2010 – 2013: Habitus, Memory, Sediment: Facets of a Phenomenological Approach to Tradition

ABSTRACT

The project deals with the problem of tradition in phenomenology. To this extent, it aims to combine the structural perspectives offered by three great areas of phenomenological research: memory, habit and sedimentation. All three represent manners in which, at the elementary level of everyday life-world, we are able to carry along, assume and assimilate our lived past. Our starting point is the analysis of the life-world conducted by Husserl and Heidegger. The life-world is the horizon of our daily practical life, and as such it represents the primary field of all constitution of meaning. In view of the dimension of the life-world, we seek to document the forms, the functions and the structure of the way we retain our own lived past, by trying to find their unity in the phenomenon called by Husserl traditionalizing.

Our research will systematically lay out, by means of a rigorous exegesis, the significance of Husserl’s conception, also following its later developments in the work of other phenomenologists, like Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricœur, Patočka, Schütz, or Alexandru Dragomir.

Finally, we wish to sketch out a few concrete hermeneutical applications, by analyzing some exemplary phenomena of everyday life-world, like the wearing of habitual things (Dragomir, 2005), past-depositing objects (photography, souvenir), the familiarity of lived spaces, the habitual forms of everyday motivational processes, like routine, boredom or monotony etc. Through our entire research, we will emphasize the points in which philosophical conceptual analysis need to be further complemented by empirical sciences like psychology, sociology or cultural studies.

PROJECT INFO

  • Project director: Dr. Christian FERENCZ-FLATZ
  • Project title: Habitus, Memory, Sediment: Faces of a Phenomenological Approach to Tradition.
  • Project code: PN-II-RU-TE-2010-155
  • Program: “Tinere Echipe”
  • Financed by: CNCS-UEFISCDI
  • Period of Time: August 2010 – July 2013
  • Funding: 642.536 lei

RESEARCH TEAM

Current team:

Past team members:

EVENTS

  1. Workshop (Alexandru Dragomir Institute for Philosophy/ Romanian Society for Phenomenology): Urmă-Sediment-Memorie corporală, the 24th of June 2013, Casa Lovinescu, Bucharest. The workshop is organized by Christian Ferencz-Flatz in collaboration with Paul Marinescu – PD-2011-3-0206 and Cristian Ciocan – TE-2010-156.

Year 2010 (August – December)

  • Scheduling of project meetings; systematisation of necessary bibliographical material;
  • Attending an international conference;
  • Publication of an article in an ISI indexed journal;
  • Themes discussed:
    • „lifeworld” and science in Husserl, Heidegger and Schütz;
    • the idea of a phenomenology of „occasionality”;
    • the manifold meanings of „foundation” in Husserl and Heidegger;
    • sedimentation and meaningfulness

Year 2011

  • Organising a seminar on the problem of history in Being and Time;
  • Organising a seminar on the relation between hermeneutics and phenomenology in Ricoeur;
  • Publishing the romanian translation of Edmund Husserl, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie/ Criza ştiinţelor europene şi fenomenologia transcendentală (Bucharest, Humanitas, 2011, 472 p.);
  • Organising the national conference: Fenomenologie și Istorie, 21-22 October 2011, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest;
  • Publishing the papers of the conference: Timp, memorie și tradiție. Studii de fenomenologia istoriei (Bucharest, ZetaBooks, 2011, 232 p.);
  • Attending 3 international and 1 national conferences;
  • Attending 3 research stays at european universities;
  • Publishing an article in a ISI indexed journal and another 3 in internationally indexed journals;
  • Editing the dossier of Studia Phaenomenologica XI, 2011 (ISI indexed) on „tradition and phenomenology”;
  • Themes discussed:
    • aperceptive sedimentation and objects as carriers of the past;
    • sedimentation and scientific idealisation in Husserl;
    • habitualisation and the consciousness of practical posibilities;
    • bodily habituality and the ontology of the self;
    • film as a mode of memorial representation and historical discourse;
    • the reality and the alterity of the past;
    • temporal distance as a chance of historical understanding;

Year 2012

  • Organising the national conference: Figuri ale vulnerabilităţii existenţiale. De la uitarea de sine la uitarea fiinţei, 18-19 October 2012, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest;
  • Publishing the romanian translation of Edmund Husserl, Erfahrung und Urteil/ Experienţă şi judecată (Bucharest, Humanitas, 2012, 592 p.)
  • Attending 2 international conferences;
  • Attending 4 research stays at european universities;
  • Publishing an article in a ISI indexed journal and another 4 in internationally indexed journals;
  • Themes discussed:
    • the idea of a phenomenological genealogy;
    • the retroactive modifiability of the past;
    • forgetting as revelation of time;
    • sedimentation and constitution in Husserl;
    • bodily habituality and the social prescription of gestures;
    • tradition and truth in Gadamer;

Year 2013 (January – July)

  • Organising the workshop: Urmă-Sediment-Memorie corporală, 20 June 2013, Bucharest, Casa Lovinescu;
  • Publishing the Translation of Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologhische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles/ Interpretări fenomenologice la Aristotel, Bucharest, Humanitas (forthcoming);
  • Publishing the authored monograph Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Amorse pentru o fenomenologie a trecutului, Bucharest, Humanitas (forthcoming);
  • Attending 3 international conferences;
  • Publishing an article in a ISI indexed journal and another 2 in internationally indexed journals;
  • Themes discussed:
    • destruction and historical research in phenomenology;
    • forms of implicit memory;
    • „arhi-familiarity” as objectified memory;
    • the „trace” as a residual dimension of tradition;
    • practical habitualisation and the typification of situations;
    • the problem of „generations” and phenomenology;
    • aperception, sedimentation and empathy in Husserl;
    • tradition as the fundament for empathy in the early Heidegger;
    • memory as a condition of film reception;
    • conceptual sedimentation.

2014

2013

  • Martin Heidegger, Interpretări fenomenologice la Aristotel (Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles) – translation by Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Bucharest, Humanitas, 2013.

2012

2011

2013

2012

  • Christian Ferencz-Flatz, The Ever-changing Past. Husserl on Retroactive Modifications, at the Annual Meeting of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology: The Varieties of Phenomenology, 07-09 June 2012, Oslo, Norway;
  • Paul Marinescu, La vulnérabilité de l’être historique. La tension d’un indécidable : oubli destructeur / oubli fondateur, at the International Conference on Ricoeur Studies: Through crisis and conflict. Thinking differently with Paul Ricœur, 24-27 September 2012, Lecce, Italy;

2011

  • Deodath Zuh, Natur und Geist in Halle. Deskription des Verhältnisses von Alltag und Wissenschaft in Husserls Hallenser Periode, at the Colloque Natur und Geist Husserl-Arbeitstage 2011, 4-5 November 2011, Husserl-Archiv, Universität zu Köln, Germany;
  • Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Filmul ca formă de cunoaștere istorică, at the National Collloque Text și imagine, 27-28 October 2011, Al. Ioan Cuza University, Jassy, Romania;
  • Paul Marinescu, Traduire le Passé: Cheminer entre des Commémorations Réifiantes et des Oublis Irréversibles, at the International Colloque New Perspectives on Hermeneutics in the Social Sciences and Practical Philosophy, 13-16 September 2011, Moscow, Russia;
  • Denisa Butnaru, Minimal Embodiment and Its Implications in the Shaping of Selfhood, at the International Colloque Intertwining body-self-world, 27-30 July 2011, St. Catherine College, Oxford, Great Britain;
  • Paul Marinescu, L’oubli comme phénomène inaugural de l’herméneutique heideggérienne, at the International Colloque Heidegger: Tradition et oubli, 31 May- 03 June 2011, Universités du Nouveau-Brunswick & St. Thomas, Fredericton, Canada;
  • Christian Ferencz-Flatz, Objects with a past. Husserl on ad-memorizing apperceptions, at the Annual Meeting of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology: Phenomenology in Times of Crisis, 28.04.-01.05.2011, Reykjavik, Island;

2010