Conference paper
AFTER HUSSERL – ARISTOTLE AND KANT
Davor Rodin
; professor emeritus University of Zagreb
Abstract
The 1970s movement aimed at rehabilitation of practical philosophy was an
intellectual rebellion against scientific universalism. The movement was by
no means unique. Some sought rehabilitation of practical philosophy in reinterpretation
of Aristotle’s ethics and politics. In these parts, Ante Pažanin
and Danilo Pejović inclined towards this strand. To Kant’s and Hegel’s universal
rationalism they opposed Aristotle, who drew a clear distinction between
practice, poiesis and theory. Instead of firmly establishing a new semantic
paradigm in the understanding of practical relations, one moved back
into the “pre-scientific” history of practical philosophy, i.e. towards Aristotle.
Nostalgia for Aristotle’s Athens suppressed the reality of contemporary
life. Others sought new paths in accordance with Husserl’s, Heidegger’s and
Wittgenstein’s semantic criticism of metaphysical tradition, both in its variant
of Kant’s and Hegel’s scientific philosophy of identity and in the version
of Aristotle’s analogous logo-centrism. On the whole, all methodical preconditions
for such a movement had already existed in Edmund Husserl’s early
works. Husserl is the author of the semantic turn of the Western logo-centric
metaphysics which “antiquated” both Aristotle and Kant. Through an interpretation
of Husserl’s diagnosis of the crisis of European sciences and the
understanding of his overcoming of neo-Kantian formal transcendentalism,
the author puts forward a semantic understanding of practice and politics, and
shows how it is possible to found practical philosophy utilizing the devices
of Husserl’s phenomenology. He concludes that in the present day Husserl’s
phenomenology is undoubtedly relevant for both natural-scientific and socialscientific
research.
Keywords
practical philosophy; phenomenology; semantics of practice; Husserl; Heidegger; Aristotle; Kant; Pažanin
Hrčak ID:
64116
URI
Publication date:
16.1.2011.
Visits: 1.995 *