TRANSCENDENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY. FORMATION OF SENSE, PERSONAL I, AND SELF-IDENTITY IN EDMUND HUSSERL AND THEIR RECEPTION IN THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL METAPHYISICS OF LÁSZLÓ TENGELYI

The main topics of the following article are Edmund Husserl's conception of phenomenological anthropology and its reception in László Tengelyi's philosophy. Thematically the paper is made up of two parts: the first treats the development of Husserl's notion of the transcendental subject and the particular role the transcendental person played in his idea of a phenomenologically founded anthropology. The second examines the special influence of Husserl's idea of the transcendental person on Tengelyi's concept of the history of life (Lebensgeschichte) and on his thought of the metaphysics of contingency and experience. In the first part (which is made up of four sections) I analyze the development of Husserl's notion of the subject, and I show how Husserl arrives at the concept of the concrete transcendental person in his genetic phenomenological researches of the 1920s. The idea of the transcendental person was the core of Husserl's late conception of phenomenological anthropology. Husserl's late concept of the transcendental subject could be characterized as a fragile and complex form of self-identity, and he even used the notions of «life path» («Lebensweg») and «history of life» («Lebensgeschichte») in this context. The crises of human life, crises of self-interpretation became analyzable problems within this sphere and with the means of transcendental phenomenology. The second part (which is made up of two sections) investigates the details of Husserl's influence on Tengelyi's work of life, with a special regard on his interpretation of the subject, the experience and metaphysics. Husserl played a fundamental role in the elaboration of Tengelyi's own notion of self-identity, where self-identity was constituted through certain events of destiny (Schicksalsereignisse), which confronts us with radical alterity and strangeness (Fremdheit). Husserl was also an important source for Tengelyi, when he elaborated on his concept of the passive formation of sense (Sinnbildung) and his metaphysics of contingency. The ultimate foundation of the last formulation of Tengelyi's phenomenological metaphysics (in his posthumous work, Welt und Unendlichkeit) was the idea of a concrete transcendental person, which we could find in the late Husserl.