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Sara Heinämaa

University of Jyväskylä, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, Faculty Member

University of Helsinki, Department of History, Philosophy, Culture and Art Studies, Adjunct

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Address: University of Jyväskylä
Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy
P.O. Box 35
40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland

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Papers by Sara Heinämaa

Two ways of understanding persons: A Husserlian distinction

Phenomenology and Mind, no. 15, eds. Roberta De Monticelli and Francesca De Vecchi, Firenze University Press, pp.92–103., 2019

This paper clarifies the distinction that Edmund Husserl makes between two different ways of unde... more This paper clarifies the distinction that Edmund Husserl makes between two different ways of understanding other persons, their actions and motivations: the experiential or empirical way, on the one hand, and the genuinely or authentically intuitive way, on the other hand. The paper argues that Husserl's discussion of self-understanding clarifies his concept of the intuitive understanding of others and allows us to explicate what is involved in it: not just the grasping of the other's actual motivations of action but also the grasping of her motivational possibilities. The paper ends by discussing the dynamic character of the personal subject.

Existential-phenomenological insights into collective intentionality

Australasian Philosophical Review, 2024

Book Description of Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values

by Sara Heinämaa and Mirja H Hartimo

Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values, 2022

This book offers an updated and comprehensive phenomenology of norms and normativity. It is the f... more

Book Description of Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters

Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters, Routledge, 2022

Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches,... more Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics.

Une approche phénoménologique du moi : temporalité, finitude et intersubjectivité

Diogène

Strange vegetation: Emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November

SATS

This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November.... more This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November. I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson’s book is the autumn forest that surrounds the abandoned Moomin house. The decomposing forest is not just an emblem of the inner lives of the guests that gather in the house but is an active character itself: an ambiguous life form that creeps in the house and must be expelled from its living core. I further demonstrate that the emotion of disgust has a crucial role in Jansson’s narrative, and that an adequate analysis of the intentional content of disgust allows us to see what is at issue in the relations between the characters. In my reading, the main insight of Tove Jansson’s last Moomin book is not about loss or sorrow but is about the human capacity to begin anew by composing novel wholes from scraps.

Introduction: Phenomenological approaches to Tove Jansson’s fiction

SATS

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original... more

Anonymity and personhood: Merleau-Ponty’s account of the subject of perception

Continental Philosophy Review, 2015

From decisions to passions: Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Husserl’s reduction

Contributions to Phenomenology, 2002

Selfhood, consciousness, and embodiment: A Husserlian approach

Consciousness, 2007

... in D. Carr and C. Lotz (eds.), Subjektivität – Verantwortung – Wahrheit: Neue Aspekte der Phä... more

The self and the others: Common topics for Husserl and Wittgenstein

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2012

Several commentators have argued that Husserl's phenomenological project is compromised or even d... more Several commentators have argued that Husserl's phenomenological project is compromised or even destroyed by Wittgenstein's critical inquiries into our use of psychological concepts. In contrast to oppositional interpretations, this paper explicates certain crucial connections between Husserl's phenomenology and Wittgenstein's late thinking-shared views that concern the embodied nature of selfhood and our relations to other selves. In line with certain recent contributions, I argue that there are important similarities between Husserl's analysis of these phenomena and Wittgenstein's remarks on our use of language and that these connections, when noticed and explicated, can help us avoid simplified, barren contrasts and get clear about our actual philosophical alternatives. Several commentators have argued that Husserl's and Wittgenstein's approaches to the problem of other minds are directly oppositional, if not explicitly conflictual. Many Wittgenstein scholars tend to take Husserl's theories of selfhood and otherness as a sophisticated form of Cartesian subjectivism or idealism and claim that Wittgenstein's critical investigations show that such an approach is as philosophically hopeless as its historical predecessors. Husserl's phenomenology is supposed to be motivated or regulated by a false Sara Heinämaa is a Docent and Senior Lecturer of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is currently working as an Academy Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, where she also leads the research group, European Rationality in the Break from Modernity, financed by the Academy of Finland. She is co-founder of The Nordic Society for Phenomenology and at the moment operates as its president. Heinämaa's expertise is in phenomenology, existential philosophy, philosophy of mind, and history of philosophy; her work focuses on the problems of perception, embodiment, selfhood, personhood, and intersubjectivity. She is the author of Toward a

Embodiment and expressivity in Husserl's phenomenology: From Logical Investigations to Cartesian Meditations

SATS, 2000

... null Addis, Mark / Grassme Binderup, Lars / Carlshamre, Staffan / Emundts, Dina / Christensen... more

Strange vegetation: Emotive undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November

SATS–Northern European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 19, no. 1, pp.41–67, 2018

This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November.... more This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November. I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson’s book is the autumn forest that surrounds the abandoned Moomin house. The decomposing forest is not just an emblem of the inner lives of the guests that gather in the house but is an active character itself: an ambiguous life form that creeps in the house and must be expelled from its living core. I further demonstrate that the emotion of disgust has a crucial role in Jansson’s narrative, and that an adequate analysis of the intentional content of disgust allows us to see what is at issue in the relations between the characters. In my reading, the main insight of Tove Jansson’s last Moomin book is not about loss or sorrow but is about the human capacity to begin anew by composing novel wholes from scraps.

Keywords: Tove Jansson, Moomin, Aurel Kolnai, disgust, emotion, perception, movement, death

Strange vegetation: Emotive undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November

I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson's book is the autumn forest that surrounds the... more I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson's book is the autumn forest that surrounds the abandoned Moomin house. The decomposing forest is not just an emblem of the inner lives of the guests that gather in the house but is an active character itself: an ambiguous life form that creeps in the house and must be expelled from its living core. I further demonstrate that the emotion of disgust has a crucial role in Jansson's narrative, and that an adequate analysis of the intentional content of disgust allows us to see what is at issue in the relations between the characters. In my reading, the main insight of Tove Jansson's last Moomin book is not about loss or sorrow but is about the human capacity to begin anew by composing novel wholes from scraps.

On the complexity and wholeness of human beings: A Husserlian perspective

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 25, no. 3, pp.393–406, 2017

At the very beginning of the first division of Being and Time, Heidegger distinguishes his own Da... more At the very beginning of the first division of Being and Time, Heidegger distinguishes his own Dasein-analytic and the new phenomenological hermeneutics that it motivates from Husserl's classical phenomenology which, in Heidegger's reading, is predominated by epistemological interests and misguided by taken for granted concepts. Heidegger attacks classical phenomenology as a strayed form of philosophical anthropology, hopelessly entangled with ontic inquiries and with empirical notions of human life. Thus, he argues that his former teacher falls victim to fundamental mistakes that are analogous to those that strain 19 th and 20 th century life philosophies and all philosophical "personalism" (Heidegger [1929] 1993 47/72).

Epoché as personal transformation: On the similarities between the philosophical change of attitude and religious conversions

Phänomenologischen Forschungen, 2019

In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl draws a peculiar par... more In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl draws a peculiar parallel between the phenomenological-philosophical change of attitude and religious conversions. He writes: "Perhaps it even will become manifest that the total phenomenological attitude and the epoché belonging to it are called [berufen] in essence to effect first a complete personal transformation [Wandlung], comparable first to a religious conversion [Umkehrung], which, however, over and above this, bears within itself the sense of the greatest existential transformation which is assigned to mankind as such." 1 Husserl does not explain this parallel in any way or characterize the suggested similarity between the two types of transformations at issue, the philosophical and the religious. He does not refer to any relevant discussions of spiritual conversions or vocational transformations -neither to his earlier reflections in the so-called Kaizo essays nor to any contemporary or classical accounts.

Phenomenology of orgasm and the dynamics of desire

"An equivocal couple overwhelmed by life": A Phenomenological analysis of pregnancy

philoSOPHIA, 2014

Two conceptions of human generativity prevail in contemporary feminist philosophy. First, several... more Two conceptions of human generativity prevail in contemporary feminist philosophy. First, several contributors argue that the experience of pregnancy, when analyzed by phenomenological tools, undermines several distinctions that are central to western philosophy, most importantly the subject-object distinction and the self-other and own-alien distinctions. This line of argument was already outlined by Iris Marion Young in her influential essay "Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation" (1984). The other dominant argument is related to the first one, and it states that organic birth is the event that establishes the first experiential separation between the self and the other. On this understanding the mother-fetus relation would not involve any relations between two corporeal selves; all such relations would be postnatal. This notion has been defended, for example, by Christine Schües (1997, 2000) and Johanna Oksala (2003). 1

The Living body and its position in metaphysics: Merleau-Ponty’s dialogue with Descartes

Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation: Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries, eds. Dan Zahavi, Sara Heinämaa and Hans Ruin, pp.23–48, 2003

The Cartesian idea of the human body as a human non-closed, open inasmuch as governed by thought ... more The Cartesian idea of the human body as a human non-closed, open inasmuch as governed by thought -is perhaps the most profound idea of the union of the soul and the body. It is the soul intervening in a body that is not of the in itself (…), that can be a body and living -human only by reaching completion in "view of itself" which is thought (…) (Merleau-Ponty Le visible et l'invisible, 288/234).

Selfhood, consciousness, and embodiment: A Husserlian approach

Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy, eds. Sara Heinämaa, Vili Lähteenmäki and Pauliina Remes, pp.311–328, 2007

Two ways of understanding persons: A Husserlian distinction

Phenomenology and Mind, no. 15, eds. Roberta De Monticelli and Francesca De Vecchi, Firenze University Press, pp.92–103., 2019

This paper clarifies the distinction that Edmund Husserl makes between two different ways of unde... more This paper clarifies the distinction that Edmund Husserl makes between two different ways of understanding other persons, their actions and motivations: the experiential or empirical way, on the one hand, and the genuinely or authentically intuitive way, on the other hand. The paper argues that Husserl's discussion of self-understanding clarifies his concept of the intuitive understanding of others and allows us to explicate what is involved in it: not just the grasping of the other's actual motivations of action but also the grasping of her motivational possibilities. The paper ends by discussing the dynamic character of the personal subject.

Existential-phenomenological insights into collective intentionality

Australasian Philosophical Review, 2024

Book Description of Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values

by Sara Heinämaa and Mirja H Hartimo

Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values, 2022

This book offers an updated and comprehensive phenomenology of norms and normativity. It is the f... more

Book Description of Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters

Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters, Routledge, 2022

Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches,... more Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics.

Une approche phénoménologique du moi : temporalité, finitude et intersubjectivité

Diogène

Strange vegetation: Emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November

SATS

This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November.... more This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November. I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson’s book is the autumn forest that surrounds the abandoned Moomin house. The decomposing forest is not just an emblem of the inner lives of the guests that gather in the house but is an active character itself: an ambiguous life form that creeps in the house and must be expelled from its living core. I further demonstrate that the emotion of disgust has a crucial role in Jansson’s narrative, and that an adequate analysis of the intentional content of disgust allows us to see what is at issue in the relations between the characters. In my reading, the main insight of Tove Jansson’s last Moomin book is not about loss or sorrow but is about the human capacity to begin anew by composing novel wholes from scraps.

Introduction: Phenomenological approaches to Tove Jansson’s fiction

SATS

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original... more

Anonymity and personhood: Merleau-Ponty’s account of the subject of perception

Continental Philosophy Review, 2015

From decisions to passions: Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of Husserl’s reduction

Contributions to Phenomenology, 2002

Selfhood, consciousness, and embodiment: A Husserlian approach

Consciousness, 2007

... in D. Carr and C. Lotz (eds.), Subjektivität – Verantwortung – Wahrheit: Neue Aspekte der Phä... more

The self and the others: Common topics for Husserl and Wittgenstein

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2012

Several commentators have argued that Husserl's phenomenological project is compromised or even d... more Several commentators have argued that Husserl's phenomenological project is compromised or even destroyed by Wittgenstein's critical inquiries into our use of psychological concepts. In contrast to oppositional interpretations, this paper explicates certain crucial connections between Husserl's phenomenology and Wittgenstein's late thinking-shared views that concern the embodied nature of selfhood and our relations to other selves. In line with certain recent contributions, I argue that there are important similarities between Husserl's analysis of these phenomena and Wittgenstein's remarks on our use of language and that these connections, when noticed and explicated, can help us avoid simplified, barren contrasts and get clear about our actual philosophical alternatives. Several commentators have argued that Husserl's and Wittgenstein's approaches to the problem of other minds are directly oppositional, if not explicitly conflictual. Many Wittgenstein scholars tend to take Husserl's theories of selfhood and otherness as a sophisticated form of Cartesian subjectivism or idealism and claim that Wittgenstein's critical investigations show that such an approach is as philosophically hopeless as its historical predecessors. Husserl's phenomenology is supposed to be motivated or regulated by a false Sara Heinämaa is a Docent and Senior Lecturer of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is currently working as an Academy Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, where she also leads the research group, European Rationality in the Break from Modernity, financed by the Academy of Finland. She is co-founder of The Nordic Society for Phenomenology and at the moment operates as its president. Heinämaa's expertise is in phenomenology, existential philosophy, philosophy of mind, and history of philosophy; her work focuses on the problems of perception, embodiment, selfhood, personhood, and intersubjectivity. She is the author of Toward a

Embodiment and expressivity in Husserl's phenomenology: From Logical Investigations to Cartesian Meditations

SATS, 2000

... null Addis, Mark / Grassme Binderup, Lars / Carlshamre, Staffan / Emundts, Dina / Christensen... more

Strange vegetation: Emotive undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November

SATS–Northern European Journal of Philosophy, vol. 19, no. 1, pp.41–67, 2018

This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November.... more This article investigates the emotional undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November. I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson’s book is the autumn forest that surrounds the abandoned Moomin house. The decomposing forest is not just an emblem of the inner lives of the guests that gather in the house but is an active character itself: an ambiguous life form that creeps in the house and must be expelled from its living core. I further demonstrate that the emotion of disgust has a crucial role in Jansson’s narrative, and that an adequate analysis of the intentional content of disgust allows us to see what is at issue in the relations between the characters. In my reading, the main insight of Tove Jansson’s last Moomin book is not about loss or sorrow but is about the human capacity to begin anew by composing novel wholes from scraps.

Keywords: Tove Jansson, Moomin, Aurel Kolnai, disgust, emotion, perception, movement, death

Strange vegetation: Emotive undercurrents of Tove Jansson’s Moominvalley in November

I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson's book is the autumn forest that surrounds the... more I argue that one of the main characters of Jansson's book is the autumn forest that surrounds the abandoned Moomin house. The decomposing forest is not just an emblem of the inner lives of the guests that gather in the house but is an active character itself: an ambiguous life form that creeps in the house and must be expelled from its living core. I further demonstrate that the emotion of disgust has a crucial role in Jansson's narrative, and that an adequate analysis of the intentional content of disgust allows us to see what is at issue in the relations between the characters. In my reading, the main insight of Tove Jansson's last Moomin book is not about loss or sorrow but is about the human capacity to begin anew by composing novel wholes from scraps.

On the complexity and wholeness of human beings: A Husserlian perspective

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 25, no. 3, pp.393–406, 2017

At the very beginning of the first division of Being and Time, Heidegger distinguishes his own Da... more At the very beginning of the first division of Being and Time, Heidegger distinguishes his own Dasein-analytic and the new phenomenological hermeneutics that it motivates from Husserl's classical phenomenology which, in Heidegger's reading, is predominated by epistemological interests and misguided by taken for granted concepts. Heidegger attacks classical phenomenology as a strayed form of philosophical anthropology, hopelessly entangled with ontic inquiries and with empirical notions of human life. Thus, he argues that his former teacher falls victim to fundamental mistakes that are analogous to those that strain 19 th and 20 th century life philosophies and all philosophical "personalism" (Heidegger [1929] 1993 47/72).

Epoché as personal transformation: On the similarities between the philosophical change of attitude and religious conversions

Phänomenologischen Forschungen, 2019

In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl draws a peculiar par... more In The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl draws a peculiar parallel between the phenomenological-philosophical change of attitude and religious conversions. He writes: "Perhaps it even will become manifest that the total phenomenological attitude and the epoché belonging to it are called [berufen] in essence to effect first a complete personal transformation [Wandlung], comparable first to a religious conversion [Umkehrung], which, however, over and above this, bears within itself the sense of the greatest existential transformation which is assigned to mankind as such." 1 Husserl does not explain this parallel in any way or characterize the suggested similarity between the two types of transformations at issue, the philosophical and the religious. He does not refer to any relevant discussions of spiritual conversions or vocational transformations -neither to his earlier reflections in the so-called Kaizo essays nor to any contemporary or classical accounts.

Phenomenology of orgasm and the dynamics of desire

"An equivocal couple overwhelmed by life": A Phenomenological analysis of pregnancy

philoSOPHIA, 2014

Two conceptions of human generativity prevail in contemporary feminist philosophy. First, several... more Two conceptions of human generativity prevail in contemporary feminist philosophy. First, several contributors argue that the experience of pregnancy, when analyzed by phenomenological tools, undermines several distinctions that are central to western philosophy, most importantly the subject-object distinction and the self-other and own-alien distinctions. This line of argument was already outlined by Iris Marion Young in her influential essay "Pregnant Embodiment: Subjectivity and Alienation" (1984). The other dominant argument is related to the first one, and it states that organic birth is the event that establishes the first experiential separation between the self and the other. On this understanding the mother-fetus relation would not involve any relations between two corporeal selves; all such relations would be postnatal. This notion has been defended, for example, by Christine Schües (1997, 2000) and Johanna Oksala (2003). 1

The Living body and its position in metaphysics: Merleau-Ponty’s dialogue with Descartes

Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation: Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries, eds. Dan Zahavi, Sara Heinämaa and Hans Ruin, pp.23–48, 2003

The Cartesian idea of the human body as a human non-closed, open inasmuch as governed by thought ... more The Cartesian idea of the human body as a human non-closed, open inasmuch as governed by thought -is perhaps the most profound idea of the union of the soul and the body. It is the soul intervening in a body that is not of the in itself (…), that can be a body and living -human only by reaching completion in "view of itself" which is thought (…) (Merleau-Ponty Le visible et l'invisible, 288/234).

Selfhood, consciousness, and embodiment: A Husserlian approach

Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy, eds. Sara Heinämaa, Vili Lähteenmäki and Pauliina Remes, pp.311–328, 2007

Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy (review)

Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2009

This is a review of Sara Heinämaa, Vili Lähteenmäki, Pauliina Remes (ed.), Consciousness: From Pe... more

Phenomenology as Critique Why Method Matters: Book Description

by Sara Heinämaa and Andreea Smaranda Aldea

Phenomenology as Critique Why Method Matters, 2022

Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches,... more Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics.

Chiasmatic Encounters: Ethics, Arts, Politics

Chiasmatic Encounters: Ethics, Arts, Politics, Rowman & Littlefield.

The concept of chiasm has played major role in continental philosophy, where it has referred to ... more The concept of chiasm has played major role in continental philosophy, where it has referred to various phenomenological and hermeneutic structures of reversibility, intertwining, and encounter. In Chiasmatic Encounters: Art, Ethics, Politics, fourteen international contributors representing various fields of expertise analyze this central concept and its significance for contemporary cultural theory. The authors discuss the work of major philosophers like Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir, Habermas, Levinas, Derrida, and Deleuze, adapting their ideas of chiasmatic relations to cultural analysis.

Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir

Psychology and Philosophy: Inquiries into the Soul from Late Scholasticism to Contemporary Thought

Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy

by Sara Heinämaa, Pauliina Remes, and Vili Lähteenmäki

Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy, Dorcrecht: Springer., 2007

Birth, Death and the Feminine: Essays in the Philosophy of Embodiment

by Sara Heinämaa and Schott Robin

Birth, Death and the Feminine: Essays in the Philosophy of Embodiment, , Bloomington: Indiana University Press., 2010

New Perspectives on Aristotelianism and its Critics

by Sara Heinämaa, Miira Tuominen, and Diana Quarantotto

New Perspectives on Aristotelianism and its Critics, Leiden, Boston: Brill., Nov 2014

New investigations regarding the content, impact, and criticism of Aristotelianism in antiquity, ... more New investigations regarding the content, impact, and criticism of Aristotelianism in antiquity, the late middle ages, and modern ethics show that Aristotelianism is not an obsolete monolithic doctrine, but a living and evolving tradition within philosophy. Modern philosophy and science are sometimes understood as anti-Aristotelian, and early modern philosophers often conceived their philosophical project in opposition to medieval Aristotelianism. New Perspectives on Aristotelianism and Its Critics brings to light the inner complexity of these simplified antagonisms by analysing Aristotle’s philosophy, the Aristotelian tradition, and criticism towards it with respect to three topics – knowledge, rights, and the good life – in ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy. It explores the potential Aristotle’s philosophy has in helping to overcome some of the central impasses and simplified dichotomies in present-day philosophy.
Contributors are: John Drummond, Sabine Föllinger, Hallvard Fossheim, Sara Heinämaa, Roberto Lambertini, Virpi Mäkinen, Fred D. Miller, Diana Quarantotto, and Miira Tuominen.

Ottelu ja pelaaminen performansseina

by Sara Heinämaa and Alpo Suhonen

Kanava, 2024

Urheilu tarvitsee pelaamisen ilmaisullisia ulottuvuuksia koskevaa ymmärrystä, jota löytyy ihmisti... more

Poliittiset tunteet: viha, raivo, inho ja pelko

Kanava, 2023

Kotimaiset yhteiskuntatieteet ovat pitkälti sitoutuneet oletukseen, että tunteilla ei ole suuremp... more

Epokhe ja olemukset: Husserlin fenomenologian kaksi tehtävänasetusta

Skeptisismi, ed. Malin Grahn, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, pp.359–379., 2016

Edmund Husserlin fenomenologia sisältää vahvan tulkinnan antiikin skeptikkojen fi losofi sista oi... more Edmund Husserlin fenomenologia sisältää vahvan tulkinnan antiikin skeptikkojen fi losofi sista oivalluksista. René Descartesin tavoin Husserl antaa skeptikkojen pidätt yvälle asenteelle systemaatt isen tietoteoreett isen tehtävän, mutt a samalla hän vaatii, ett ä Descartesin fi losofi a on radikalisoitava: arvostelmista pidätt äytyminen on ulotett ava niihin tietoteoreett ista hankett a ohjaaviin vakaumuksiin, jotka koskevat tieteen luonnett a ja teoreett isen toiminnan muotoja.

Vihapuhe ja demokratia

Suomen Kuvalehti 14.7.2017, 2017

Vihapuhe nähdään yleensä suvaitsemattomuuden äärimuotona sekä tähän yllyttämisenä. Euroopan neuvo... more Vihapuhe nähdään yleensä suvaitsemattomuuden äärimuotona sekä tähän yllyttämisenä. Euroopan neuvoston määritelmäehdotuksen mukaan vihapuhe on kielenkäyttöä, jolla levitetään, edistetään tai oikeutetaan suvaitsemattomuudesta kumpuavaa vihaa, muun muassa rotuvihaa, muukalaisvihaa ja antisemitismiä.

Filosofista kehräystä ja punontaa: Wittgensteinin peli-vertausten merkitys hänen filosofiakäsitykselleen

Julkaistu otsikolla ”Filosofista kehräystä (tai punontaa): huomautuksia viisasten välisistä taisteluista ja peleistä”, teoksessa Mitä on filosofia? toim. Henrik Rydenfelt ja Heikki A. Kovalainen, Helsinki: Gaudemus, 2010, s.77–94., 2010

Filosofista kehräystä ja punontaa: Wittgensteinin peli-vertausten merkitys hänen filosofiakäsityk... more Filosofista kehräystä ja punontaa: Wittgensteinin peli-vertausten merkitys hänen filosofiakäsitykselleen (2015) 1 Sara Heinämaa Jyväskylän yliopisto Helsingin yliopisto Kaikki pelasivat yhtä aikaa odottamatta vuoroaan, kinastelivat koko ajan ja taistelivat siileistä. Varsin pian kuningatar oli taas raivokkaalla tuulella ja tömisti ympäriinsä huutaen aina vähän väliä: "Pää poikki! Pää poikki!" 1 Ryhdyimme ystäväni kanssa käymään läpi viime vuosisadan filosofian klassikoita. Tapaamme Kluuvikadun Fazerilla joka toinen viikko ja keskustelemme teoksista, jotka olemme ohittaneet perehtyessämme toisiin ajattelutapoihin. Väliviikot tutkimme sivuuttamiamme filosofeja: Bergsonia, Jamesia, Diltheyta, Deweya... Pyrimme syventymään ennen muuta sellaisiin ajattelutapoihin, jotka ovat laajemminkin laiminlyötyjä -kokonaisten sukupolvien kadottamia. Tilaisuus tähän on Suomessa ainutlaatuinen, sillä akateeminen filosofiamme on jo pitkään (ellei aina) ollut valikoivaa ja keskittynyt vain harvoihin filosofian osaalueisiin ja koulukuntiin. Kotimaisen filosofian ulkopuolelle on vuosikymmenien ajan jäänyt paljon niin ajankohtaista kuin historiallistakin ajattelua -kokonaisia paradigmoja, käsitteellisiä järjestelmiä, menetelmäoppeja, argumentaatiotapoja sekä logiikan tulkintoja. Kun itse aloitin opinnot 1980-luvun alussa, jokainen kurssi käsitteli Wittgensteinia. "Systemaattinen johdatus filosofiaan" merkitsi systemaattista johdatusta Wittgensteinin filosofiaan, ja tieto-opin peruskurssi keskittyi 1 Julkaistu otsikolla "Filosofista kehräystä (tai punontaa): huomautuksia viisasten välisistä taisteluista ja peleistä", teoksessa Mitä on filosofia? toim. Henrik Rydenfelt ja Heikki A. Kovalainen, Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2010, s. 77-94.

Taaksepäin katsovista operaattoreista esi-reflektiiviseen tietoisuuteen: huomautuksia Esa Saarisen Sartre-luennasta

In Elämän filosofi, Esa Saarisen juhlakirja, Frank Martela, Lauri Järvilehto, Peter Kenttä and Jaakko Korhonen

Filosofista kehräystä (tai punontaa): huomautuksia viisasten välisistä taisteluista ja peleistä

In Mitä on filosofia? eds. Henrik Rydenfelt and Heikki A. Kovalainen, 2010

Korkeinta opetusta? J.V. Snellmanin käsitys yliopiston tehtävistä ja akateemisesta opiskelusta

Korkeinta opetusta? J.V. Snellmanin käsitys yliopiston tehtävistä ja akateemisesta opiskelusta 1 ... more Korkeinta opetusta? J.V. Snellmanin käsitys yliopiston tehtävistä ja akateemisesta opiskelusta 1 J.V. Snellmanin kirjoitus "Akateemisesta opiskelusta" (1840) sisältää radikaalimman näkökannan yliopistotyöhön kuin useimmat oman aikamme puheenvuorot. Snellman esittää kirjoituksessaan vahvan, ja mielestäni oikean, käsityksen yliopiston kahden päätehtävän suhteesta: hänen mukaansa tutkimus ja opetus ovat yhden ja saman asian kaksi ulottuvuutta.

Naisia filosofiassa!

Filosofian välttämättömyydestä: tiede, todellisuus ja kokemus

Arvoisa vararehtori, parhaat kollegat ja ystävät, hyvät naiset ja herrat, Charles Darwin kirjoitt... more Arvoisa vararehtori, parhaat kollegat ja ystävät, hyvät naiset ja herrat, Charles Darwin kirjoitti vuonna 1844 vaimolleen Emma Darwinille seuraavasti: "Rakas Emmani, Olen juuri viimeistellyt luonnoksen lajiteoriastani. Jos teoriani on tosi, kuten uskon, ja jos edes yksi arvostelukykyinen tuomari voi sen hyväksyä, niin se merkitsee huomattavaa tieteellistä askelta". Saksalainen fenomenologi Edmund Husserl varoitti matemaatikkoja, luonnontieteilijöitä, ihmistieteilijöitä ja filosofeja vakavasta menetelmäopillisesta virheestä, joka hallitsi tiedettä koskevia keskusteluja 1900--luvun vaihteessa: tieteen moninaisuus pyrittiin palauttamaan muutaman tieteen menetelmiin. Husserl vastusti tätä ajatusta ja argumentoi, että tieteellisen tiedon kokonaisuutta ei voi hallita minkään erityistieteen välinein, ei sen enempää biotieteellisin kuin psykotieteellisin mallein, ei aivotutkimuksen keinoin eikä taloustieteen käsittein. Toki monet erityistieteet auttavat ymmärtämään tieteellisen tutkimuksen eri ulottuvuuksia sekä ihmisen tiedollisia kykyjä ja voimavaroja osana maailman kokonaisuutta. Taloustiede esimerkiksi valottaa tieteellisen työn kaupallisia, taloudellisia ja talouspoliittisia kytköksiä, historia kuvaa tietämisen ajallista jatkumoa yliyksilöllisestä näkökulmasta, ja psykologia selvittää tietävän yksilön sisäisiä prosesseja. Silti mikään erityistiede ei Husserlin mukaan kykene antamaan muille tieteille käsitteellistä eikä metodista perustaa. Tähän kykenee vain ankara ja radikaali filosofinen analyysi.

Elämän tarkoituksesta

Suomen Kuvalehti, Dec 19, 2014

Filosofian professori, Jyväskylän yliopisto SHC--tutkijayhteisön johtaja, Helsingin yliopisto Elä... more Filosofian professori, Jyväskylän yliopisto SHC--tutkijayhteisön johtaja, Helsingin yliopisto Elämän tarkoitusta koskevaan kysymykseen ei voi vastata yleisesti, eikä kukaan voi ratkaista tätä ongelmaa toisten puolesta. Tiedemiehet, jumaloppineet ja kaikenlaiset saarnamiehet ja elämänvalmentajat, kirkolliset yhtä lailla kuin maalliset, ovat minun elämäni, sinun elämäsi ja jokaisen toisen ihmiselämän osalta amatöörejä.

Kurjistuvat yliopistot ovat tulevaisuutemme menetys

by Sara Heinämaa and Pauliina Remes

Suomen Kuvalehti, Mar 6, 2015

Jatkuvia ja vaihtuvia näkökulmia

Tieteessa Tapahtuu, 2009

Paikka tutkimuksessa : henkilökohtaisen paikanmäärityksen vaatimus naistutkimuksessa

Naisten tunneherkkyys : filosofinen keskustelu tunteiden järjellisyydestä

by Sara Heinämaa and Martina Reuter

Naiset ja tekoäly

Skeptisismi. Epäilyn ja etsimisen filosofia

by Malin Grahn-Wilder, Sara Heinämaa, Jari Kaukua, and Ilkka Niiniluoto

Skeptisismi. Epäilyn ja etsimisen filosofia., 2016

Mitä jos maailma ei olekaan sellainen, millaiseksi sen kuvittelemme? Mistä voimme tietää, mitkä h... more Mitä jos maailma ei olekaan sellainen, millaiseksi sen kuvittelemme? Mistä voimme tietää, mitkä havainnot vääristyvät omien ajatusmalliemme mukaan ja mikä on asioiden oikea tila? Hakupalvelimet ja uutissivustot syöttävät meille " tietoa " , mutta lähdekritiikki on koetuksella. Mitä oikeastaan tarkoitamme " tiedolla " ? Kenen tietoa se on? Mistä se tullut ja voiko siihen luottaa? Skeptisismi kyseenalaistaa tiedon varmuuden, etsii ja epäilee. Skeptikon suhde tietoon ei kuitenkaan ole aina kieltävä vaan paremminkin tutkiva. Eri aikakausien suuret filosofit muotoilivat kantojaan skeptikkojen asettamaa haastetta vasten, joten skeptisismi on muovannut koko länsimaista ajattelua. Skeptisismi syventyy epäilyn ja etsimisen filosofiaan antiikista nykypäivään. Se avaa uusia näkökulmia skeptisismiin pohtimalla skeptisen filosofian suhdetta tunteisiin, uskonnollisen tiedon kyseenalaistamisen perinteeseen ja nykyajan filosofiaan. Länsimaisen filosofian lisäksi teos sivuaa skeptisiä kysymyksiä arabifilosofiassa ja buddhalaisuudessa. " Paljon keskustelua käydään myös tietona esitettävien väitteiden yhteydestä erilaisiin taloudellisiin, aatteellisiin tai poliittisiin intresseihin. Tieto kytkeytyy valtaan: tiedolliset väitteet paitsi kuvailevat maailmaa myös monin tavoin tuottavat sitä. " Malin Grahn-Wilder " Ne, jotka sanovat skeptikoiden kieltävän ilmenevän, näyttävät minusta kuunnelleen huonosti, mitä me sanomme. Me emme nimittäin kiellä sitä, minkä pakottava vaikutelma saa meidät hyväksymään ilman harkintaa, kuten aiemmin sanoimme. " Sekstos Empeirikos: Pyrrhonismin pääpiirteet (suomentanut Marke Ahonen) " On varmaa, että tervejärkisellä ja kokeneella ihmisellä tulisi olla ja yleensä onkin enemmän luottamusta mielipiteisiinsä kuin tyhmällä ja tietämättömällä (…). Edes järkevimmällä ja kokeneimmalla ihmisellä tämä arvovalta ei ole koskaan täydellinen, sillä hänenkin täytyy olla tietoinen monista entisistä erehdyksistä ja yhä pelätä tulevia samankaltaisia erehdyksiä. " David Hume: Filosofian skeptisestä järjestelmästä (suomentanut Tuomo Aho)

Ajatuksia synnyttävät koneet: tekoälyn unia ja painajaisia

Ihmetys ja rakkaus: esseitä ruumiin ja sukupuolen fenomenologiasta

Olennainen nainen: naiskuvan filosofiset perusteet

Merleau-Ponty's parallel between art and philosophy: The case of poetry – from Baudelaire and Akhmatova

James Mensch Festhschrift, eds. Parmis Aslanimeh, Karel Novotny, Michael Staudigl and Barbara Weber, Dordrecht: Springer, submitted August., 2022

In this, the artist joins forces with the phenomenologist, a philosopher who is dedicated to coin... more In this, the artist joins forces with the phenomenologist, a philosopher who is dedicated to coin and develop adequate verbal expressions for things as they give themselves to us in experience, independently of our theories of and explanations about them (cf. Husserl Hua3, Hua1, 54/13-14, 83-84/46, 170/144; Hua3, 6-7/xxii-xxiii, 124-125/151-152; Mattens 2008). Meanings and senses are condensed and compressed in percepts, things, faces and sceneries, and the task of the painter, as well as that of the phenomenologist, is to unfold or liberate these signifiers by their actions (e.g., Merleau-Ponty DC, 26-27/21; OEE 61-66/178-180; PP 209/161, 218/168, 336/261; S 56-58/44-46). Mikel Dufrenne compares the artist's operation to the task of squeezing juice from an orange: "In French, when we press an orange, we say that the juice is 'ex-pressed'. The orange expresses itself in producing its juice" (Dufrenne 1976, 17). Analogously, the affective thing is able to express itself in the works of the artist and the philosopher but only because their explorations put pressure on the thing and do so in manners that divert from the pressure exercised by everyday practical dealings and theoretical experiments.

Self – A phenomenological account: Temporality, finitude and intersubjectivity

in Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and the Social World: The Continued Relevance of Phenomenology, Essays in Honour of Dermot Moran, eds. Anna Bortolan and Elisa Magri, Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming 2021/2022., 2021

European philosophy is often criticized and attacked as an outdated form of thinking, unable to a... more European philosophy is often criticized and attacked as an outdated form of thinking, unable to address the problems of today's world. It is characterized as individualistic, anthropocentric and Euro-centric and contrasted to supposedly more pluralistic, communitarian and ecological approaches, put forward and elaborated most vigorously in today's political philosophy, philosophy of nature and ontology. Posthuman(istic), new realistic, new materialistic and neovitalistic movements of thought aim at taking on this challenge by creating alternative conceptualizations for the service of global politics of equality and justice-not just for all human beings and cultures, but also for the animal kingdom and ultimately for the earth itself. One of the most prevalent arguments put forward in these discussions is the claim that the philosophical landscape of Europe must and can be remodeled by fresh conceptual tools offered by pre-modern forms of thinking. Many contributors contend that European philosophy should also be revivified or impregnated by non-European traditions of wisdom and learning. A third, growingly popular set of concepts is found in mathematical and mathematized natural sciences, most importantly in system theory, quantum physics and set theory (e.g. Badiou [1969] 2007; Barad 2007).

Varieties of normativity: Norms, values, goals

Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, Values, eds. Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo ja Ilpo Hirvonen, London, New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2021/2022, 2021

The chapter begins with an overview of contemporary phenomenological theorization of normativity.... more The chapter begins with an overview of contemporary phenomenological theorization of normativity. In light of phenomenological contributions, the field of norms proves to be both multi-faceted and heavily layered. In order to organize the field, the paper turns to Husserl's classical account, arguing that it provides an elegant and powerful manner of unifying the phenomena of normativity without disregarding or downplaying their plurality and layered character. On this basis, the paper then clarifies the difference between the normativity of the criteria of evaluation and the normativity of the rules of action or conduct. At the same time, it sheds light on the guiding function of values and paragons.

On the transcendental undercurrents of phenomenology: The case of the living body

CPR, 2020

Today the phenomenological concept of the lived body figures centrally in several philosophical a... more Today the phenomenological concept of the lived body figures centrally in several philosophical and special scientific debates, from the medical sciences to the social and political sciences. Examples of disciplines that use the concept in fruitful new ways include the neurosciences, psychopathology, social psychology, qualitative sociology, political science and critical anthropology. Moreover, the concept also serves several broadly interdisciplinary fields, such as gender studies, race studies, disability studies and nursing studies.

Values of love: Two of forms of infinity characteristic of human persons

Submitted to Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2019

Husserl's late reflections on values and forms of good life entail an important but largely negle... more Husserl's late reflections on values and forms of good life entail an important but largely neglected argument about human infinity. In his research manuscripts and essays from the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl introduces and develops the concept of personal value (ein personaler Wert), and argues that the values thus identified are specific in opening two kinds of infinities in our lives. On the one hand personal values disclose infinite emotive depths in human persons while on the other hand they connect human individuals in continuous and progressive chains of sympathy, solicitude and care. Husserl calls personal values also "values of love" (Liebeswerte) but the point in this is not to promote any form of sentimentalism. Rather, the idea is to emphasize the productivity and fruitfulness of the types of connections that personal values are able to establish between human beings.

The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Emotions, eds. Thomas Szanto and Hilge Landweer, London: Routledge, forthcoming 2020, 2020

On the conditions and limits of Understanding: A Wittgensteinian analysis of the case of a speaking lion

History of Mind: Studies in the Philosophy of Simo Knuuttila, eds. Ritva Palmer and Filipe de Silva, de Gruyter, 2024

Simone de Beauvoir: Encroachment, agency, embodiment

Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology, eds. Sophie Loidolt, Gerhard Thonhauser, Tobias Matzner and Nils Baratella, London: Routledge, 2024

This chapter offers a new explication of the main parameters of Simone de Beauvoir’s political ph... more This chapter offers a new explication of the main parameters of Simone de Beauvoir’s political philosophy. The chapter argues that Beauvoir develops her central political-philosophical concepts – the concepts of encroachment, oppression and violence – in parallel with her phenomenological ontology and existential ethics. More specifically, it demonstrates that Beauvoir’s understanding of the structures of human embodiment and human action lays the ground for her critique of oppression and her original approach to the philosophical problems of violence. The guiding idea of all her analyses is in her conception of human existence as deeply volitional and futural and thus necessarily intersubjective and fundamentally embodied.

Verwunderung und sexuelle Differenz: Luce Irigarays phänomenologischer Cartesianismus

Feminist Phenomenology and Hermeneutics, eds. Linda Fisher, Silvia Stoller and Veronica Vasterling, pp.192–207, 2005

Introduction: Methodological, historical and conceptual starting points

by Sara Heinämaa, Mirja H Hartimo, and Timo Miettinen

Phenomenology and the Transcendental, 2014

Since the turn of the millennium, phenomenology has become one of the major approaches in contemp... more Since the turn of the millennium, phenomenology has become one of the major approaches in contemporary philosophy of the mind and cognition. Phenomenological results and innovations have influenced not only theories of perception and cognition but also our views on social emotions and human coexistence. Consequently, contemporary phenomenology is well-known for its contributions to the philosophy of selfhood and pre-conceptual perception, for its explications of empathy, shame and guilt and for its emphasis on the facticity and plurality of human life. Phenomenological analyses have broadened our view of the interface between the mental and the physical, and they have contributed to our understanding of the classic division between the animal and the human as well as that between nature and culture.

Constitutive, Prescriptive, Technical or Ideal? On the Ambiguity of the Term "Norm"

Normativity, Meaning, the Promise of Phenomenology, eds. and Matthew Burch, Jack E. Marsh and Irene McMullin, London: Routledge., 2019

The paper starts by pointing out that the terms "normative" and "norm" operate in several differe... more The paper starts by pointing out that the terms "normative" and "norm" operate in several different senses in contemporary phenomenology. It distinguishes between three main contexts in which these terms are used today: first, analyses of the basic structures of intentionality; second, investigations of interested perception and the dynamics of appearing; and third, discussions of the experiential grounds of ethics. In these three contexts, the terms "norm" and "normative" are used in different meanings and with different connotations. The basic ideas of regulation, rule-following, and correctness are implied by all usages, but the types of rules and the types of correctness at issue vary. In order to organize the field, the paper distinguishes between six different and mutually irreducible senses of the term "norm" and identifies several ambiguous usages in which these senses conflate. The paper ends by suggesting a practical solution for the specification of phenomenological discourses on normativity.

"Through desire and love": Simone de Beauvoir on the possibilities of sexual desire

Sex, Breath and Force: Sexual Difference in a Post-Feminist Era, ed. Ellen Mortensen, Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Lexington Books, 2006

Psychoanalysis of things: Objective meanings or subjective projections?

Beauvoir and Sartre: A Riddle of Influence, eds. Christine Daigle and Jacob Colomb, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009

The body as instrument and as expression

The Cambridge Companion to Simone de Beauvoir, 2003

The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir || Simone de Beauvoir's Phenomenology of Sexual Difference

Hermeneutics and the Analytic-Continental Divide

Keane/A Companion to Hermeneutics, 2015

Phenomenological Responses to Gestalt Psychology

Psychology And Philosophy, 2000

The Soul-Body Union and Sexual Difference from Descartes to Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir

The New Synthese Historical Library, 2000

The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology

The chapter explicates the central resources that classical Husserlian phenomenology and its cont... more The chapter explicates the central resources that classical Husserlian phenomenology and its contemporary elaborations offer for the study of psychic disorders. We shall first discuss the phenomenological principles that enable analysis of the conditions and limits of experiencing and sense-constitution. We shall then clarify the concepts that phenomenologists have developed for the discussion of the normality and abnormality of experiencing—optimality and concordance—while also paying heed to the types of phenomena that classical and contemporary phenomenologists have tackled while developing their methods. In this vein, we will emphasize methodological factors that separate phenomenological studies of intentional experiencing from empirical studies of human behavior and psyche, on the one hand, and from alternative philosophical studies of the mind and consciousness, on the other hand. In sum, our chapter shows that phenomenology offers powerful tools for the systematic investigat...

Ch 33: Normality

by Sara Heinämaa and Joona Taipale

The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology, eds. Giovanni Stanghellini, Andrea Raballo, Matthew Broome, Anthony Vincent Fernandez, Paolo Fusar-Poli and René Rosford, Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2018

Love and admiration (wonder): Fundaments of the self-other relations

Eds. John Drummond and Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, London: Rowan and Littlefield International, forthcoming 2018., 2017

what is good and valuable. This notion is intuitive, and it neatly fits our common sense concepti... more what is good and valuable. This notion is intuitive, and it neatly fits our common sense conception of human affairs but also coheres with many findings in empirical psychosciences and bio-sciences. We tend to love things and persons that we consider good and beautiful (or superb, terrific, cool, etc.), and we tend to value and appreciate the things and the persons that we happen to love. I call this idea the value-theoretical conception of love. It informs our views of many, if not all, forms of love, from erotic and carnal love (eros, ludus) to affective ties between family members and partners (pragma), to friendship (philia), to self-love (philautia), and finally to the brotherly and sisterly charity that unites us all as human beings (agape). 1 However, for philosophical purposes it is crucial to notice that the assimilation of the object of love with the good is not unproblematic. We know many cases in which love is not directed at what is considered good or beautiful: we are able to love things and persons that are bad or even evil, and we would not always insist that the people that we

Descartes’ notion of the mind-body union and its phenomenological expositions

The chapter clarifies systematic connections between Descartes’ discussion of the mind-body union... more The chapter clarifies systematic connections between Descartes’ discussion of the mind-body union and classical phenomenology of embodiment, as developed by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. It argues that the perplexing twofoldness of Descartes’ account of the mind-body union – interactionistic on the one hand, and holistic on the other – can be explicated and made coherent by phenomenological analyses of the two different attitudes that we can take toward worldly beings: naturalistic and personalistic. In the naturalistic attitude, the human being is understood as a two-layered psycho-physical complex, in which mental states and faculties are founded on the material basis of the body. In the personalistic attitude, the human being is not a layered being but forms an expressive whole in which the spiritual and the sensible-material are intertwined? The chapter ends in a discussion of the most important similarities and differences between Descartes’ and Husserl’s conceptions of philosophy as a radical science.

Phenomenological responses to Gestalt-psychology

Psychology and Philosophy: Inquiries into the Soul from Late Scholasticism to Contemporary Thought, eds. Sara Heinämaa and Martina Reuter, pp.264–284, 2009

This chapter studies the reception that Gestalt psychological theories were given by phenomenolog... more This chapter studies the reception that Gestalt psychological theories were given by phenomenologists in Germany and France in the first half of the twentieth century. The aim is to study, in particular, the reactions of two phenomenologists, Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The chapter focuses on these two thinkers in order to explicate the main idea of the phenomenological-transcendental critique of psychological theories. The interpretative claim is that Merleau-Ponty followed Husserl in defining phenomenological philosophy by its radical task in providing a transcendental basis for all experience and knowledge. He thus came to argue that psychological theories, Gestalt theories included, must be submitted to a phenomenological- transcendental critique. Despite their apparent differences, Merleau-Ponty and Husserl agreed that no empirical or wordly knowledge – psychological, anthropological or natural scientific – can overrule philosophical reflections in the grounding of the positive sciences. Before entering into Gestalt-theoretical and phenomenological sources, the chapter briefly discusses the historical relations between the two fields of research. The connections are to be found in common conceptions of parts and wholes, both approaches being influenced by Brentano’s distinctions between different kinds of parts. The disparity concerns the role of consciousness in the institution and establishment of meaning.

Husserl's ethics of renewal: A personalistic approach

In New Perspectives to Aristotelianism and Its Critics, eds. Sara Heinämaa, Virpi Mäkinen and Miira Tuominen, 2015

In the early 1920s, Edmund Husserl published a series of essays on renewal (Erneuerung) in the Ja... more In the early 1920s, Edmund Husserl published a series of essays on renewal (Erneuerung) in the Japanese journal Kaizo, discussing human life, its goal-directed, teleological nature and its possibilities for self-regulation. Husserl focused on the problems of individual transformation and social-cultural development and argued that human life should not be modelled on biological life. There is a crucial difference between human action and animal behaviour, according to Husserl, but this difference is not material, it is structural and based on the reflective potentials of human beings.

The many senses of death: Phenomenological insights into human mortality

PUBLISHED VERSION: "The many senses of death: Phenomenological insights into human mortality," in Mortality and Death: From Individual to Communal Perspectives, eds. Outi Hakola, Sara Heinämaa and Sami Pihlström., 2015

Phenomenology is a transcendental-philosophical investigation into the correlation between subjec... more Phenomenology is a transcendental-philosophical investigation into the correlation between subjectivity and objectivity, or consciousness and being, fundamental to all human experience. It aims at disclosing the essential features of the intentional acts that take part in the constitution of the different senses of objectivity and being, operative in human and animal experiences. In addition to intentional acts, phenomenology also illuminates the passive aesthetic synthesis that establishes the most rudimentary, primordial objectivities on which acts can operate. As such phenomenology demonstrates how the different senses of being result from the constitutive activities and passivities of conscious subjects. It covers the whole variety of ontic sense: the being of material things, living things, persons, utensils, tools, values; theoretical entities, practical aims and goals, linguistic units, works of art; images, pictures, memories; real, possible, probable; present, absent, past, and future.

The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology, Sebastian Luft and Søren Overgaard, pp.222–232, 2011

Phenomenological analysis shows that several philosophical problems central in the tradition and ... more Phenomenological analysis shows that several philosophical problems central in the tradition and crucial to contemporary discussions are intimately linked with the issue of embodiment. Theoretical problems of spatiality and thinghood imply question concerning the movements and sensations of living bodies, but so do also problems of expression, communication, action, and motivation.