THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE, written by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, outlines the early history of the Institute. It was originally published in the Analecta Husserliana, and is reprinted here with permission.

THE THEME

Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition – The Human Individual, Nature, and the Possible Worlds

With the present volume we celebrate the decade 1968-78 of research work in philosophy and the human sciences conducted by The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, its incorporated International Husserl and Phenomenological Research Society, International Society of Phenomenology and Literature, and International Society of Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, as well as by its affiliated societies and centers around the world. The present volume presents appropriately the entire program carried out in 1977-78, the "Jubilee Year", in which a philosophical platform for our work was reached. Let us now review in retrospect the philosophical itinerary which we have covered and pinpoint the turning points of our progress. This progress, which culminates in the programs of the present volume, may be considered as the third phase of phenomenology.

THE GRAND DESIGN OF THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL "RE-CONSTRUCTION" OF PHILOSOPHY

The Task of the "Philosophical Re-construction"

The enervation manifested by twentieth-century philosophical trends in the mid-sixties (positivism and the Oxford Analytic School, neo-Thomism, naturalism, Marxism), concurrent with the diversification of phenomenological research, one of the great intellectual forces of our times - which lost its initial focus as well as the cohesive intensity of its creative inspiration threatened to leave a void. And yet, at this turning point in human civilization, humanity turned to philosophy - as offering more fruitful inspiration than the sciences - for clarification of man’s predicament and for the estimation of his situation, as well as for foresight. However, while other philosophical trends have been approaching exhaustion, phenomenology, in contrast, appears not yet to have begun to properly tap her own abundant resources. The captivating interest in Husserl's thought after World War II concentrated first upon the extensive and multitudinous study of Husserl's works themselves; this led to numerous interpretations of phenomenological insights, which either formed a body of scholarly research or resulted in new philosophies. Then, innumerable ideas stemming from the phenomenological work of Husserl and contemporary phenomenological thinkers affected many areas of scholarship, science, arts, and religion and stimulated increased appreciation of phenomenology. Nevertheless, this great wave of phenomenological research and inspiration - which constituted a second phase of the phenomenological trend of thought succeeding the first phase (the original thinking of Husserl and his contemporaries) and giving it its distinctive interpretative twist - was spread so thin that the new issues posed by the development of Occidental and other cultures, and by the challenges of modem science, were left unanswered by phenomenology. The profound fermentations of the new civilizations seem to have diminished the significance of phenomenology. And yet no other philosophy could meet this new challenge. But on the one hand, the mid-sixties marked phenomenology's seeming exhaustion with the then-prevalent transcendental approach. On the other hand, it disclosed "cracks" within its seemingly smooth surface. The "structuration" of consciousness jubilantly discovered by Husserl was challenged by phenomenologically inspired psychiatry (Henri Ey) and its "de-structuration of consciousness." Behind the network of intentional structuration lurked, of a sudden, an unfathomable depth calling for attention (A-T. Tymieniecka, 'Dem Wendepunkt der Phdnomenologie entgegen,' review article in Philosophische Rundschau [Heidelberg, 1967]). The enormous reservoir of Husserlian intuitions demanded a deeper probing as well as a stronger and more daring grip upon facts. Three new avenues opened which led first from the essence to the fact and then to a radical reassessment from within the phenomenological tradition of its fundamental assumptions and their hitherto accepted interpretation: a "phenomenological self-reflection. "Phenomenology reflecting upon itself" has emerged as possessing inexhaustible resources for a new mathesis universalis with which to resume this first task of Husserl. In fact, phenomenology appears to offer the promise of a grand philosophical reconstruction of the human spirit. 4 The Itinerary of the grand phenomenological "reconstruction" which was covered in the first decade of phenomenological work contributed by the many collaborators of the above-mentioned International Phenomenology Societies, is recorded in the volumes of Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research. Sincere appreciation is due to Mr. Anton Reidel, who, in his "creative" approach to publishing, first recognized the significance of our project and helped to initiate it by agreeing to publish the series. The title indicates that the series was meant to take up again, and to continue, Edmund Husserl's own Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phenomenologische Forschung. Both The International Husserl and Phenomenological Research Society, which was inaugurated at our Waterloo Conference, the first international phenomenology conference in this hemisphere, in 1969, and The International Society for Philosophy and Literature, which I founded with Professor Claude Levesque and Waldo Ross in Quebec in 1974, needed an institutional academic framework to continue. To fulfill this need The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, with headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts, was organized in 1976. The invaluable work of Mr. Philip Suter - with the assistance of his colleague, Mr. John Huntwork led to a pioneering type of research/learning institution as the academic structure of the Institute. Mr. Suter has remained with us as a forceful support and his vivid interest in our work continues to be a source of courage and confidence. The following scholars have consented to serve on the counseling board of The Institute and have during this decade generously contributed to its progress. The Boston Forum for the Interdisciplinary Phenomenology of Man, a continuing research program of The Institute, owes its impetus to Professor Paul Ricoeur, who consented to act as its co-director and who opened its inaugural session.

COUNCILORS OF THE WORLD PHENOMENOLOGY INSTITUTE

Angela Ales Bello, Centro Italiano di Fenomenologia, Rome, Italy
D. N. K. Darnoi, Monmouth College, New Jersey, USA
Alvin Diemer, University of Düsseldorf, Germany
Martin Dillon, State University of New York, Binghamton
Erling Eng, Veterans Administration Hospital, Lexington, Kentucky, USA
Gerhardt Funke, University of Mainz, Germany
Joseph Kockelmans, Pennsylvania State University, USA
Emmanuel Levinas, University of Paris, France
Werner Marx, University of Freiburg, Germany
J. N. Mohanty, University of Oklahoma, USA
Maurice Natanson, Yale University, USA
Yoshihiro Nitta, University of Tokyo, Japan
Jean-Claude Piguet, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Paul Ricoeur, University of Paris and Chicago
Mario Sancipriano, University of Arezzo, Italy
André Schuver, Duquesne University, USA
Benjamin 1. Schwartz, Harvard University, USA
Stephan Strasser, University of Nijmegen, Holland
Hirotaka Tatematsu, Nanzen University, Nagoya, Japan
Masato Uno, Psychiatric Research Institute of Tokyo, Japan
Dieter Wyss, University of Würzburg, Germany
Richard Zaner, Southern Methodist University, USA
Zurab Kakabadse, Georgian Academy of Science, Tbilisi, Georgia, USSR

My warm appreciation goes to the many scholars who have participated in this undertaking by helping to launch our three international societies; in particular I would like to thank Professors Marie-Rose Barral, Erling Eng, and Dallas Laskey, who helped to launch the International Husserl Society and to the scholars who served on the consulting board of the World Phenomenology Institute and who have contributed throughout the years to our progress. In addition, I cannot forget the contributors to our research sessions, conferences, seminars, and congresses around the world who did not spare in their time, effort or means to give to them substance and assure their progress. The names of these contributors are listed on the programs and documents of the Institute's work during this period and are cited in the documentary annex to the present volume. Here I will focus upon the major ideas which have emerged in the course of our work as the cornerstones of our "reconstructing" itinerary. The present volume gives a selection from the entire one-year program of the Institute and its three incorporated societies in the jubilee year 1978-79. In the reformulations of the conception of Man and the Human Condition, which in their ramifications comprehend a vast array of issues, the approach to Nature, Society, and the "possible worlds" in this itinerary converge. The Analecta Husserliana volumes where this itinerary is fully recorded will be indicated at each point of this brief summary.

THE GRAND PHILOSOPHICAL DESIGN

a. The Conception of the Body as the Vortex of the Reformulated Differentiations

Our itinerary began with the assessment of Husserl's last efforts to embrace within one meaningful system the entire universe of discourse which found its resistance point in the conception of the "body." In fact, it appears that Husserl's eidetic/transcendental net met its limit on the issue of the body within its experienced, lived, and ultimately unthematizable regions. The tentacles of intentionality reach no further than the borderline of the preconscious; the further stretches of pre-predicative "Nature" escape the schema. The reign of "essences" and intentional structures breaks down at the borderline of the "fact." And yet, being is, nonbeing is not, and contingent reality is the core of being. Leaving behind artifacts of the intellect by which man defines himself in the eidetic/transcendental perspective, we must move toward the actuality of the real individual within the context of actual existence. 5 We must begin at the breaking point of intentionality, at the borderline between the meaning-giving role of the intellect and the ground whose significance eludes the mind's tentacles; once ascertained, the living individual emerges as the vortex distributing and measuring the significant roles. It indicates where the reformulation of the phenomenological approach should go. (Cf. Analecta Husserliana, vol. 1, Body, Consciousness and Method).

b. The Phenomenological Inheritance in a Self-critical Reflection (the Vast Field for Reconstruction)

From within the phenomenological perspective there emerged the need to appreciate the multifarious contributions made from different angles, orientations and areas of inquiry by various thinkers within the field. The most fertile field for a new philosophical beginning is offered by engaging these thinkers in a dialogue that leads to a mutual appreciation of their distinctive insights. What is sought is neither arbitrary selectiveness nor easy eclecticism but a confrontation of divergent standpoints in a common probing into the great philosophical issues. The need and basis for extended inquiries result from the shortcomings of the eidetic and transcendental approaches - which clearly appear to lead to "naive ontologies," on the one hand, and to the raising of exclusive rights to the meaningfulness of the world, on the other as well as from so-called "phenomenological realism" and "transcendental idealism." (Cf. Analecta Husserliana, vol. 2, The Later Husserl and the Idea of Phenomenology; Idealism-Realism, Historicity and Nature).

c. The Creative Function of Man and the Initial Spontaneity in the Dilemmas Of Culture

The reinvestigation of the "crisis of culture" on the pattern laid down by Husserl of man's situation within his life-world appears in our times as that of man's self-confidence in his virtualities and of his will to believe. Yet human virtualities appear as lifting the dilemma of pessimism/ optimism in the human condition. Man's inner spontaneity enables him to overcome the "ruptures " in culture. Instead of the self-enclosure within one intentionally predetermined world, man's creative virtualities disclose a horizon of "possible worlds." Cf. Analecta Husserliana, vol. 3, The Phenomenological Realism of the Possible Worlds; The "A Priori", Activity and Passivity of Consciousness, Phenomenology and Nature; vol. 4, Ingardiana; and vol. 5, The Crisis of Culture; Steps to Reopen the Phenomenological Investigation of Man).

d. Sovereignty of Intentional Intellect Dispelled. Not "Essences" but the "Irreducible" Cornerstones of Order: The Creative Reconstruction

Does the denouncing of objectivity as an artifact of reason, of "essences" as its instrument, of intentionality as its network, etc. - which the discovery of man's creative freedom led us to - leave philosophical inquiry without compass in no-man's land in a chaos without order? No! The creative function itself, while being retrieved from the shattered intentional artifacts enables us to discover the non-decomposable vestiges of all order. We discover the footholds of order within the virtualities of the human individual rather than in the abstract structures of the structurizing intellect or in the ideal "essences." While differentiating himself from "other" beings and things, the functioning of the individual being follows the irreducible guidelines of the human condition. To unravel them shows us how to recompose the decomposed, to restructure the de-structured, to reconstruct the deconstructed in its multiple contingencies. (Cf. Analecta Husserliana, vol. 6, The Self and the Other; The Irreducible Element  in Man, Part I: The "Crisis of Man"; vol. 7, The Human Being in Action; The Irreducible Element in Man, Part II: Investigation at the Intersection of Philosophy and Psychiatry; vol. 9, The Teleologies in Husserlian  Phenomenology: The Irreducible Element in Man, Part III: Telos as the Pivotal Factor of Contextual Phenomenology).

e. I Can: I Create, I Value, I Cognize

From within the creative perspective the functional priorities take a reverse order. Going to the end of the Husserlian, Schelerian and Merleau-Pontian "I can" is to exfoliate the entire spread of human functions. Instead of maintaining the stress, in the Husserlian vein, upon the cognitive/constitutive "I can" assumed as comprising them all, man's power to "act", fully exfoliated, manifests in contrast the priority of the irreducible creative act, ignored by Husserl, Scheler and Merleau-Ponty. We may account intentionally for the ethical choice; yet it is not the ethical action which is the pivotal human function, but the creative act which as the prototype of all action, establishes the specificity of man over all other types of beings. As a phase in man's self-individualization in existence, the creative "I can" carries the progress of the human being from the vital origins, through the cultural world, toward his specifically human destiny. (Cf. Analecta Husserliana, vol. 6, The Self and the Other; The Irreducible Element in Man, Part I: "Crisis of Man"; vol. 7, The Human Being in Action; The Irreducible Element in Man, Part II. Investigation at the Intersection of Philosophy and Psychiatry; vol. 10, The Acting Person [by Karol Wojtyla]; vol. 11, The Great Chain of Being and Italian Phenomenology)

f. Phenomenology as the "Universal Praxiology of Knowledge" -Interdisciplinary Communication through a Philosophical Dialogue

In Husserl's conception of phenomenology as a mathesis universalis which establishes a foundation for all the sciences, the cognitive evidence has been sought as the unifying ground. However, we must now reconsider the question of foundations. Contemporary science, with its enormous diversification of cognitive approaches and methods, has not only lost from sight the notion of links, but is unable to use a single type of evidence with which to reestablish communicative antennae. In fact, the vertiginous shift of ever-expanding insights indicate that the "common ground" is nothing persistent, stable, or "ultimate" but the creative vortex of human faculties coming to grips with the facticity of being. Hence phenomenology conceived anew as the investigation of the virtualities of man and the human condition has to seek insights gained by scientific inquiry; while this scientific inquiry has to elucidate its interdisciplinary links through phenomenology: first, because phenomenology is specifically conceived as proceeding in such a two-way traffic; second, because they share in the common objective in which, in the last analysis, all their specific concerns meet, that is, the human individual within his life and his social world. In the course of carrying out a presuppositionless appreciation of their results, experiences, and respective evidences in the light of the phenomenological universality, these evidences may be brought into a philosophically clarified common reservoir of knowledge. In this dialogue phenomenology functions not as laying the ground of fixed principles or standards, but as conducting a clarifying scrutiny of the praxis itself.- a universal praxiology of knowledge. (Cf. Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 7, The Human Being in Action; The Irreducible Element in Man, Part II: Investigation at the Intersection of Philosophy and Psychiatry; vol. 9, The Teleologies in Husserlian Phenomenology: The Irreducible Element in Man, Part III: Telos as the Pivotal Factor of Contextual Phenomenology; Vol. 14, Phenomenology of Man and the Human Condition; Human Individual, Nature, and the Possible Worlds).

g. The Specifically Human Destiny in the Pessimism/Optimism Controversy about the Human Condition

The phenomenological probing into the virtuality of the human condition crosses not only into the human sciences but also into man's self-interpretation in existence in the creative effort proper, especially in literature, as well as in its theoretical interpretation. Indeed, not only do philosophy and literature share a common interest in the human being but, more specifically, they meet at the central issue of the pessimism/optimism evaluation of the human condition with respect to man's essential quest after a unique self-destiny. (Cf. Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 12, The Phenomeno- logical Reflection of Man in Literature; Vol. 13, The Unhappy Consciousness; The Poetic Plight of Samuel Beckett [Eugene F. Kaelin])

h. Phenomenology as the Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Man

In contrast to Husserl's emphasis upon the highest intellectual diversification of the forms of the life-world and his consequent identification of phenomenology with the origin and development of Occidental culture - of phenomenology as a crowning accomplishment - the phenomenology of man and of the human condition probes more deeply the conditions of individuality and the virtualities according to which the human being differentiates himself from the vital ties and projects his own unique human existence. This descent into the conditions of human functioning enables phenomenology to assume its intended role as the truly "first philosophy." As such, it not only elucidates the puzzling issues lying at the roots of the diversification into cultural forms but also offers a profound platform for an intercultural philosophical and human dialogue. (Cf. Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 8, Japanese Phenomenology; Phenomenology as the Trans-Cultural Philosophical Approach; Vol. 9, The Teleologies in Husserlian Phenomenology: The Irreducible Element in Man, Part III.- Telos as the Pivotal Factor of Contextual Phenomenology; Vol. 14, Phenomenology of Man and of the Human Condition; Human Individual, Nature, and the Possible Worlds, etc.)

i. The "Great Chain of Being" in a Phenomenological Reformulation

The existential discontinuities and attempts to establish their connectedness are present in phenomenology in its very conception. From its incipient phase onward, phenomenological inquiry has, on the one hand, carefully     distinguished several "strata" or "layers" of reality. (Th. Conrad, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Roman Ingarden) On the other hand, Husserl's transcendental approach distinguished various constitutive regions, aimed at bringing them together as areas corresponding to the meaning-bestowing system of consciousness. Yet "being is and nonbeing is not" and the universe of man in its philosophical reconstruction, with all its "ruptures" and "schisms" is a discreet continuity, does not suffer void. Furthermore, both the strata approach and the transcendental intentional network fail to account for the pervading flux which carries the structures of objectivity and breaks them to pieces. Being is not a chaos, and existence means order. The phenomenology of man and the human condition attempts to reformulate the puzzling issue of "existence versus order" running through philosophical thought from the Presocratics on. (Cf. Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 4, Ingardiana; Vol. 7, The Human Being in Action; The Irreducible Element in Man, Part II.- Investigation at the Intersection of Philosophy and Psychiatry; Vol. 11, The Great Chain of Being and Italian Phenomenology)

The above are some of the cornerstone ideas which have emerged in the itinerary pursued by The World Phenomenology Institute and carried out through the numerous contributions of scholars from all five continents - scholars of different persuasions, convictions, and beliefs. The innovating impetus of their thought finds its appropriate place within the vast schema. With their personal concerns, questioning, research, etc. they contribute a large spectrum of issues into which the multifarious insights, intuitions, conceptions, etc. opening up the dimensions of the human spirit branch out. No hasty synthesis, no undue simplifications in formulating the problems, no arbitrary tendencies or aims. We proceed by opening the immense field of a universal inquiry into the core of beingness, with the human being in his condition as the vortex. Only some cornerstones of its ground are so far revealed but they are enough to carry further our itinerary which originated and carries on the THIRD PHASE OF PHENOMENOLOGY. In the present volume we present a specific exploratory phase of our research in progress. This centers on the topic of man, nature, and the interdisciplinary communication among the sciences and has been carried out during the "jubilee year" of our work, 1978-79. During this time our typical program, concentrating on the above theme, comprised The Boston Forum for the Interdisciplinary Phenomenology of Man, The Ninth International Phenomenology Conference in Paris and the Institute's own program at the Fifteenth World Philosophy Congress in Düsseldorf.

NOTES

1.Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, "Beyond Ingarden's Idealism/Realism Controversy with Husserl; The Third Phase of Phenomenology," ANALECTA,vol.4.

2.Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Phenomenology and Science in Contemporary European Thought, 1961, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York.

3.Cf. by the present writer, "Cosmos and the Foundations of Psychiatry, in Heidegger and the Path of Thinking, Duquesne University Press, Pittsburgh, 1969; also "Die Phänomenologische Selbstbesinnung. 1: Der Leib und die Transzendentalität in der gegenwärtigen phänomenologischen und psychiatrischen Forschung," ANALECTA, vol. 1, 1971;

4.Ibid. and "Phenomenology Reflects upon Itself, II," ANALECTA,vol.2.