"All life upon the stage"; the Theatrum Mundi. In this volume, a seventeenth century metaphor is revisited and is seen as applying to all art in all times. In the "magic mirror of art" the human being discerns the hidden spheres of human life and commemorates and celebrates its glorious victories and mourns its ignominious defeats. Let us rediscover Art as a witness to the human predicament as well as a celebrant of humanity's most sublime moments. This is the invitation of this collection of studies by A-T. Tymieniecka, Hanna Scolnicov, Muella Erkilic, Matt Landrus, Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Monika Bakke, David Brubaker, Tammy Knipp, Howard Pearce, Ellen J. Burns, G. Backhaus, Ethan J. Leib, Lawrence Kimmel, Ingrid Scheibler, Gottfried Scholz, L.F. Werth, A. Carillo, M. Statkiewicz, K. O'Rourke, B. Meyler, H. Meltzer, Jiuan Heng, W.V. Davies. Art as mirror of life, human life as participating in a stage play, corresponds to the fervent search human being of the causes, reasons, puzzles of our existence which elude us in the concrete life. This XVII c. conception of Theatrum Mundi opens as this volume shows a fascinating field of investigation for our times.

A concise and accessible introduction to phenomenology, which investigates the experience of experience.This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise and accessible introduction to phenomenology, a philosophical movement that investigates the experience of experience. Founded by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) and expounded by Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others, phenomenology ventures forth into the field of experience so that truth might be met in the flesh. It investigates everything as experienced. It does not study mere appearance but the true appearances of things, holding that the unfolding of experience allows us to sort true appearances from mere appearance. The book unpacks a series of terms--world, flesh, speech, life, truth, love, and wonder--all of which are bound up with each other in experience. For example, world is where experience takes place; flesh names the way our experiential exploration is inscribed into the bearings of our bodily being; speech is instituted in bodily presence; truth concerns the way our claims about things are confirmed by our experience. A chapter on the phenomenological method describes it as a means of clarifying the modality of experience that is written into its very fabric; and a chapter on the phenomenological movement bridges its divisions while responding to criticisms from analytic philosophy and postmodernism.

Wittgenstein's philosophy is a puzzling subject mainly because Wittgenstein himself does not appear to have given a full, explicit account of what he means by his phenomenology', phenomenological language' or phenomenological problems'. This book examines the idea of phenomenology throughout the different stages of Wittgenstein's philosophical development. The author argues that Wittgenstein's entire philosophical life was mainly concerned with what is immediately given in one's experience. Early interpretations of the phenomenological elements in Wittgenstein's philosophy usually emphasized the unique nature of his later work. However, the author here convincingly makes the case that Wittgenstein's concern with immediate experience and the way we describe it guided his philosophical journey through the phenomenological problems that pervade his work. The author offers many intriguing ideas and philosophical insights for Wittgenstein scholars and students, and philosophers interested in phenomenology who wish to study one of the most distinguished but least understood philosophers of the twentieth century. Audience: Philosophers, philosophers interested in phenomenology, Wittgenstein scholars.

Philip Blosser and Thomas Nenon The essays in the volume were assembled in honor of Lester Embree, who celebrated his 70th birthday on January 9, 2008. A preview of this volume was presented to Professor Embree at a reception sponsored by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology that was held in his honor at the 2008 meeting of the Husserl Circle at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The title Advancing Phenomenology is purposely ambiguous. On the one hand, these essays document the progress that phenomenology as an ongoing and vibrant movement has made in the period of over a century since its inception. They ill- trate the advance of phenomenology both in terms of the range of topics represented in this volume and in terms of the disciplinary and geographical diversity of the scholars who have contributed to it. The topics range from scholarly appropriations of past achievements in phenomenology, to concrete phenomenological investi- tions into ethics, gender, and environmental philosophy, as well as phenomenolo- cal reflections on the foundations of disciplines outside philosophy such as psychology, history, the social sciences, and archeology. The contributors come both from philosophy departments and from a number disciplines outside of philosophy such as sociology, psychology, and archeology; and they come from all around the world - from North America, from Western and Eastern Europe, from Latin America, and from several different countries in Asia.

Although the creative impulse surges in revolt against everyday reality, breaking through its confines, it makes pacts with that reality's essential laws and returns to it to modulate its sense. In fact, it is through praxis that imagination and artistic inventiveness transmute the vital concerns of life, giving them human measure. But at the same time art's inspiration imbues life with aesthetic sense, which lifts human experience to the spiritual. Within these two perspectives art launches messages of specifically human inner propulsions, strivings, ideals, nostalgia, yearnings prosaic and poetic, profane and sacral, practical and ideal, while standing at the fragile borderline of everydayness and imaginative adventure. Art's creative perduring constructs are intentional marks of the aesthetic significance attributed to the flux of human life and reflect the human quest for repose. They mediate communication and participation in spirit and sustain the relative continuity of culture and history.

This volume marks a phase of accomplishment in the work of the World Phenomenology Institute in unfolding a dialogue between Occidental phenomenology and the Oriental/Chinese classic philosophy. Going beyond the stage of reception, the Oriental scholars show in this collection of studies their perspicacity and philosophical skills in comparing the concepts, ideas, the vision of classic phenomenology and Chinese philosophy toward uncovering their common intuitions. This in-depth probing aims at reviving Occidental thinking, reaching to its intuitive sources, as well as providing Chinese thinking with a precise apparatus of expression toward its rejuvenation in a new significance. Studies by Korean and Chinese phenomenologists: Nam-In Lee, Inhui Park, Benjamin I. Schwartz, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Sitansu Ray, Zhang Xian, Zhang Qingxiong, Tsung-I Dow, Ashok K. Gangadean, Yushiro Takei, Louise Sunderarajan, Gregory Tropea, James Sellmann, Tyong Bok Rhie, Sang-Ki Kim, Daniel Zelinski, Qingjie Wang, Calvin O. Schrag, Jung-Sun Han.

In this study of Hegel's philosophy, Brinkmann undertakes to defend Hegel's claim to objective knowledge by bringing out the transcendental strategy underlying Hegel's argument in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Logic. Hegel's metaphysical commitments are shown to become moot through this transcendental reading. Starting with a survey of current debates about the possibility of objective knowledge, the book next turns to the original formulation of the transcendental argument in favor of a priori knowledge in Kant's First Critique. Through a close reading of Kant's Transcendental Deduction and Hegel's critique of it, Brinkmann tries to show that Hegel develops an immanent critique of Kant's position that informs his reformulation of the transcendental project in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit and the formulation of the position of 'objective thought' in the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Brinkmann takes the reader through the strategic junctures of the argument of the Phenomenology that establishes the position of objective thinking with which the Logic begins. A critical examination of the Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy shows that Hegel's metaphysical doctrine of the self-externalization of spirit need not compromise the ontological project of the Logic and thus does not burden the position of objective thought with pre-critical metaphysical claims. Brinkmann's book is a remarkable achievement. He has given us what may be the definitive version of the transcendental, categorial interpretation of Hegel. He does this in a clear approachable style punctuated with a dry wit, and he fearlessly takes on the arguments and texts that are the most problematic for this interpretation. Throughout the book, he situates Hegel firmly in his own context and that of contemporary discussion." -Terry P. Pinkard, University Professor, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C, USA "Klaus Brinkmann's important Hegel study reads the Phenomenology and the Logic as aspects of a single sustained effort, in turning from categories to concepts, to carry Kant's Copernican turn beyond the critical philosophy in what constitutes a major challenge to contemporary Cartesianism." - Tom Rockmore, McAnulty College Distinguished Professor, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA "In this compelling reconstruction of the theme of objective thought, Klaus Brinkmann takes the reader through Hegel's dialectic with exceptional philosophical acumen.... Many aspects of this book are striking: the complete mastery of the central tenets of Kant's and Hegel's philosophy, the admirable clarity in treating obscure texts and very difficult problems, and how Brinkmann uses his expertise for a discussion of the problems of truth, objectivity and normativity relevant to the contemporary philosophical debate. This will prove to be a very important book, one that every serious student of Kant and Hegel will have to read." - Alfredo Ferrarin, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

Merleau-Ponty in contemporary perspective: this was the theme of the conference at the Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K. U. L. ) from 29 November to 1 December 1991. Thirty years after Merleau Ponty's untimely death, it seemed appropriate to bring together scholars from Europe and from the United States of America to reappraise his philosophy. In fact, a significant body of scholarship has emerged which would seem to attest to the continuing importance of his thought for a variety of disciplines within the humanities, the social sciences, and the philosophy of nature. In the present volume, Gary Brent Madison addresses the issue whether Merleau-Ponty can be considered to be a classical philosopher. The fact that his work is one of the highlights of the phenomenological tradition and is of continuing inspiration for researchers in various domains seems to justify that claim. Yet, it is the feeling of many of the contributors to this volume that the so-called "second Merleau-Ponty" is still not really known. The unfinished state of The Visible and the Invisible and the cryptic condition of many of the "Working Notes" may be responsible for that. More research should be done, to uncover "the unsaid" of Merleau-Ponty. lowe to a remark of Paul Ricoeur in his introduction to the work of G. B. Madison, La Phenomenologie de Merleau-Ponty. Une recherche des limites de la conscience (Paris, Klincksieck, 1973, p.

Fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl, the main founder of the phenomenological current of thought, we present to the public a four book collection showing in an unprecedented way how Husserl's aspiration to inspire the entire universe of knowledge and scholarship has now been realized. These volumes display for the first time the astounding expansion of phenomenological philosophy throughout the world and the enormous wealth and variety of ideas, insights, and approaches it has inspired. The basic commitment to phenomenological concerns found in all this variety makes this collection a most signifi cant historical document. This second volume of the collection bears witness to a deliberate shift of attention from the earlier to the later phase of Husserl's reflections. We see how his issues - intersubjectivity, ethics, human encounter, the societal world, empathy, the sphere of the self, and the surpassing of dichotomies (bodylpsyche, etc.) - are now at the center of attention in the human sciences. Among the authors are H. Tellenbach, A. Rigobello, C. Balzer, C. Bjurvill, V. Molchanov, E. Syristova, O. Balaban, R. Boehm, M. Sancipriano, O. M. Anwar, Y. Okamoto, B. Holyst, T. Sodeika, and M. De Negri. The studies were gathered at the programs held by The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning in the commemorative year 1988/1989, chiefly at the First World Congress of Phenomenology at Santiago de Compos tela, Spain, with the aim of assessing the current state of phenomenology. A-T. T."

Azarya Polikarov was born in Sofia on October 9, 1921. Through the many stages of politics, economy, and culture in Bulgaria, he maintained his rational humanity and scientific curiosity. He has been a splendid teacher and an accomplished critical philosopher exploring the conceptual and historical vicis situdes of physics in modern times and also the science policies that favor or threaten human life in these decades. Equally and easily at home both within the Eastern and Central European countries and within the Western world. Polikarov is known as a collaborating genial colleague, a working scholar. not at all a visiting academic tourist. He understands the philosophy of science from within, in all its developments, from the classical beginnings through the great ages of Galilean, Newtonian. Maxwellian science. to the times of the stunning discoveries and imaginative theories of his beloved Einstein and Bohr of the twentieth century. Moreover, his understanding has come along with a deep knowledge of the scientific topics in themselves. Looking at our Appendix listing his principal publications, we see that Polikarov's public research career, after years of science teaching and popular science writing, began in the fifties in Bulgarian, Russian and German journals.

What is the relationship between perception and perceptual judgment? Does it involve sensual content that cannot be expressed verbally, or is it verbal structures that first allow us to recognize something? Both positions engender discomfort. In this systematically conceived examination grounded in the history of philosophy, Nolte uncovers the dogma underlying each of these positions and proposes alternatives.

Rationality in its various expressions and innumerable applications sustains understanding and our sense of reality. It is traditionally differentiated according to its sources in the soul: in consciousness, in reason, in experience, and in elevation. Such a functional approach, however, leaves us searching for the common foundation harmonizing these rationalities. The perennial quest to resolve the aporias of rationality is finding in contemporary science's focus on origins, on the generative roots of reality, tantalizing hints as to how this may be accomplished. This project is enhanced by the wave of recent phenomenology/ontopoiesis of life, which reveals/expresses the workings of the logos at the root of beingness and all rationality, whereby we gaze upon the prospect of a New Enlightenment. In the rays of this vision the revival of the intuitions of classical Islamic metaphysics, particularly intuition of the continuity of beingness in the gradations of life, receive fresh confirmation.

In medicine the understanding and interpretation of the complex reality of illness currently refers either to an organismic approach that focuses on the physical or to a 'holistic' approach that takes into account the patient's human sociocultural involvement. Yet as the papers of this collection show, the suffering human person refers ultimately to his/her existential sphere. Hence, praxis is supplemented by still other perspectives for valuation and interpretation: ethical, spiritual, and religious. Can medicine ignore these considerations or push them to the side as being subjective and arbitrary? Phenomenology/philosophy-of-life recognizes all of the above approaches to be essential facets of the Human Condition (Tymieniecka). This approach holds that all the facets of the Human Condition have equal objectivity and legitimacy. It completes the accepted medical outlook and points the way toward a new medical humanism'.

Through mystery, literature reveals to us the Great Unknown. While we are absorbed by the matters at hand with the present enactment of our life, groping for clues to handle them, it is through literature that we discover the hidden strings underlying their networks. Hence our fascination with literature. But there is more. The creative act of the human being, its proper focus, holds the key to the Sezam of life: to the great metaphysical/ontopoietic questions which literature may disclose. First, it leads us to the sublimal grounds of transformation in the human soul, source of the specifically human significance of life (Analecta Husserliana, Volume III, XIX, XXIII, XXVII)
Second, it leads us to the unveiling of the hidden workings of life in the twilight of knowing in a dialectic between The Visible and the Invisible, (Volume LXXV, 2002, Analecta Husserliana) down to the ontopoietic truth. (Volume LXXVI, 2002, Analecta Husserliana)
This prying into the unknown which provokes the human being as he or she attempts to conquer, step by step, a space of existence, finds its culmination in the phenomenon of mystery as the subject of the present collection. Its formulation brings us to the greatest question of all: the enigmatic solidarity -in-distinctiveness of human cognition and existence.
Papers are written by: Tony E. Afejuku, Gary Backhaus, Paul G. Beidler, Matthew J. Duffy, Raffaela Giovagnoli, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Matti Itkonen, Lawrence Kimmel, Catherine Malloy, Vladimir L. Marchenkov, Nancy Mardas, Howard Pearce, Bernadette Prochaska, Victor Gerald Rivas, M.J. Sahlani, Dennis Skocz, Jadwiga S. Smith, Mara Stafecka, Max Statkiewicz, Mariola Sulkowska, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Leon U. Weinman, Tim Weiss.

Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript is a classic of existential literature. It concludes the first and richest phase of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship and is the text that philosophers look to first when attempting to define Kierkegaard's own philosophy. Familiar Kierkegaardian themes are introduced in the work, including truth as subjectivity, indirect communication, the leap, and the impossibility of forming a philosophical system for human existence. The Postscript sums up the aims of the preceding pseudonymous works and opens the way to the next part of Kierkegaard's increasingly tempestuous life: it can thus be seen as a cornerstone of his philosophical thought. This volume offers the work in a new and accessible translation by Alastair Hannay, together with an introduction that sets the work in its philosophical and historical contexts.

Contemporaryphilosophyseems a great swirling almost chaos. Every situation must seem so at the time, probably because philosophy itself resists structura tion and because personal and political factors within as well as without the discipline must fade in order for the genuinely philosophical merits of performances to be assessed. Nevertheless, some remarks can still be made to situate the present volume. For example, at least half of philosophy on planet Earth is today pursued in North America (which is not to say that this portion is any less internally incoherent than the whole of which it thus becomes the largest part) and the present volume is North American. (Incidentally, the recognition of culturally geographic traditions and tendencies nowise implies that striving for cross-culturalif not trans-cultural philosophical validity has failed or ceased. Rather, it merely recognizes a significant aspect relevant from the historical point of view.) Episte- Aesthetics Ethics Etc. mology Analytic Philosophy Marxism Existentialism Etc. Figure 1. There are two main ways in which philosophical developments are classified. One is in terms of tendencies, movements, and schools of thought and the other is in terms of traditional sub-disciplines. When there is little contention among schools, the predominant way is in terms of sub-disciplines, such as aesthetics, ethics, politics, etc. Today this mode of classification can be seen to intersect with that in terms of movements and tendencies, both of which are represented in the above chart."

For some twenty years now, I have been working on a philosophical programme which falls into two parts, a systematic metaphysics, to be entitled Being and Becoming, conceived in the general framework of ontological phenomenology, but employing what I call a 'genetic' methodol ogy, and an historical interpretation, designed to support and confirm the ontological philosophy in question. The historical part of the overall programme was originally conceived in the form of an Epochal Interpretation of the history of modern philosophy from Descartes on. Part of the material accumulated towards such an Epochal Interpretation has however been deployed rather differently. First, the Kant material has already been turned into an interpretive transforma tion of Kant's Critical Philosophy. Second, the material on Husserl' s Phenomenological Philosophy now forms the basis of the present study. The interpretive transformation of Kant's Critical philosophy was published by Winter Verlag in the context of a Humboldt fellowship. In that work, I took Heidegger's Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics as my model. Like Heidegger, I subjected the Critical Philosophy to an interpre tive procedure as a result of which I finished up with structures matching and reflecting the basic structures of my own (genetic) ontology. But I sought to overcome certain limitations inherent in the Heideggerian project."

To know the work of Jitendra Nath Mohanty even slightly is to commence to appreciate it immensely. Lucidity and sagacity have been its armor; originality and ingenuity have been its strength. And wearing the former and wielding the latter have become so persistent a mark of his work as to suggest that their appeal for Mohanty lies altogether more in the refmed reaches of philosophical craftsmanship than on the coarse ground of intellectual partisanship. The multifaceted character of his work in phenomenology and Indian philosophy has never left us palled by its significance and, as a consequence, has always left us conceding its command on our philosophical discourse. It has fulfilled the most welcomed promise of striking the chords of both imagination and reason by exposing Husserlian phenomenology to the concerns of both the so-called "analytical" and "continental" traditions and by exposing the philosophical tradition of Indian thought to the intricacies of Husserl. Although charting and periodizing the body ofMohanty' s work in phenomeno logy may be the function of a memory inconspicuous for originality and liveli ness, they nonetheless offer a precis conspicuous for the variety of topics that Mohanty has both engaged and enriched. Mohanty's career in phenomenology can be characterized by three phases, each concentrating on different themes, but with the latter two also epitomizing a more incisive and deeper discussion of the issues raised in the first.

This collection of essays draws together work done during a period of more than fifteen years. In the course of these years much has changed, including much about politics. Patterns of political activity have been trans formed. Ways in which we had been accustomed to construe politics have been substantially modified and sometimes replaced. Some apparently in tractable conflicts have been resolved. Other, apparently more manageable, conflicts have shown shocking durability. A number of political doctrines once considered indefinitely serviceable have lost all relevance. And the material and technical resources at our disposal look strikingly different than they did just a few years ago. Practical politics of whatever stripe encounters at every turn ever more grave environmental degradation. But, or so this collection assumes, not everything political has changed. Some political issues, both "theoretical" and "practical," remain persistently trenchant. Questions like the following demand ever renewed consideration. What is the point and worth of belonging to a political community? What entitlements and responsibilities follow upon such membership? Or even more fundamentally, what conditions are required for there to be politics at all? Taken together, the essays collected in this volume propose a way both to understand and to engage in politics which is properly responsive both to perennial political issues and to the peculiar exigencies of our era. Some of them present criticisms of widely held, warmly cherished ways of addressing political matters. Others propose constructive alternatives."

In the footsteps of Ingardeniana II, this volume marks the 20th anniver- sary of Roman Ingarden's death, partly focusing upon his thought, partly bringing his aesthetics into the present-day framework of research. It might have appeared puzzling to the followers of our Analecta Husserliana why within the original horizon encircled by the research work of our International Society of Phenomenology and Literatur- whose research work is devised in a diametrically opposed direction to that of Roman Ingarden - there is steadfastly running through our discussions a line of Ingardenian reflection. The reason, as I have pointed out in the introduction to Ingardeniana II, expertly edited by Hans Rudnik, is clear: Ingarden's analysis of the intentional structures of works of art offers in its distinct and clear-cut forms an 'objective' correlate - as well as a point of reference - to the vast conundrum of issues concerning the creative endeavor of the writer, poet, artist in their struggle to endow life with its specifically human significance; a conundrum that in our research we are trying to disentangl- elucidating its mysterious ramifications, their sources and dynamic virtualities. As a matter of fact, Ingarden's thought, newly interpreted and originally expanded, occupies a legitimate place in the present collec- tion. We find here, in the first place, an original expansion of Ingarden's aesthetic theory in the monograph of ladwiga Smith followed by the essays of Wadaw Osadnik, Yushiro Takei and Charles Rzepka.

Husserl's phenomenology has often been criticized for its Cartesian, fundamentalistic, idealistic and solipsistic nature. Today, this widespread interpretation must be regarded as being outdated, since it gives but a very partial and limited picture of Husserl's thinking. The continuing publication of Husserl's research manuscripts has disclosed analyses which have made it necessary to revise and modify a number of standard readings. This anthology documents the recent development in Husserl research. It contains contributions from a number of young phenomenologists, who have all defended their dissertation on Husserl in the nineties, and it presents a new type of interpretation which emphasizes the dimensions of facticity, passivity, alterity and ethics in Husserl's thinking.

Despite, or perhaps better by virtue of, its very brevity, Appearance and Sense is a difficult text to read and understand, particularly if we make the attempt independently of Husserl's Ideas I. This is certainly at least in part owing to the intent behind Shpet's work. On the one hand it strives to present Husserl' s latest views to a Russian philosophical audience not yet conversant with and, in all likelihood, not even aware of, his transcendental idealist turn. With this aim any reading would perforce be exacting. Yet, on the other hand, Shpet has made scant concession to his public. Indeed, his text is even more compressed, especially in the crucial areas dealing with the sense-bestowing feature of consciousness, than Husserl' s own. For all that, Shpet has not bequeathed to us simply an abbreviated paraphrase nor a selective commentary on Ideas I, although at many points it is just that. Rather, the text on the whole is a critical engagement with Husserl' s thought, where Shpet among other things refonnulates or at least presents Husserl's phenomenology from the perspective of hoping to illuminate a traditional philosophical problem in a radical manner. Since Husserl's text was published only in 1913 and Shpet's appeared sometime during 1914, the latter must have been conceived, thought through, and written in remarkable haste. Indeed, Shpet had already finished a first draft and was busy with a revision of it by the end of 1913.

The question of relativism is a perennial one, and as fundamental and far reaching as the question of truth itself. Is truth absolute and universal, the same everywhere and for everyone? Or is truth historically, culturally, biologically, or otherwise relative, varying from one epoch or species to another? Although the issues surrounding relativism have attracted especially intense interest of late, they continue to spark heated controversies and to pose problems lacking an obvious resolution. On the side of one prevalent form of relativism, it is argued that we must finally recognize the historical and cultural contingency of our available means of cognition, and therefore abandon as naIve the absolute conception of truth dear to traditional philosophy. According to this line of thinking, even if there were univer sally valid principles, knowledge of them would not be possible for us, and thus an absolute conception of truth must be rejected in light of the demands of critical epistemology. However, when truth is accordingly relativized to some contingent subjective cognitive background, new difficulties arise. One of the most infamous of these is the logical inconsistency of the resulting thesis of relativism itself. Yet an even more serious problem is that the relativization of truth makes truth itself contingent, thereby undermining the motivation for preferring one belief or value to another, or even to its opposite."

I have always had a great interest in the philosophy of science. At first this interest led to reflections on the mathematical sciences;l later my focus shifted to the natural sciences;2 during the past twenty years or so my interest has also included the behavioral, social, and historical sciences) From the very start my interest was always combined with a concern for the history of the sciences. In philosophy of science proper, my main interest was not in logical, methodological, or even epistemological issues, although I obviously studied and taught the most important insights proposed in the leading publications in this large field of study. My concern has always been predominantly ontological; and in that area I have approached the relevant issues from a 4 phenomenological perspective. For what follows it is perhaps of some importance to mention here that I came to phenomenology in a rather indirect way, through the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann. Yet it was mainly the influence of Herman Van Breda and Alphonse De Waelhens which led me directly to Husserl's phenomenology. At first I fo- cused almost exclusively on Husserl's phenomenology. Later I moved in the direction of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and, 1Cf. Joseph J. Kockelmans, Philosophy of Mathematics in the Middle Ages (in Dutch) (Langemark: Vonksteen, 1953); "On the Mode of Being of Mathematical Entities" (in Dutch), in Tijdschrift voor Philosophie, 16(1954), pp. 289-33l. 2Joseph J. Kockelmans, On Time and Space.