Unscheinbarkeit

Günter Figal's Unscheinbarkeit has, following on from his phenomenological hermeneutics ( Gegenständlichkeit, 2006) and his phenomenological aesthetics ( Erscheinungsdinge, 2010) phenomenology and its phenomena as its main topic. According to the central and innovative thesis of the book, phenomena are in and of themselves spatial and as such can only be understood in reference to space. As a consequence, phenomenology has to reflect and describe space. Space is the inconspicuous in which something can appear and thus be able to be a phenomenon. If that is the case, then phenomenology not only describes space, but is as such spatial. The determinations of space and spatiality developed in the book emerge from attentive perception and conscious experience. And it is therefore in debt to Husserl's thinking that perceptive contemplation is the only correct source of cognition.

»A remarkable book. Figal's supple way with phenomenological description, combined with his close attention to the phenomenological horizon of classical philosophical treatments of space and place, yield an original meditation on the inconspicuous conditions of belonging, that is, of being, somewhere.«
Steven Crowell, Rice University, Houston, TX