully
encompassed within the realm of meaning, and consequently is not entirely
reducible to the hylomorphic framework supposed to enlist it, one must
consider the concept of matter as a phenomenological challenge to the
complete self-constitution of consciousness. Does not matter push
phenomenology to renew with at least a minimal form of realism, according
to which consciousness, prior to any type of meaning giving activity, first
discovers the world as a fait accompli, to which it has always already been
delivered beforehand, a fact which it has no other choice but to accept it
and deal with it?
Here one could of course object that whatever gives itself – the
phenomenon – is always structured minimally as "something", and insofar as
this is the case the hypothesis of a raw materiality, of a shapeless
ὑποκείμενον that would constitute the underlying substratum of all formal
determinations, is simply senseless (this by the way would not even be a
phenomenological statement, just a point of grammar). Consequently, one
would have to renounce the very idea of phenomenalizing matter per se, and
condemn it as an abstraction that misunderstands the proper characteristic
of any given phenomenon to be necessarily endowed with meaning, even if
nothing more can be said of it that it is there (τόδε τι, ἐστί).
Nonetheless, everything will depend here on what is meant exactly here by
"phenomenalizing" or "phenomenalization". Indeed, it is very well possible
that matter, incapable of appearing (devoid of form – εἶδος – matter would
be invisible by definition, and always underground, it would evade
obstinately the light of appearing), should nevertheless have an impact on
phenomenality, as it were from "the outside", and in so doing would oblige
phenomenology to become aware of itself as an intrinsically limited and
finite λόγος.


2. The project: argumentation and methodology

As one can see, the equivocal status of matter allows us to put
forward a tension that is constitutive of the phenomenological method, of
its very object and even probably of its historical development. Our
postdoctoral project offers to explore this tension around three main
approaches. The first one will consist in analyzing and taking hold of the
complexity of the different intertwined layers and implications of the
concept of matter in Husserlian phenomenology. Special attention will be
given to the plurality of technical terms, and the different meanings
Husserl ascribes to each, by which the founder of phenomenology tries to
circumscribe the field of materiality (Materie, Stoff, hylè, archi-hylè).
Our aim here is to lay emphasis on the enrooted ambiguity within the
phenomenological concept of matter, since on the one hand matter refers to
objective contents that are conditional on the form of intentional acts of
consciousness, but on the other hand it is meant to play the crucial role
of a touchstone with the given, testifying to the latter's irreducibility
and at least relative exteriority to the intentional grasp (this part of
our research will be conducted during the first 8 months of our postdoc;
the results will be written down in the form of an article).
The second approach of our research will focus on the legacy of the
concept of matter in Heidegger's thought. On first observation, one could
judge that the hermeneutical structuring of phenomenology, which Heidegger
calls for right from the start of his philosophical career in the early
1920's, removes all philosophical pertinence to matter insofar as the
question of Being is indissolubly linked to the question of the meaning of
Being (and it goes without saying that traditionally the question of
meaning is linked to the notion of form much more than matter).
Furthermore, it is quite indisputable that for Heidegger the distinction of
metaphysical origin between forma and materia is nothing but a residual
symptom of the forgetting of Being. The form-matter distinction falls under
the rigid categorial apparatus with which metaphysical discourse, along
with its modern redefinition as theory of knowledge, has traditionally
confused Being with beings (i.e. entities), a confusion to which even
Husserl had fallen prey. However, one must also note that Heidegger's
phenomenological "return" to Aristotle, and more specifically his very
strong emphasis on the fundamental concepts of Aristotelian Physics
(starting as early as the 1920's during the Marburg period), participated
in his philosophical reassessment of the Greek conceptual distinction ὕλη –
μορφή. Described phenomenologically, the genuine way of Being of matter
appears as a "being-at-one's-disposal" (Bereitheit), where an entity that
has its origin in nature (φύσις) shows itself as ready-to-hand (zuhanden)
for a set of possible uses. In this sense, matter correctly understood
refers to the phenomenalization of nature in its most concrete dimension,
as always already integrated within the praxeological horizon of human
existence. However, here one must ask the question whether Heidegger does
not inevitably subordinate matter to the form of Dasein's projects, the
being which I am and which has Being as an issue. If "the wood is a forest
of timber, the mountain a quarry of rocks; the river is waterpower, the
wind is 'wind in the sales'"[2], is Heidegger then not just shifting the
thematic of matter, which Husserl had treated on a strictly epistemological
and categorial soil (i.e. the material a priori), onto the field of the
existential analytic, but by leaving untouched a fundamental presupposition
of Husserlian phenomenology, i.e. that nothing can be given unless it
appears within a structure of meaning that shapes beforehand the very
possibility of its manifestation? From this angle, the hermeneutical way of
Heideggerian phenomenology would even amount to a radicalization of
Husserl's theory of meaning, since it entails to simply erase the other
competing Husserlian conception of a pure sensory contact with the given in
passive originary experiences, and to replace it with the hermeneutical
thesis according to which the given is "always already" formed and
structured, where beings are from the very start included within the
referential interpretative structure of the "hermeneutical as", in a
network of worldly pre-constituted meanings (here "meaning" is not confined
to the much too narrow sphere of theoretical knowledge, it no longer
signifies the objective Bedeutung but must be understood as the practical
"significance" – Bedeutsamkeit – of entities ready-to-hand). As Heidegger
wrote famously in a passage of Sein und Zeit almost explicitly directed
against Husserl, but which in a way confirms the phenomenological
orientation towards the primacy of form (i.e. meaning) in the description
of phenomena:


"It requires a very artificial and complicated frame of mind to 'hear'
a 'pure noise'. The fact that motor-cycles and waggons are what we
proximally hear is the phenomenal evidence that in every case Dasein, as
Being-in-the-world, already dwells alongside what is ready-to-hand within-
the-world; it certainly does not dwell proximally alongside 'sensations';
nor would it first have to give shape to the swirl of sensations to provide
the springboard from which the subject leaps off and finally arrives at a
'world'. Dasein, as essentially understanding, is proximally alongside what
is understood"[3].


The same strategy can be observed in Heidegger's interpretation of
Aristotelianism. Indeed, when Heidegger recurrently admits to a positive
ontological sense of the distinction ὕλη – μορφή, he generally goes on
noticing that it is possible to minimize the role played by ὕλη, if not
reduce it completely to form (μορφή/εἶδος). Faithful here also to a certain
side of Husserlian phenomenology, Heidegger subscribes to the idea that the
given (i.e. beings) necessarily appears in the visibility of its aspect or
visage (Aussehen), to such a point that Being itself, understood as the
ontological movement by which beings enter into presence, is finally
nothing other than the clearing (Lichtung) that shelters the possibility of
all manifestation. Thus, in conformity with the spirit of Aristotelianism,
Heidegger does not hesitate to identify φύσις, the Greek name for the Being
of entities, with a movement of forming, which must be understood
phenomenologically in terms of μορφή as a « placing into the appearance »
(Gestellung in das Aussehen)[4]. In this line, an entity's matter – its own
tangible and sensory being – , i.e. its factuality understood as raw there-
being, is by no means the indications of a nocturnal or subterraneous side
of being refractory to description. Matter, quite to the contrary, is
really just a way for any entity to show one side of its numerous
determinations, to be meaningful as such, in one word: to be formed (in so
far as meaning and form should be interpreted phenomenologically as
"visible visage" – Aussehen). On close attention, one should not forget
that ὕλη in Greek literally means "constructible wood", not pure matter
(and certainly not an abstract kind of formless πρώτῃ ὕλη which, to be
sure, has no physical application in Aristotle's ontology), but a formed
matter, recognizable at its look. Thus, phenomenologically speaking matter
seems to be nothing else but a grounded modality of formal-being.
However, against all odds, during de 1930's Heidegger contemplated the
prospect of a residual ontological materiality standing in opposition to
meaningful and unconcealed Being, an opaque and impenetrable matter that
withdraws from the horizon of appearing, which he called "the earth"
(Erde). This concept, of Heracliteean and Hölderlinian inspiration, which
later would end up giving rise to an original conception of the phenomenon
of the world understood as the Fourfold (Geviert), subtly revives a certain
tradition of thinking that comprehends Being within the horizon of
elementality. The problem however is that such a conception weakens the
force of Heidegger's yet central and even cardinal distinction between the
ontological and the ontical, since one can wonder if Being qua earth still
stands the test of the ontological difference, in so far as the earth falls
within the horizon of what is (the realm of beings), be it the totality of
being-there regrouped in the unified and undifferentiated compaction of the
earthly ground (Grund) of all manifestation. (This second axis of our
project, regarding Heidegger's conception of matter, will be developed
between the 9th month and the 12th month of our postdoctoral fellowship, a
shorter period of time than necessary for treating the first one, because
on this topic some of the research will cover material already present in
my doctoral research; the results will be stated in the format of an
article).
This being said, and leaving the question open, it is certain that
neither Husserl nor Heidegger were ready to engage their thought on the
road of a new kind of materialism, because for both philosophers the very
idea of phenomenology was intricately tied to the primacy of meaning and to
man's central place in its deployment. In a third approach of our
postdoctoral project, we wish to call our attention on third-generation
phenomenologists such as Sartre, Fink, Merleau-Ponty, Henry, Patočka and
Levinas, in order to assess, through their common criticism of both
intentionality's primacy and the kind of ontological anthropocentrism which
such a primacy inevitably rests on, the fortunate destiny that the concept
of matter was to have in the future developments of phenomenology.
Expressions like "material phenomenology" (Henry), "ontological
materiality" (Levinas), Being's "viscosity" (Sartre), "dark ground" (dunkle
Grund – Fink), or "the ultimate and essential ὕλη" (Patočka), all testify
to the importance that matter was bound to gain in the prospect of
overcoming subjectivism, which perhaps even Heidegger had not completely
disentangled himself with. In particular, we wish to devote the larger part
of this third approach to Levinas' works, because it is he in our opinion
who went the furthest in this direction, by explicitly calling into
question the equation – and perhaps even the identification – of Being and
meaning, militating on the contrary for a material ontology where Being
could take on a fundamentally obscure and anonymous dimension. The theory
of the il y a – a genuine objection to the generosity of the Heideggerian
es gibt in so far as Being precisely no longer gives anything –, and then
its recovery in Totality and Infinity through the notion of the
"elemental", constitute original and to our eyes decisive attempts to
introduce resolutely into phenomenology (or at least at its border) what we
propose to call a "metaphysics of matter", whose Ancient derivation goes
back to the Heraclitean conception of χάος, to Anaximander's ἄπειρον and
even, as Derrida saw it quite accurately, to the Platonic χώρα[5] (and much
closer to us maybe, to Schelling's conception of the abyssal ground –
Ungrund – that Hölderlin for his part qualified as the "aorgic"); a
metaphysics of matter which undoubtedly functions in Levinas as a foil to
his metaphysics of the other, but which is no less the condition of Her
advent, since it introduces at the heart of subjectivity a radical
passivity, older than the classical categorial division between passivity
and activity, an ontological passivity of a subject riveted to itself and
bogged down in its own materiality, caught in the grips of a primordial and
unfathomable alterity. Such an infernal alterity of material Being has to
be sure nothing to do with the redemptive one of the Face (which is
"otherwise than Being"), but it nonetheless functions as a negative (in the
photographic sense), exposing the subject to a cold and mute Being which
Levinas, in a page of Totality and Infinity, even identified to the
infinite, be it "the bad infinite"[6]. (This third axis of our project will
be carried out during 12 months, between the 12th and the 24th month, and
will be presented in an article).


3. The project's innovative perspectives

By inquiring into the possibility of saying something about matter
without such an attempt inevitably leading matter into getting enlisted
within the orbit of categorial predication, and thus of formal
determination, our project can be seen to pursue a first general objective:
to contribute to the current renewal of phenomenology in the direction of a
phenomenological realism which challenges the paradigmatic equation of
Being and meaning (i.e. intelligibility understood in terms of formal
visibility). Needless to say that our project aims at calling into
question, through a reflection on matter, the primacy of the transcendental
thematic at the heart of phenomenology's method and history. Whether it is
transcendental idealism centered on subjectivity (Husserl) or ontology
understood as veritas transcendantalis (Heidegger)[7], phenomenology has
indeed admitted very early to the commensurability of Being and meaning, in
order to dig up the conditions of possibility of the phenomenal field. In
our view, even though we do not of course deny the validity of the horizon
of meaning, it is nevertheless necessary to think on new grounds the
question of Being in a way that does not unilaterally conclude that "to be"
always and primordially falls under the orbit of intelligibility. By
appealing to authors such as Fink, Patočka, Levinas or Sartre, we will try
in the name of this phenomenological realism, and on the testimony of the
concept of matter, to deconstruct ontology, in so far as ontologia rests
all too exclusively on the supposition of an essential commensurability of
beings - τὰ ὄντα – and the gathering of meaning – λόγος. Nonetheless, the
fact remains that such a realism must be of a phenomenological kind, and to
this extent it should not be confused with a new form of naturalism, or
more generally of objectivism, all kinds of realism which are necessarily
naïve in as much as they generally agree on the existence of a legality of
objective phenomena under the encompassing material nature or physical
world, and thus reinstate obliquely the idealist presupposition of the
primacy of meaning over being, in the guise of the causal physical laws of
nature, open to mathematical formalization. This realism even falls prey to
a second naivety, in so far as it discards the subject of experience, which
is yet the receiver of phenomena's manifestation. On the contrary, the
concept of a formless and radically indeterminate matter must allow us to
establish both the point of rupture of meaning, but also to contemplate the
latter as a lived reality within the experience of a subject which, by
itself, is therefore not only material, but also consists in an intentional
and even "spiritual" opening to a world of which he is an indissoluble
part, together with matter understood as the "obscure ground" of all
manifestation. Our project in phenomenological realism is therefore
conducive to the reinstatement of a dualist metaphysical stance.
Secondly, in so doing our project offers to reflect on the question
regarding the meaning of the act of description. As one knows, description
constitutes the spearhead of the phenomenological method, in its "return to
things themselves". Now the concept of matter, when understood as the
absence of all formal structure, inevitably creates a phenomenological
problem, since it is no longer clear how it is still possible to describe
it, given that matter – fundamentally nocturnal – obstinately evades the
light of appearing. By falling short of description's hold and grip, does
matter not force the phenomenologist, by a reversal effect, to accept that
his philosophical activity always participates, to a degree or another, in
the working out of θεωρία? On the contrary, does not matter, unknowable by
essence, stand outside phenomenology's field of competence? Nonetheless, if
matter certainly is unknowable (this is here perhaps after all just a
simple point of grammar), maybe it has a certain type of visibility of its
own, a problematic one to be sure (subterraneous and obscure), but which
perhaps can be conveyed by certain limit-experiences that bring it into
presence for what it is, i.e. as the domain foreign to meaningful being. In
the occasional breakdown of the sensory field of experience, where the felt
sensations cease to be capable of participating in the intentional shaping
of the object of perception, it seems that there are borderline states of
consciousness that afford for an affective and passive experience of
matter; like for example when the world of sounds starts dislocating due to
the strident noise of tinnitus, or when bizarre gleams torment the
distraught gaze of the insomniac; or even – and perhaps mostly – in the
sensory experience of pain itself, be it physical or psychical, the one
that is too intense to be contained and accepted, but which weighs on Being
like an opaque presence, incomprehensible and unbearable. The description
of these lived realities should be the phenomenologist's role (and not only
the clinician's or the psychologist's, in so far as the stakes here are
ontological, since it is the question of Being which is at issue), and such
descriptions have to be possible if the experience of matter is an
experience which actually occurs, and to which an access is still possible
through memory. Thus, by keeping track of Husserl's decisive analyses in
his 1904 lessons on the "internal consciousness of time", we shall try to
retrieve a set of methodological guidelines for a descriptive phenomenology
that confronts the difficulty of accounting for material data at a pre-
predicative and pre-objective level of conscious experience. In our view,
it will be necessary to take into consideration the most primitive form of
description, deixis (or at least its linguistic trace in the use of
demonstrative pronouns), i.e. the fact that a description, minimally (and
all is perhaps in this minimum so difficult to maintain), points in the
direction of an existing reality, without yet prejudging of the possibility
of saying anything more about it than the mere fact of its being-there, of
its material facticity that constitutes, in its very poverty and
ontological bareness, the soil of our existential condition.
Thirdly, our project offers to rethink the concept of finitude, which
is of course central to the phenomenological tradition, but which in our
opinion tends to be too often understood as the point of revelation of a
superior meaning (we have in mind here the typical Heideggerian analyses of
Sein-zum-Tode, where the "possibility of impossibility", far from
nullifying the meaning of Dasein's existence, on the contrary elevates it
to the possibility of a full-fledged authentic assumption of its own
meaning). On the contrary, indeterminate matter, which all existing being
carries bodily in its flesh, testifies to a gap and to an exteriority in
the very depths of its Being. The raw fact of the there is (il y a) is a
menace because it is fundamentally indifferent to the existent's sake.
Things, living beings, man: all entities would in this light have to be
thought of as the fragile working out of an escape out of the material
ground, as an act of separation and of extraction (in Levinas' terms: as a
hypostasis) out of this origin of indetermination (in the sense of
Anaximander's ἄπειρον). Individuals, in order to trigger their formal
determinations (i.e. to set the conditions of their separate identity),
must keep at an ontological distance the chaotic material base from which
they originate and which they are made of. Thus, throughout existence there
is an unrest that is the lot of all finite beings facing the Ground's
infinite power of retaking hold of the individual space that it
mysteriously granted to beings. Yet, matter is not only an infinite
obstructive force resisting individuation processes. It is also, in another
sense, the nourishment, the feeding soil (the humus), the matrix that
shelters the living beings, and which allows them to rest on; it is also
matter that productive technical know-how takes hold of in order to
appropriate and transform nature. Should one, against all expectation,
admit to an ontological generosity on the part of matter, which seems
difficult to conciliate with the fact of its chaotic indifference? Or is
not the enjoyment of matter a possibility that only appears once the
existent has conquered beforehand its right to exist and its ontological
quant-à-soi, in the fight against a primordial materiality that can be
temporarily tamed, for lack of being totally overcome? This is of course a
central question in Levinas's works, on which we will dwell.
The notion of "chaos", together with the one of "obscure ground"
(Dunkle Grund), is essential for thinking a radicalized matter, refractory
to the ruling orders of formal structuring. We touch here upon our
project's last general orientation: to contribute to a cosmology of matter.
Matter is interesting because, as for dependent notions that all have
matter as their conceptual foundation (such as the incarnated flesh – Leib
–; the body, alive or inert – Körper –; or even the entire palette of
affective psychical experiences that take place at its contact – the
impression, the hyletic datum, and more generally sensibility), it opens to
the question of the world. Matter allows to ask whether the world,
understood as the horizon for the constitution of the totality of beings,
designates a cosmos that is necessarily ordered and structured (or at least
characterized by an endless ordering movement), or if it also shelters a
primitively and originarily obscure dimension, both chaotic and
unfathomable, irreducible to any given order and devoid of any legality
able to comprehend it. This last orientation is perhaps the most profound,
but also the most delicate, because it is here that a phenomenology of
matter comes closest both to speculative metaphysics and to certain aspects
of philosophy of physics. The interesting question, which we wish to broach
while we carry out our project, is simply to assess how a worldly order is
able to happen, to occur, out of a primordial situation of indetermination,
without injecting retroactively within chaos a preliminary sketch of order,
or at least a structural tendency towards order. Of course, a possible and
perhaps too easy answer would be, from the side of contemporary physics, to
doubt the very pertinence of an ontology of chaos. Arguably, in physics the
so-called "theory of chaos" does not allow chaos to be anything else than a
mere epistemological concept for qualifying certain complex systems whose
evolution are unpredictable due to their high sensitivity to initial
conditions (and where indetermination is merely tantamount to a saturation
of determinations operating simultaneously). However, even though
contemporary physics is manifestly prone to conceiving matter as always
already integrated within structures at different levels (connectivity
structures of quantum entanglement, metric structures, gravitational
structures, etc.), to the point where one can even argue that the methods
for explaining physical phenomena all bear on the postulation of a
structural cosmology[8]; in our opinion matter is an interesting concept
precisely because it commands us to meditate on the articulation between
disorder and ordered structure, instead of simply ruling out disorder as a
conceptual abstraction devoid of any real content. Thus, our ambition is to
make an attempt, in light of this project, to search through the most
recent developments of experimental physics and contemporary philosophy of
physics, in order to find complementary theoretical resources for getting a
firmer hold on this radical dimension at the heart of the concept of
matter. (These various goals at the heart of our project – phenomenological
realism, rethinking description, the meaning of finitude, the
"cosmophysical" question of chaotic matter – will be broached from the
beginning of our project, but will give way to a specific research in the
last quarter of our postdoctoral research, between the 24th and the 36th
month; we expect to be writing down the results of the latter in the form
of at least two articles, one of which will be specially focused on the
benefits that can be derived from a phenomenological reflection on the
problem of matter for research in physics and philosophy of physics).




4. Bibliography

* Bibliography of selected works from the main corpus:

Works by Edmund Husserl:
- Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenlogie und phänomenlogischen Philosophie.
Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie (Hua.
III), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1950 ;
- Ideen zur einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie.
Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution (Hua.
IV), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1952 ;
- Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale
Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie
(Hua. VI), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1976 ;
- Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstesens (Hua. X), The Hague,
Martinus Nijhoff, 1969 ;
- Analysen zur passiven Synthesis. Aus Vorlesungs – und
Forschungsmanuskripten (Hua. XI), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1966 ;
- Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907 (Hua. XVI), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff,
1973 ;
- Formale und transzendentale Logik. Versuch einer Kritik der logischen
Vernunft (Hua. XVII), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1974 ;
- Logische Untersuchungen. Erster Teil. Prolegomena zur reinen Logik (Hua.
XVIII), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1975 ;
- Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Teil. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie
und Theorie der Erkenntnis (Hua. XIX), The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff,
1984 ;
- Die « Bernauer Manuskripte » über das Zeitbewußtsein (Hua. XXXIII),
Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001 ;
- Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit. Texte aus dem Nachlass (Hua. XXXVIII),
New York, Springer, 2005 ;
- Späte Texte über Zeitkonstitution [1929-1934]. Die C-Manuskripte,
Husserliana Materialien, New York, Springer, 2006.

Works by Martin Heidegger:
- Die Kategorien und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus, in Frühe Schriften
(GA 1), Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1978 ;
- Sein und Zeit, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1960 ; (GA 2), Frankfurt am Main,
Klostermann, 1977 ;
- Der Ursprung des Kuntswerkes, in Holzwege 1935-1936) (GA 5), Frankfurt am
Main, Klostermann, 2003 ;
- Nietzsche I (GA 6.1), Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1996 ;
- « Die Frage nach der Technik » in Vorträge und Aufsätze (GA 7), Frankfurt
am Main, Klostermann, 2000 ;
- « Vom Wesen und Begriff der Phusis. Aristoteles, Physik B,1 » in
Wegmarken (GA 9), Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 2004 ;
- Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie (GA 18), Frankfurt am Main,
Klostermann, 2002 ;
- Grundbegriffe der antiken Philosophie (GA 22), Frankfurt am Main,
Klostermann, 2004 ;
- Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (GA 24), Frankfurt am Main,
Klostermann, 1997 ;
- Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt - Endlichkeit – Einsamkeit (GA 29-
30), Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 2004 ;
- Aristoteles, Metaphysik J 1-3. Von Wesen und Wirklichkeit der Kraft (GA
33), Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 2006 ;
- Nietzsche: Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst (GA 43), Frankfurt am Main,
Klostermann, 1985 ;
- Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis) (GA 65), Frankfurt am Main,
Klostermann, 1994.
- M. Heidegger, E. Fink, Heraklit. Seminar Wintersemester 1966-1967,
Frankfurt am Main, Klostermann, 1970.

Works by Emmanuel Levinas:
- Théorie de l'intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl, Paris, Vrin,
1984 ;
- De l'évasion, Paris, Librairie générale française (coll. Le livre de
poche), 1998 ;
- En découvrant l'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger, Paris, Vrin, 2010 ;
- De l'existence à l'existant, Paris, Vrin, 1990 ;
- Le temps et l'autre, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1983 ;
- Entre nous. Essai sur le penser-à-l'autre, Paris, Grasset, 1991 ;
- Totalité et infini. Essai sur l'extériorité, Paris Librairie générale
française (coll. Le livre de poche), 1971 ;
- Dieu, la mort et le temps, Paris, Grasset, 1993 ;
- Autrement qu'être ou au-delà de l'essence, Paris, Librairie générale
française (coll. Le livre de poche), 1978.

Works by Michel Henry:
- L'Essence de la manifestation, Paris, Presses universitaires de France,
1990 ;
- Phénoménologie matérielle, Paris, Presses universitaire de France, 1990 ;
- Incarnation. Une philosophie de la chair, Paris, Seuil, 2000.

Works by Jan Patočka:
- Aristote, ses devanciers, ses successeurs, trad. E. Abrams, Paris, Vrin,
2011 ;
- Introduction à la phénoménologie de Husserl, trad. E. Abrams, Grenoble,
Millon, 1992 ;
- Le monde naturel et le mouvement de l'existence humaine, trad. E. Abrams,
Dodrecht, Boston, Londres, Kluwer, 1988 ;
- Liberté et sacrifice, trad. E. Abrams, Grenoble, Millon, 1990 ;
- Papiers phénoménologiques, trad. E. Abrams, Grenoble, Millon, 1995 ;
- Platon et l'Europe, trad. E. Abrams, Lagrasse, Verdier, 1997 ;
- Qu'est-ce que la phénoménologie ?, trad. E. Abrams, Grenoble, Millon,
1988.


Works by Eugen Fink:
- Alles und Nichts. Ein Umweg zur Philosophie, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff
,1959 ;
- Spiel als Weltsymbol, Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1960 ;
- Metaphysik und Tod, , Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1969 ;
- M. Heidegger, E. Fink, Heraklit. Seminar Wintersemester 1966-1967,
Frankfurt am Main ; Klostermann, 1970 ;
- Welt und Endlichkeit, Würzburg, Königshausen und Neumann, 1990.


* Complementary bibliography:

- J. Derrida, L'écriture et la différence, Paris, Seuil, 1967 ;
- J. Derrida, Khôra, Paris, Galilée, 1993 ;
- M. Merleau-Ponty, La phénoménologie de la perception, Paris, Gallimard,
1976 ;
- M. Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible, Paris, Gallimard, 1964 ;
- M. Merleau-Ponty, Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression : cours
au Collège de France : notes, 1953, Genève, Métis, 2011 ;
- J.-P. Sartre, La nausée, Paris, Gallimard, 1989 ;
- J.-P. Sartre, La transcendance de l'ego, Paris, Vrin, 1992 ;
- J.-P. Sartre, L'être et le néant : essai d'ontologie phénoménologique,
Paris, Gallimard, 1980 ;
- M. Scheler, Wesen und Formen der Sympathie. Der « Phänomenologie der
Sympathiegefühle », Bonn, Cohen, 1923.
-----------------------
[1] E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Hua. XIX, The Hague, Boston,
Lancaster, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984, 3rd Investigation, §11.
[2] M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1960 (9th édition), p.
70 ; Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, New
York/Evanston, Harper & Row, 1962, p. 100. 
[3] M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, op. cit., p. 164 ; trans., p. 207.
[4] Cf. M. Heidegger, Vom Wesen und Begriff der φύσις. Aristoteles, Physik
B, 1 (1939), in Wegmarken (GA 9), Frankfurt/Main, V. Klostermann, 1976 ; On
the essence and concept of φύσις in Aristotle's Physics B, 1, trans. T.
Sheehan, in M. Heidegger, Pathmarks, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1998, p. 212.
[5] Cf. J. Derrida, Khôra, Paris, Galilée, 1993.
[6] E. Levinas, Totalité et infini. Essai sur l'extériorité, Paris,
Librairie générale française, 1990, p. 170.
[7] Cf. M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, op. cit., § 7c, p. 38.
[8] Cf. M. Esfeld, « The Modal Nature of Structures in Ontic Structural
Realism », International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 2009 (23),
p. 179-194.