The Infinity of the World and the Infinite Plurality of Phantasy-Worlds
The Infinity of the World and the Infinite Plurality of Phantasy-Worlds

Summary/Abstract: In my paper, I will investigate the Husserlian concept of the world understood as a horizon of all horizons. Firstly, I will focus on the unifying horizontality in perception in order to lay out the fundamental features which determine a phenomenological account of the world. In a second step, I will investigate whether the same features can be found, when one takes up the task of describing the world of phantasy. I will show that for Husserl the all-unifying unique horizon can only be given, if we accept the primacy of perception. Finally, I will sketch out how these considerations can be fruitfully interpreted in the context of contemporary phenomenology, and namely in Marc Richir’s refoundation of phenomenology. If for Richir the primacy of perception has to be abandoned and phenomenology should be a phenomenology of phantasy-appearances, and if there is no intrinsic unifying tendency in phantasy that would account for a unique horizon of all horizons. As a consequence Richir has to deal with an infinite multiplicity of phantasy-worlds at the basic architectonical levels of his phenomenology. I suggest that this infinite multiplicity of phantasy-worlds has to be understood as a phenomenological description of what he has called the plurality of worlds in the Meditations phenomenologiques, his major work from the 90s.

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