About this ebook
The chapters span the first decades of the development of phenomenology in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Yugoslavia before World War II. The contributors track the Brentanian heritage of the development. They show how this tradition inspired influential thinkers like Celms, Špet, Ingarden, Frank, Twardowski, Patočka, and others. The book also puts forward original investigations. Moreover it elaborates new accounts of the foundations of phenomenology. While the volume begins with the Brentanian heritage, it situates phenomenology in a dialogue with other important schools of thought of that time, including the Prague School and Lvov-Warsaw School of Logic.
This collection highlights thinkers whose writings have had only a limited reception outside their home countries due to political and historical circumstances. It will help readers gain a better understanding of how the phenomenological movement developed beyond its start in Germany. Readers will also come to see how the phenomenological method resonated in different countries and led to new philosophical developments in ontology, epistemology, psychology, philosophy of culture, and philosophy of religion.
About the author
Witold Płotka, Dr. habil., is Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. He was a visiting researcher at the Husserl-Archiv of the University of Cologne. His publications include articles on, for instance, the theory of intentionality, theory of knowledge, and the history of the phenomenological movement. He published two books: Studia z fenomenologii poznania. Transcendentalna filozofia Edmunda Husserla a problem wiedzy [Studies in the Phenomenology of Cognition. Transcendental Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and the Problem of Knowledge] (2015) and Fenomenologia jako filozofia mniejsza. Rozważania wokół sporów o metodę Husserla [Phenomenology as a Minor Philosophy. Considering the Controversies over Husserl’s Method] (2019). He edited also two-volumes of Wprowadzenie do fenomenologii [Introduction to Phenomenology] (2014), and co-edited (together with Peter Andras Varga) the Special Issue of the Horizon. Studies in Phenomenology (5(1), 2016) dedicated to phenomenology in Central and Eastern Europe. He is the winner of “The 2011 CARP Directors’ Memorial Prize in Honour of José Huertas-Jourda.” He is member of the Husserl Circle, former Secretary of the Polish Phenomenological Association, and President of the Central and East European Society for Phenomenology (CEESP). Recently he published, for instance, “Reduction and the Question of Beginnings in Husserl, Fink and Patočka” (Human Studies, 41(4), 2018), “From Psychology to Phenomenology (and Back Again): A Controversy over the Method in the School of Twardowski” (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Online First, 2019), and “A Controversy over the Existence of Fictional Objects: Husserl and Ingarden on Imagination and Fiction” (Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 51(1), 2020).
