Research Project
Husserl’s Concept of Leistung between Theory of Knowledge and Ontology
The project shows two main research aims: an enquiry into both the genesis and the development of the problematic concept of Leistung in Edmund Husserl's work (which still remains a major desideratum in the scientific literature); and a theoretical analysis following a systematic way. Indeed, it can be proved: how the term is central already from the earliest works of theoretical-epistemic and ontological-objective nature; its importance is confirmed in the development of transcendental idealism; it is a technical term in the phenomenology of temporality, even in its more speculative features (C-Manuskripte). The textual continuity thus traced will thus be examined by means of an analytical-conceptual method (i.e. within Husserlian phenomenology alone) and a comparative one. The purpose is indeed to show: how the fundamental conceptual determinations of the matter had already been elaborated by the Austro-German philosophy of Aristotelian derivation and by some neo-Kantian authors immediately preceding or contemporary to Husserl himself; how he managed to take possession of these acquisitions in an original manner, managing to exhibit their aporias and instead harmonise crucial aspects of them. Finally, the metaphysical and aporetic outcome to which the Husserlian elaboration of the theme in the late writings on temporality arrives will be pointed out. The major expected result of the research is the exhibition of the structural function of Leistung for the construction of the phenomenological idea of mathesis universalis and the problem that temporality represents for it. Indirect but ideal outcomes are the exhibition of a speculative continuity (albeit clearly layered) throughout Husserlian production and a non-naive comparison with salient aspects of Kantianism.