Author(s): / Language(s): English
Issue: 1/2021
Looking over a hundred years, it should be acknowledged that phenomenological studies in Latvia were
initially carried out in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, starting with 1) Husserl’s studies and
criticism of solipsism (T.Celms), 2) phenomenological analysis of forms of community (K. Stavenhagen), and 3) development of cognitive phenomenology in Ladusāns’ many-sided gnoseology. It was not
possible to work on phenomenology during the harsher years of the Soviet regime (1945–1970), but in
the mid-1970s, a phenomenological circle emerged in Riga under the influence of Nelly Motroshilova
and Merab Mamardashvili. Its focus was on the issues of consciousness and language, on phenomenological ontology, communication, time-consciousness. Since 1990, phenomenological studies have
been expanding, four international conferences have been held in Latvia in cooperation with the World
Phenomenology Institute, nine monographs on phenomenology have been published, and 56 articles
from Latvia have been published in Analecta Husserliana. Themes of papers and presentations included historicity, space and time, passions, teleology, educational philosophy, aesthetics. Since 2005,
nine phenomenology-related doctoral theses have been defended in Riga. Over the last decade, greater
focus has been given to applied phenomenology, its relationships with medicine, social media, violence research. Phenomenologists influenced a transformation of classical philosophy towards wider
horizons and reflected the necessity to consider concepts of life, nature, body, we-consciousness, it also
opened the way for contemporary perspective dialogue with cognitive sciences, linguistics, identity
studies and psychoanalysis.
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