РЕЦЕНЗИЯ НА КНИГУ НИКОЛЯ ДЕ ВАРРЕНА “HUSSERL AND THE PROMISE OF TIME: SUBJECTIVITY IN TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY”

Author(s): Sergey NIKONENKO / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2017

The review considers the clue aspects of the book. De Warren makes the main subject of researchHusserl’s idea of subjectivity in relation to the problem of time-consciousness. Husserl’s system itselfthe author refers to the subjective idealism. Husserl’s subjectivity is treated as the constitution ofthe world in time-consciousness. De Warren tries to argue that the idea of temporality is importantfor Husserl’s understanding of the identity of the subject. Conducting a comparative analysis ofthe ideas of Husserl and Brentano, de Warren shows that Husserl was the first who achieved inphenomenology a clear understanding of the experience. Criticizing the views of Derrida, de Warrenargues that Husserl insists on the definition of I as a self-sufficient subject in spite of the importanceof the problem of Other. One of the main conclusions of the book is the following: the subject is thehistory of the constitutional exercise of his own temporality. But it is a matter for further discussions.In the opinion of the reviewer this conclusion seemed to be controversial, but it doesn’t reduce theimpression of a fundamental, profound and subtle analysis of the phenomenological ideas of timeand subjectivity.

ИНТЕРПРЕТИРУЕМЫЙ МИР. ВВЕДЕНИЕ В ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКУЮ ПСИХОЛОГИЮ1 (ГЛАВА 7. ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКОЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ)

Author(s): Ernesto Spinelli / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2014

Рецензия на докторскую диссертацию А. В. ЯМПОЛЬСКОЙ «ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ МЕТОД И ЕГО ГРАНИЦЫ: ОТ НЕМЕЦКОЙ К ФРАНЦУЗСКОЙ ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИИ» М.: На правах рукописи, 2013

Author(s): Andrei Patkul / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2013

According to Yampolskaya, the main methodological difficulty of phenomenology is the uncertainty ofthe correlation between the method and the object. This uncertainty reveals ambiguity in the interpretationof the concept of phenomenon. These basic difficulties encountered by the German phenomenologyof Husserl and Heidegger have brought to life French phenomenology. Yampolskaya suggests thatthe key feature of French phenomenology is that it expresses less interest in the problem of reductionand more interest in different components of phenomenological method. Unlike German phenomenologists,who consider phenomenology to be the description of the evident, French thinkers see phenomenologyas a description of concealed.

К феноменологическим основаниям герменевтической концепции личностной идентичности во времени

Author(s): FEDOR STANZHEVSKIY / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2012

The hermeneutical conception of personal identity and self-understanding is based on narrativity. The latter is hermeneutical in so far as it involves hermeneutic circle wich is inscribed in different ways into our self-understending. However, the narrative self is founded in the phenomenology of embodiment. There is a reciprocal connection between our narrative and embodied selves.

Текстологический семинар: по Бернау-манускриптам Э. Гуссерля

Author(s): / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2012

This textological workshop focused on translation of the § 2 of the text № 14 from Bernau Manuscripts. In the framework of the workshop the discussion of the first paragraph of the text no. 14 was given, to be exact — the problem of reduction to the non-egoglogical sensuality (ichlosen Sensualität), status of discretion that leads to non-egological side of I and this I itself.

ФОРМЫ ФИЛОСОФСКОГО УДИВЛЕНИЯ: ГУССЕРЛЬ И ВИТГЕНШТЕЙН О САМОПОНЯТНОМ

Author(s): Georgy Chernavin / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2017

The article raises the question of possible common philosophical experience, a more fundamental one that the usual division into schools or traditions of philosophy. I propose to seek for such an experience in a typical (for the twentieth-century philosophy) form of a philosophical wonder which I would call the “oddity of the obvious”. Using the example of the Husserl’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophies, I try to demonstrate how this experience works, showing the important discrepancy between the two philosophers: a differently placed frontier between the sense and the nonsense. The most striking feature that characterizes the types of philosophical wonder established in the analytical and phenomenological traditions is an element that escapes their view: in the first case it is the being-in-itself which is considered absurd (widersinnig); in the second case it is pre-predicative experience which is proclaimed meaningless (unsinnig). I specify what strategies Husserl and Wittgenstein use, dealing with the experience of the “oddity of the obvious”; namely, they try either to retain the incomprehensibility of the obvious or to dissolve the“mental cramp”. The philosophical tradition (phenomenological or analytical one) takes one of the possible forms of the philosophical wonder to be the basic form. For the phenomenological philosophy, quite an emblematic feature is the effort to retain the “oddity of the obvious”, and for the analytical philosophy (of wittgensteinian provenance) – the dissolution of “mental cramp”, of philosophical bewilderment, the release from vague intellectual disquiet. Concluding the article, I propose to consider the alteration of the philosophical wonder models as a possibility of overcoming intrashop discrepancies between the philosophical traditions.

Polemology and Xenology: Waldenfels and the Sting of the Alien

Author(s): Dragan Prole / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2018

After explaining why phenomenology of the alien cannot be counted among traditional philosophical disciplines, the author explores why all of European history can be read as the “shading of the alien” (Verblendung des Fremden), although not in the sense of mere disregarding, neglecting or denying of the alien, but disciplining it, manipulating and exploiting it. The alien has not been forgotten for centuries, it was always in the European focus, but only as an instance through which the sense of power was traditionally constructed. Following the basic presumptions of Bernhard Waldenfels’ phenomenology of the alien the article presents the shading of the alien as analogous to the process of its naturalization. As if the tradition of European colonialism can be best understood in the key of maître et possesseur de’l étranger. That is to say, the European legacy shows, in an extraordinary manner, that the alien can be transformed into a resource, from which we can appropriate and assimilate everything. A crucial insight for Waldenfels is also that strangeness is not reducible to a narrow segment of reality, whether it is culture, religion or art-based, because strangeness is a radical dimension that transcends all regions.

REVISTING HUSSERL’S ACCOUNT OF LANGUAGE IN LOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS

Author(s): Petr Urban / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The main aim of this paper is to revisit and reassess the account of language at the origins of Husserl’s phenomenology specifically focusing on Logical Investigations. I would like to argue that there is an ambivalence in Husserl’s discussion of language in Logical Investigations: on the one hand, Husserl is concerned with language as one of the most important symbolic systems and a requisite for scientific knowledge, and he emphasizes the role of linguistic discussions as the philosophically indispensable preparations for constructing pure logic; on the other hand, he applies the idea of the fundamental distinction between the realm of ideal and real being to his views of logic, science and language, which finally causes him to interpret the relation between logic, science and language as the inessential one. The paper begins with discussing Husserl’s view of symbolic methods and sign systems in Prolegomena. The second section is focused on the idea of the necessity of linguistic investigations for pure logic presented in the Introduction to the second volume of Logical Investigations. In the final section I make an analysis of the 4th Logical investigation with the special emphasis put on the idea of pure logical grammar.

КОНЦЕПЦИИ МИРА В КРИТИЧЕСКОЙ ФИЛОСОФИИ КАНТА И ФУНДАМЕНТАЛЬНОЙ ОНТОЛОГИИ ХАЙДЕГЕГРА

Author(s): Andrei Patkul / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

The goal of the article is, one the one hand, to show the concrete correlation between the phenomenological conception of the world in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology and its conception in the critical philosophy of Kant, insofar such philosophy could be treated as one of the significant predecessors of Heidegger’s understanding of the world. On the other hand, this explication allows us to analyze the limits and the borders of Heidegger’s phenomenological conception of the world. In order to achieve such goal, the following tasks were undertaken by me: (1) the reconstruction of the phenomenological conception of the world in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology at two levels (i.e. (a) the world as wholeness of involvement and (b) the world as the direction of the transcendence)); (2) the reconstruction of Kant’s cosmological concept of the world made from the perspective of the interpretation of this concept given by Heidegger; (3) detection of the continuity and divergence between Kant’s cosmological concept of the world and its phenomenological conception posed by Heidegger in light of Kant’s concept of the transcendental ideal. As result, I would like to pose and defend the following theses. (1) Heidegger primarily treats the world as a priori condition of the possibility of the wholeness of involvement, and yet, more fundamentally it is treated as the direction for the transcendence of human Dasein. Thus, being understood as such direction, it represents universal horizon of the existent possibilities. (2) Kant characterizes the world as an idea of reason, namely, as the totality of appearances, being formed on the bases of the universal hypothetic synthesis of the unconditional one. Herewith, Kant’s cosmological concept of the world ought to be distinguished from his concept of the moral world. (3) Both Kant and Heidegger understand the world as the totality a priori, which in every case differently presupposes the presence of the human being. (4) The concept of the world as the direction of the transcendence posed by Heidegger has the formal functions similar to those, which are ascribed by Kant to the concept of the sum-total of all possibilities, consequently, not to the world, as the totality of appearances, but to the totality of all objects of thought altogether (to the transcendental ideal). Thereupon, Heidegger believes that whole definition of the Kant’s cosmological concept of the world can be achieved only from the perspective of the transcendental ideal. (5) Heidegger tries to overcome the limitation of Kant’s theory of the world as present being by understanding it as the condition for possibility of that-which-is as ready-at-hand. For Heidegger it is also a way to manifest the ontological foundation common both for Kant’s cosmological and moral concepts of the world.

МИР, ПОКОЙ, ОБЩИНА: О ВЗАИМОСВЯЗИ ЗНАЧЕНИЙ ПОНЯТИЯ «МИР» В РУССКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

Author(s): Alexander Frolov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

In this article we have tried to trace the correlations between different meanings of the world-concept in Russian language. The problematic point is that the same Russian word (“mir”) has three meanings separated in other Indo-European languages (mundus, pax, communitas). The analysis of this issue is preceded by an exposition of the world-problem in modern philosophy, with an emphasis put on the so-called “cosmological difference” introduced by Eugen Fink. It turned out that both for Russian and other languages, the core of the considered concept is a habitable space which the order, agreement and concordance between people take place in. Thus, such aspects of the world as community (communitas) and as peace, harmony (pax) intersect here. Further, the derived meanings of the concept of communitas were considered, starting from the peasant and Church community to the “historical world” and the “secular world” (in its Christian interpretation). In conclusion, we turned to the experience of some special sentiments having a cosmological value. First of all, it is the unique experience of the universal harmony (harmonia mundi), i.e. the experience of the world as peace (eirēnē, pax) in cosmological perspective. In addition, existential-practical conditions of the possibility of such experience (location, disposition and care) were considered. We also drew attention to some natural and social factors that prevent participation in the experience of the cosmological harmony. As a problematization of such experience, it was emphasized that from the theological standpoint the idea of the world, as the whole, can be realized only in the eschatological outlook, since the world in its present state is split, subjected to disorganization and only partly serves as an image (“icon”) reminding of its Creator.

БОГОВИДЕНИЕ И МЫШЛЕНИЕ О БЫТИИ: ВЛАДИМИР ЛОССКИЙ И МАРТИН ХАЙДЕГГЕР

Author(s): SVETLANA KONACHEVA / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

The paper is devoted to the dialogue between Orthodox theology of the latter half of the 20th century and Heidegger’s philosophy. We focus on the interpretation of the apophasis in the works of Vladimir Lossky. Our research tasks are not so much the description of the direct influence of Heidegger’s philosophy on the Lossky’s theological reflections, but, rather, a demonstration of the parallels between Heidegger’s existential and historical thinking and Lossky’s negative theology. In the first part we highlight the points common to early Heidegger’s interpretation of the mystical theory of cognition and Lossky’s understanding of the mystical theology of the Eastern Church: the correlation between theology and mystical experiencing, overcoming the conceptual frameworks, the knowledge of God as a transformative practice, which is aimed at the radical unity with God. There are also common features in both in Heidegger’s and Lossky’s critical interpretations of the identity of the concepts of God and being in Meister Eckhart’s mystical theology. Lossky opposes Eckhart’s God as Esse absconditum with the apophaticism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite who has thought out God beyond being. Heidegger insists on the theological differentiation distinguishing between God and being. We also compare the concept of detachment given in the works of Eckhart, Lossky and later Heidegger. Lossky’s explanation of the human personality is focused on irreducibility of a person to nature; he referred to the ecstatic character of existence of Dasein, but his anthropology is constituted on doctrine of a human being seen as the image and likeness of God. Further development of Orthodox apophaticism (Chr. Yannaras, D. B. Hart and J. P. Manoussakis) demonstrates a critical attitude towards Heidegger’s philosophy. Such attitude originates in their attempts to develop the ontology of personal being. We argue that Orthodox thinkers correlate with Heidegger in their search for a renewal of theological method, for the identical-differential mode of thinking moving from subject-object speculation to the ecstatic transformations of subject. The difference is in the emphasis on the personal character of the mystical ecstasy, founded on the trinitarian provisions inherent to the Eastern Church.

ХАЙДЕГГЕР БУДУЩЕГО И БУДУЩЕЕ ХАЙДЕГГЕРА

Author(s): ALEXANDER MIKHAILOVSKY / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

Martin Heidegger’s philosophy had a profound influence on the late Soviet and post-Soviet philosophical landscape. Nevertheless, there is no general picture of perception and critique of Heidegger’s philosophy in Russia. This article deals with Heidegger’s entry into the Russian philosophical scene as a philosopher of the future – a conservative critic of late modernity, a thinker of Being, and a “post” philosopher. On the one hand, by virtue of the influence French post-modernism had on late Soviet and post-Soviet philosophy, Russia has developed a special interest in Heidegger’s deconstruction theory. On the other hand, the reception of critique given by Heidegger to European nihilism, totalitarianism and machine technology, as the manifestations of modernity, has prompted significantly the interest in “political ontology”. The specifics of reception of Heidegger in Russia can also be traced to a refusal to make a strict division between the pure “core” of Heidegger’s philosophy and “accidental” circumstances associated with social and political aspects of his work in 1930s. The ongoing discussion about recently published Black Notebooks manifests not just the fact that there is a separate language of description and analysis existing in Russian philosophical field but also the original tendency for holistic consideration of Heidegger’s thinking, which includes not just his existential and historical reflections but also political passages and critique of civilizational discourse. Besides the reviews of Black Notebooks made by N. V. Motroshilova, V. V. Mironov and D. Mironova in the last year’s issues of Voprosy Filosofii (a philosophical journal), the attention is focused on the earlier works by N. V. Motroshilova, V. V. Bibikhin, A. V. Gulyga, V. A. Podoroga and A. G. Dugin, related to Heidegger’s overcoming of the Western metaphysical tradition and his concept of a new beginning beyond Machenschaft. The article is also devoted to considertion given to a new book by J. Love (2017) examining the philosophical influence Heidegger exerts in Eastern Europe and Russia.

ХАЙДЕГГЕР И РОССИЙСКОЕ ФИЛОСОФСТВОВАНИЕ: ПРОДУКТИВНОСТЬ ДИСТАНЦИИ

Author(s): Ilya Inishev / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

The paper offers a critical analysis of a programmatic article by Alexander Mikhailovsky on the reception of “late” Heidegger’s philosophy in Russian philosophical community. I mainly focus on the thesis put forth by Mikhailovsky on the peculiar esoterism of Heidegger’s “being-historical” thought, demanding a special philosophical practice of a “meaningful silence” considered the only commensurate approach to it. Moreover, according to Mikhailovsky, only Russian cultural and philosophical space (by which he understands mainly Russia’s conservative cultural and political thought) retains the ability to perform this kind of silence, while Western researchers and scholars have completely lost it. I put forward the following main arguments against this thesis: 1) several varieties of “esoterism” are simultaneously inherent in early” and “late” Heidegger’s philosophy and none of which requires a disavowal of a public scientific discussion and undertaking of a particular socio-political mission instead; 2) Heidegger’s conception of the so-called “other beginning” is not a radical-reformist but diagnostic one, that is to say, in its basic intentions it is not active revolutionary but rather quietist; 3) By now, the most substantial contribution to the systematic research of Heidegger’s legacy is made by Western interpreters; 4) Heidegger’s publishing policy testifies precisely to his intention to prevent ideologized forms of appropriation of his philosophy and, on the contrary, to guarantee the possibility of its systematic scientific reception. In addition to issues of content, I pay attention to the rhetorical form of the article in question. From my point of view, the rhetorical strategy of Alexander Mikhailovsky draws on a general tonality that came to be strongly associated with reception of Heidegger in Russian speaking cultural space due to the translations of Heidegger’s works into Russian made in the 1980-90s. In conclusion I, in general outline, present my own – alternative – view on the productive strategies of treating Heidegger’s theoretical legacy.

РЕЦЕНЗИЯ НА КНИГУ АДОНИСА ФРАНГЕСКУ LEVINAS, KANT AND THE PROBLEM OF TEMPORALITY London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. ISBN 978-1-137-59795-3

Author(s): Anna Yampolskaya / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

Frangeskou’s point of departure in his juxtaposition of Levinas and Kant is the problem of transcendental schematism but not the tension between autonomy and heteronomy as it is common for most of the published literature. Thus, the middle ground between Levinas and Kant is occupied by Heidegger, but also by Franz Rosenzweig with his “biblical” version of ecstatic temporality. Levinassian diachrony is described by Frangeskou as a new form of ecstatic temporality, different from the interpretations given by Heidegger and Rosenzweig. It is analogous to transcendental schematism of reason. We briefly compare Frangeskou’s interpretation with Marc Richir’s notion of transcendental schematism which also goes back to Levinassian diachronic temporality. Richir’s schematism functions as a medium joining together heterogenous elements such as the layer of “phenomenological”, i.e., the unstable and flickering sense, and the layer of “symbolic”, i.e., the organised and stabilised sense. In a similar way, for Frangeskou, diachronic temporality provides a synthesis (though, not a synchronisation) of God, the world and a man.

РЕЦЕНЗИЯ НА КНИГУ ДЭВИДА КЛЕЙНБЕРГА-ЛЕВИНА BECKETT’S WORDS. THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS IN A TIME OF MOURNING London and New York. Bloomsbury, 2015. ISBN 978-1-47421-685-2

Author(s): Alexey Sidorov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

The review is devoted to the book of American philosopher D. Kleinberg-Levin Beckett’s Words. The Promise of Happiness in a Time of Mourning. The book presents an analysis of the contemporary post-religious and post-metaphysical situation in Western culture, which was became known as nihilism in the 19th century. “The Death of God” has become a historical, cultural and intellectual trauma, which requires the “work of mourning” in order to cope with its consequences. The author analyzes the causes of this situation and possible positions for philosophers and writers. Guided by the late works of Heidegger, D. Kleinberg-Levin argues that the path in a world without grounds is possible due to a promise that calls us from the essence of the language. Beckett’s work is interpreted as an example of the writer’s struggle with the forces of nihilism in the name of the “promise of happiness”, which is inherent in the very language as such. Therein lies the messianic dimension of language that can be freed from religious doctrines and retain its importance in the “disenchanted” modern world. In the epoch of nihilism, after the death of God, there is the last remaining hope of the immanent power and responsibility of a writer, true to his paradoxical vocation – the impossibility and necessity of expression. In the review Kleinberg-Levin’s book is considered in the context of studies of nihilism as a cultural trauma of modernity.

ENACTING THE CONTINGENCY CATHERINE MALABOU BEFORE TOMORROW: EPIGENESIS AND RATIONALITY Translated by Carolyn Shread. Malden, MA, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016. ISBN 9780745691510

Author(s): Maxim Miroshnichenko / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

This review is an attempt to read the main ideas of Catherine Malabou’s Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality, with a particular emphasis made upon the problem of the modifiability of the transcendental one and the rejection of the a priori dimension of subjectivity within scientific and philosophical thought of a materialist orientation. Malabou’s thesis of the epigenesis of pure reason evinces the dynamical dimension of the transcendental one, integrating structural and evolutionary conceptions of reason. Epigenesis secures the stability of the phenomenal world and provides the possibility of a contingent metamorphosis of reason, thereby establishing the economy of the transcendental contingency. Largely, Malabou’s work has many affinities with the recent phenomenological thought, although it makes just a few explicit references to phenomenological philosophers as such.

FILOZOFIJSKA MISAO V. SOLOVJEVA U DIJALOGU S PREDSTAVNICIMA FENOMENOLOŠKOG REALIZMA

Author(s): Iris Tićac / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2010

Ziel und Zweck der vorliegenden Arbeit liegen in dem Versuch, konvergente Punkte zwischen Solovev’s Philosophie der Liebe und die Auffassungen der Liebe bei Vertretern der »realistischen Phänomenologie« darzustellen und zu würdigen. Dabei handelt es sich nicht um ein Lesen Solovev’s aus der phänomenologischen Perspektive. Die Gedanken der phänomenologischen Realisten werden in die Analyse eingebracht nur insofern sie zum besseren Verständnis der Tendenzen der Solovev’s Philosophie der Liebe beitragen können. Zusammenfassend ist festzuhalten, dass man drei konvergente Punkte zwischen Solov’evs Philosophie der Liebe und Auffassungen der Liebe bei Vertretern der »realistischen Phänomenologie « entdecken kann.

EXISTENTIAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL SUPPORT GROUPS ADDRESSED TO PARENTS OF CHILDRENS WITH VARIOUS NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS: PRINCIPLES, MODELS, IMPLEMENTATION AND FUNCTIONING FEATURES

Author(s): Ioan Emanuel Gruia / Language(s): English Issue: Sp.Issue/2019

Existential-Phenomenological Support Groups Addressed to Parents of Childrens with Various Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Principles, Models, Implementation and Functioning Features. This article aims to present the principles, techniques and models of existential-phenomenological philosophical counseling, as well as the way in which philosophical practice can be used to support discussions within support groups addressed to parents of children with disabilities. A model of philosophical existential-phenomenological group counseling will also be proposed, addressing the parents of children diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder. The phases of the group counseling process as well as individual counseling through phenomenology will be reproduced in this article, which will also propose possible themes that discussions in workshops with parents of children with disabilities can be based on.

RENAUD BARBARAS AND THE MULTIPLE MEANING OF “LIFE”

Author(s): Jakub Čapek / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

The recent philosophy of Renaud Barbaras counts among the most original contributions to the phenomenology of life. My article examines it in the light of some conceptual observations based on the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. The early phenomenological texts illustrate the complexity of the phenomenological approach to the living inasmuch as “life” can be said in different ways, it is plural in meaning; further, life is also plural in that it can be attributed to a plurality of beings (consciousness, organisms, certain forms of existence, etc.). When developing his own account, Barbaras starts from a profound analysis of the phenomenological idea of correlation and comes to a new notion of life which is no longer attributed to organisms but to the world. The article critically follows this move from the life of organisms to the life of the world and articulates certain questions that this move can raise. The background of these questions is the double plurality of the notion of life. Even though saying that “life” has multiple meanings and attributions is purely formal and general, this multiplicity can serve as a ground for the phenomenological analysis of the way life is indeed experienced in its different meanings.

ДАННОСТЬ КАК ПРОБЛЕМА ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИИ

Author(s): Mikhail Belousov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2019

According to principle of all principles, formulated in §24 of Ideas I, every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of all cognition. The principle is the one of givenness, and, as such, it seems to show the limits of philosophical problematization, since the true givenness leaves no room for sensible questions and is, as Husserl puts it, the absolute matter of course. Proceeding from the key differences and intuitions of Husserlian phenomenology, I show instead that bringing phenomena to phenomenological givenness does not eliminate them, but, on the contrary, constitutes them as problematic. In grounding this thesis in the first section of the article I start with analyzing differences underlying the problematics of givenness in phenomenology. These are the correlative differences between empty and fulfilled intention and between meaning and fulfilling sense, which are introduced in Logical Investigations. In the second section I show that the Husserlian idea of final fulfillment as strict phenomenological evidence—eliminating the surplus of meaning in relation to the givenness and hence, at first sight, depriving the phenomenon of its problematical character—is, at the same time, the idea of final ‘emptying’ of meaning which turns it into the problem. In view of this, the article puts together the Husserlian description of final fulfillment with the analysis of the phenomenon of death in Heidegger’s Being and Time to demonstrate their affinity. In the third section, relying on Hans Jonas’ description of metabolism, I draw an analogy between the relation between organism and matter and the one between problem and givenness to substantiate the thesis that problematicity is not a philosophical dead end, but the constitutive feature of life and life-world.