Repository | Journal | Volume | Articles

This paper deals with Husserl’s idea of a “life-world ontology”, as it appears in his last work, the Crisis, and discusses the idea that this ontology could be the achievement of a material ontology, as Husserl defines it in the context of the Logical Investigations. The article first sketches out briefly the idea of a “life-world ontology”, then shows that the structures constituting what Husserl calls “the life-world’s a priori” are not those of material reality but rather the structures according to which the unique lifeworld pluralises itself for the subjects who experience it. Accordingly, this a priori can be reduced to two basic categories: the opposition nah/fern and the notion of Jeweiligkeit. While recognizing the fundamental ambiguity of this ontology, the paper concludes by highlighting its methodological interest as far as the relationship between phenomenology and ontology is concerned.

Full citation: