Phenomenology of Life - From the Animal Soul to the Human Mind

Transcendental phenomenology presumed to have overcome the classic mind-body dichotomy in terms of consciousness. Should we indeed dissolve the specificity of human consciousness by explaining human experience in its multiple sense-giving modalities through the physiological functions of the brain? The present collection of studies addresses this crucial question challenging such "naturalizing" reductionism from multiple angles.

"Transcendental phenomenology presumed to have overcome the classic mind-body dichotomy in terms of consciousness, yet, according to progress in scientific studies, the biological functions of the brain seem to appropriate significant functions attributed traditionally to consciousness. Should we indeed dissolve the specificity of human consciousness by explaining human experience in its multiple sense-giving modalities through the physiological functions of the brain? The present collection of studies addresses this crucial question challenging such "naturalizing" reductionism from multiple angles. In search for the roots of "The Specifically Human Experience" (Bombala), moving along the line of "Animality and Intellection"(Gosetti-Ferencei), "Naturalistic Attitude and Personalistic Attitude"(Villela-Petit), and numerous other perspectives, we arrive at a novel proposal to explain the scholar functional differentiation of conscious modalities. We reach their source in the ontopoietic thread conducting the Logos of Life in its stepwise "Evolutive Unfolding"(Carmen Cozma), and in "sentience" as its quintessential core of further irreducible continuity (Tymieniecka) dispelling dichotomies and reductionisms. TOC:Acknowledgements. Thematic Study.- Section I: Amimality and Consciousness.- Section II: Sources of Humanity.- Section III: In Search of Experience.- Section IV: Moral Element of Experience.- Section V: The Creative Turn.- Section VI: Creativity and Aesthetic Experience.- Index of Names."

Animality and Consciousness.- Nietzsche's Bestiary. Animal, Man, Superman.- "Strange Kinship": Merleau-Ponty on the Human-Animal Relation.- Husserl's Intersubjectivity and the Possibility of Living with Nonhuman Persons.- Vertigo and the Beetle out of the Box. On the Representation of Inner Mental States.- Bodies and More Bodies: Trying to Find Experience.- Sources of Humanity.- Nature and Men. The Common Destiny.- In Search of the Sources of Humanity.- The Historicity of Body and Soul.- In Search of Experience.- An Empirical Phenomenological Approach To Experiences.- The Ethics of Attention.- Between Animality and Intellection: Phenomenology of the Child-Consciousness in Proust and Merleau-Ponty.- Naturalistic and Personalistic Attitude.- Mamardashvili on thinking and sensitivity.- Moral Element of Experience.- "The Ontopoietic Unfolding of Life" - A Conceptual System for an Ethics Focusing on the "Bios".- Ontological Intentionality and Moral Consciousness in Human Experience.- Gibt Es Eine Ethik Der Lebenswelt?.- Traces Left by Levinas: Is "Humanism of the Other" Possible?.- On the subject of Heidegger: Existence, Person, Alterity.- The Creative Turn.- La Volonté Husserlienne En Tant Que Pouvoir Créateur.- Mental Experience and Creativity: H. Bergson, E. Husserl, P. Jurevi?s and A-T. Tymieniecka.- Learning and Creativity.- Education Without Paideia. A Phenomenological View of Education Today.- Creativity and Aesthetic Experience.- When the given becomes the Chosen.- Gadamer and the "Traditionalist" School on Art and the Divine.- Aesthetic Virtuality of the Architectural-Natural Landscape in Modern Communications.- Vitalogical Aesthetics. The Idea of Beauty in African Culture, Art and Philosophy.