Gurwitsch's phenomenal holism

Elijah Chudnoff

pp. 559-578

in: Uriah Kriegel (ed), Phenomenal intentionality past and present, Phenomenology and the cognitive sciences 12 (3), 2013.

Abstract

Aron Gurwitsch made two main contributions to phenomenology. He showed how to import Gestalt theoretical ideas into Husserl's framework of constitutive phenomenology. And he explored the light this move sheds on both the overall structure of experience and on particular kinds of experience, especially perceptual experiences and conscious shifts in attention. The primary focus of this paper is the overall structure of experience. I show how Gurwitsch's Gestalt theoretically informed phenomenological investigations provide a basis for defending what I will call Phenomenal Holism, the view that all the parts of a total phenomenal state metaphysically depend on it. To illustrate how the ideas developed along the way can be used in advancing work on the phenomenology of particular kinds of experience, I draw on them in defending Husserl's view that we can be aware of abstract objects against a phenomenological objection.

Cited authors

Husserl Edmund

Gurwitsch Aron