The “Face of Nature” in Contemporary French Phenomenology

Grant project “The “Face of Nature” in Contemporary French Phenomenology. The Challenges of a New Meta-Ethics and Ecology” (GAP 21-22224S).

July 2021 – June 2024

Husserl’s diagnose of the crisis of man becomes eminently actual once we understand it as the crisis both of man and of nature. For modern science has achieved such a success by pulling things out of the world and by transforming them into manipulated objects. Consequently, natural resources are exhausted and non-recyclable waste is accumulated. But Husserl’s specific solution of the crisis – his meta-ethical ideal of the phenomenological foundation of human life in absolute subjectivity – is no longer actual because phenomenology has been largely transformed since the publication of The Crisis of European Sciences. Contemporary French phenomenology has substituted new dynamic descriptions of the relation between man and nature for Husserlian absolute (inter)subjectivity constituting nature as a dependent formation. The project’s main objective is to investigate and systematically interpret these new descriptions according to which man is being transformed by its encounters with the transcendent “face of nature”. By developing this framework, the project aims to provide fundamental elements for a new phenomenological meta-ethics, and to contribute to eco-phenomenology.

Team members: Karel Novotný (principal investigator), Petr Prášek, Daniela Matysová