Elmar Holenstein

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Elmar Holenstein (born January 7, 1937 in St. Gallen ) is a Swiss philosopher with research interests in the fields of philosophical psychology, language and cultural philosophy.

Scientific career

Elmar Holenstein studied philosophy, psychology and linguistics at the Universities of Louvain / Leuven , Heidelberg and Zurich from 1964–72 . After a licensed thesis in 1967 with the title “Philosophical Reflections on Contemporary Christian Theology”, he received his doctorate in 1970 in Leuven with a dissertation on Husserl's phenomenology of pre-conceptual and non-conceptual experience. In 1976 he completed his habilitation in Zurich with a book on the “phenomenological structuralism” of Roman Jakobsons . Between 1971 and 1997 he spends longer research stays at the Husserl archive in Leuven, with Roman Jakobson in Harvard , at the University of Hawaii , in the “Universalienprojekt” of the linguist Hansjakob Seiler at the University of Cologne , with Joseph Greenberg in Stanford , at the Institute for the Studies of Languages ​​and Cultures of Asia and Africa in Tokyo and at the Collegium Budapest .

From 1977 to 1990, Holenstein was Professor of Philosophy at the Ruhr University in Bochum and then until 2002 at the ETH Zurich . In 1986/87 he was visiting professor at the University of Tokyo and in 2004 Tang Chun-I visiting professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong . He has lived in Yokohama since his retirement in 2002 .

Research priorities

"Decentering the ego"

The early phenomenological analyzes of Holenstein can be summarized under the title "Decentration of the ego". His dissertation provides a pioneering conceptual-historical clarification of the cognitive processes of consciousness, which, according to Husserl's less than happy terminology, take place “passive”, ie “without ego participation”. Associations are prototypical for this. In the text "Der Nullpunkt der Orientation" (The Zero Point of Orientation), which is the programmatic text for further research, in a discussion with Husserl, Holenstein proves that the ego, although the starting point of perception, by no means automatically experiences itself as the orientation center of its perceptions. For orientation in a field of perception, the shape of the phenomena is often more important than their meaning. However, there is no getting around the relevance of self-awareness in communication (in view of its sender-recipient structure) and in ethical action.

Phenomenological structuralism

In contrast to Paul Ricœur's characterization of Lévi-Strauss ' structuralism as “Kantism without a transcendental subject”, Holenstein interprets the Prague structuralism in its form in Roman Jakobson , based on the history of science, as a “Husserlianism” with the dimensions of intersubjectivity and the unconscious Subject conception. In Jakobson's preferred linguistic sub-disciplines, phonology and poetics , “what fashion strictly divides” belongs inseparably together: phenomenology and structuralism, analysis of emic participant and etic observer perspective, formal and content (semantically oriented) description. Jakobsons linguistic theory has roots in "the Russian ideological tradition" beyond phenomenology. Participant and observer perspectives naturally complement one another, also in intersubjective communication processes. Holenstein deals in detail with possible linguistic universals and their explanation.

Philosophical psychology

From the beginning, Holenstein's actual research interest in his language studies was the relationship between experience, language and thought, later increasingly that of “nature and spirit” (the traditional “ body-soul problem ”) and, connected with this, the heuristic function of the comparison between natural and artificial intelligence. Based on Gestalt psychology and cognitive science , he advocated the thesis early on within German philosophy that the categorical structuring of perception and thinking is decidedly more language-independent than was assumed during the high time of linguistic relativism in the early 20th century. The Neurology may prove that the will is the cause of human action an illusion. However, it fails to prove that consciousness is not a psychological reality. Since the evolution of consciousness can be explained as little with today's physics as with Descartes ' early modern physics , we have to admit that we do not know the intima fabrica ( Albrecht von Haller ) of nature, which seems to function as the emergence basis of consciousness . According to Holenstein, a naturalistic explanation is indicated within limits equally in psychology, in epistemology and in ethics .

Comparative culture philosophy

Since the mid-1980s, Holenstein began to do comparative research into cultural phenomena using the methodological tools he had acquired during his linguistic teaching and traveling years. In doing so, he developed his cultural philosophy , in accordance with the unfinished state of research, “not in a systematic form, but according to the modular principle in a series of essays”. The focus is on possible cultural universals , the comparability of intra- and intercultural variation and the untenability of the romantic conception of cultures as homogeneous, self-centered and closed wholes, the explanation of intra- and intra-cultural as well as intrapersonal conflicts with the impossibility of a simultaneous optimal realization of all human values, the importance of neighborhood relationships for historical change and the ability to code-switch for intercultural understanding. For him, Asia is not only a millennia-old refuge of spirituality, but also of secularity, of non-religious justifications of morality. His most widely used text in seminars is “A dozen rules of thumb to avoid intercultural misunderstandings”.

Philosophy Atlas

The new visual teaching aids motivated Holenstein to attempt “experimental cultural geography ” in the 1990s . Geography shows what it shows in its spatial context. Accordingly, maps are particularly suitable to illustrate that “European philosophy” cannot be understood without its non-European context. In addition, a particular concern of Holenstein's Atlas is the evidence of striking philosophical developments in Asia beyond their classical phases in the Axial Age and the shifting of their centers in China and India (comparable to those in Europe) as well as the ecological and economic diversity of oral traditions in Africa and in pre-Columbian America.

Traditional Swiss political science

The appointment to the ETH Zurich was an occasion for Holenstein to supplement the cultural-philosophical research with a series of political studies with regard to typical Swiss conditions. Topics were the favorable causes of the peaceful coexistence of several language groups (international prestige and factual privilege of minority languages, no coverage of political, linguistic, denominational and economic boundaries), the peculiarities of traditional Swiss social contracts (contract between communities, not between individuals, mediation, mutual Assurance of various laws), informal principles (good faith, equity / fairness), freedom of movement, neutrality in the event of a global conflict between civilizations, the historical background of the invocation of God in the preamble of the constitution.

ethics

In the few texts by Holenstein on ethics , as in his studies of the philosophy of language, the focus is on cognitive phenomena: conscience and responsibility, feelings of value that are regarded as obligatory by their owners and by society (and by Kant ) without “ naturalistic fallacy ”: Noblesse oblige!

Selected bibliography

Monographs

  • Phenomenology of Association: On the structure and function of a basic principle of passive genesis in Edmund Husserl , 1972.
  • Roman Jakobson's phenomenological structuralism , 1975.
  • Linguistic Universals: An Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Mind , 1985.
  • Socrates: 2,400 years after he was sentenced to suicide , 2002.
  • Philosophy Atlas: Places and Paths of Thought , 2004.

Collections of articles

  • Linguistics, semiotics, hermeneutics: Plea for a structural phenomenology , 1976.
  • On the evasion of language: Cognitive documents of language , 1980.
  • Human self-image: self-awareness - intersubjective responsibility - intercultural understanding , 1985.
  • Cultural-philosophical perspectives: school example Switzerland - European identity - global communication possibilities , 1998.
  • China is not entirely different: Four essays in globally comparative cultural history , 2009.

Editorships

  • Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations. Volume 1: Prolegomena to pure logic : Husserliana 18, 1975.
  • Roman Jakobson, Hölderlin, Klee, Brecht: On the word art of three poems , 1976.
  • (with Tarcisius Schelbert) Roman Jakobson, Poetik: Selected essays , 1979.
  • Roman Jakobson, Hans-Georg Gadamer & EH, The Legacy of Hegel II , 1984.
  • Roman Jakobson, Semiotics: Selected Texts , 1988.
  • Takeo Doi, Amae - Freedom in Security: On the Structure of the Japanese Psyche , 1982.

Scattered essays

(a) on philosophical psychology

  • Brain and mind: On the renaissance of theories of consciousness , in: Philosophische Rundschau 29 , 1982, 90-106.
  • Coevolutionary Epistemology , in: Transcendental or Evolutionary Epistemology? Edited by Wilhelm Lütterfelds, 1987: 307-333.
  • Machine knowledge and human consciousness , in: Studia Philosophica 46 , 1987: 145–163.
  • Naturalization prospects in psychology and epistemology , in: Journal for philosophical research 45 , 1991: 329–346.
  • Mental structures , in: Cognitive Science , ed. by Dieter Münch, 1992: 319–342.
  • Psychology as a daughter of philosophy and physiology , in: The brain - organ of the soul: To the history of ideas of neurobiology , ed. by Ernst Florey & Olaf Breidbach , 1993: 285-308.
  • Natural and artificial intelligence , in: Nature and Technology Terms , ed. by Karen Gloy, Bonn: Bouvier, 1996, 205–220.
  • The causal role of consciousness and reason , in: consciousness , ed. by Sybille Kramer, 1996: 184-212.
  • Natural Ethics: Legitimate Naturalism in Ethics , in: Phenomenology 2005, volume 1: Selected Essays from Asia , ed. By Cheung Chan-Fai & Yu Chung-Chi, 2007: 133–149.

(b) to the philosophy of culture

  • The cultural history of mankind: its conception in Hegel (until 1831), in Jaspers (1948) and today (1999) , in: Karl Jaspers: Philosophy and Politics , ed. by Reiner Wiehl & Dominic Kaegi, 1999: 163-184.
  • Philosophy outside Europe , in: Ortliche Ortlichkeit der Philosophie: Festschrift for Ram Adhar Mall for his 70th birthday , 2007: 65–77.
  • On the relativity of linguistic relativism , in: Paths to Culture: Similarities - Differences - Interdisciplinary Dimensions , ed. by Hamid Reza Yousefi et al., 2008: 343-360.

literature

  • Norbert Mecklenburg: Intercultural Philosophy: Habermas and Holenstein , in: The girl from abroad: German studies as intercultural literature. Academium, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-89129-552-6 , pp. 135-152.

Web links

Works in national libraries
Texts
Lecture on the beginnings of philosophy

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Phenomenology of Association , p. 2; Jakobson's phenomenological structuralism , § 2.2.1.
  2. ↑ See Bruce Bégout , Introduction to the French translation of the 9th chapter of Phenomenology of Association , in: Philosophie [Paris] 50, 1996, p. 30.
  3. ↑ Jakobson's Phenomenological Structuralism , Chapter 2.2; Human self-image , pp. 59 ff. & 77 ff.
  4. ↑ Jakobson's phenomenological structuralism , § 2.2.1.
  5. ↑ The Legacy of Hegel , p. 21 ff.
  6. ↑ Human self-image , p. 97 ff.
  7. ↑ Linguistic Universals , 1985.
  8. ↑ Since From the evasion of language (1980) to From the relativity of linguistic relativism (2008).
  9. ↑ The Causal Role of Consciousness and Reason , 1996.
  10. ^ Socrates , p. 28.
  11. ^ Coevolutionary Epistemology , 1987; Prospects of Naturalization in Psychology and Epistemology , 1991; Natural Ethics , 2005.
  12. ↑ Mecklenburg, Das Mädchen aus der Fremde , p. 143. See the three collections of essays Human Self-Understanding , Cultural-Philosophical Perspectives and China is not entirely different .
  13. ↑ Kulturphilosophische Perspektiven , pp. 257 ff .; most detailed reception: Christoph Antweiler, What is common to people , 2 2009.
  14. ↑ China is not entirely different , p. 41 ff.
  15. ↑ See the trilingual publication of the article in Polylog online and Franz M. Wimmer, Interkulturelle Philosophie , UTB, 2004, pp. 147–150.
  16. ↑ Harald Loch in Saarbrücker Zeitung , August 5, 2004: A wonderful example of very experimental cultural geography
  17. ↑ Human Self-Understanding, pp. 77 ff .; Natural Ethics , 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Holenstein, Elmar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Gallen