Phenomenology: linguistic or transcendental?

FWF Project J 4534 (Schrödinger Program)

Project leader: Bernhard Ritter

Duration: 21.01.2023 - 20.01.2024

Funded by: FWF (Austrian Science Fund)

 

The FWF project "Phenomenology: linguistic or transcendental?" (Schrödinger Program) by Dr. Bernhard Ritter has been running since 21 January 2021. The main protagonists of the project are Edmund Husserl, the founder of classical phenomenology, and J.L. Austin, who is better known for his theory of speech acts than for his concept of "linguistic phenomenology". The project's approach is based on the following maxim: to know how one can in principle move from one position to the other and why one might want to do so is to know how they relate to each other. The relationship between Austin and Husserl is to be presented as if linguistic phenomenology had emerged from transcendental phenomenology. It is therefore not a matter of the rational reconstruction of an actual development, but of the rational construction of a possible one. In the end, such an approach can probably only be justified by the persuasive power of the corresponding narrative. There is also a "right or wrong", but more in the sense of the question of whether France is hexagonal than in the sense of whether SARS-CoV-2 originated in China. "Is France really hexagonal?" is, as Austin says, not necessarily a meaningful question.

 

You can find out more about the project at https://kfunigraz.academia.edu/BernhardRitter.