Magyar Filozófiai Szemle, 2011
2011 / 4. szám - SZEMLE - Summaries
However, as far as the precise description of this role is concerned, there is also a certain difference between Time and Narrative, on the one hand, and Memory, History, Oblivion, on the other. In the first work, Ricoeur emphasizes mainly the idea of a redescription or refiguration of reality by narratives. By contrast, in the second work, he arrives to make clear that a true reconstruction of the past does not depend solely upon a purely epistemological approach to history, but it requires also an ontological analysis of what may be designated as our “historical condition”. It is in this ontological analysis that memory and oblivion find their place - a place which reveals itself, by the way, to be a central one. Unregulated Experience Interpreting Experience in Gadamer and Adorno Csaba Olay In my paper it is argued that non-standardised, unregulated experience has been discussed by both Gadamer and Adorno in an instructive way. Experience, as understood by these authors, refers to the appearance of something new, unexpected, and this might be called the event model of experience, as opposed to the regularity model of experience. Modern philosophy usually regards experience to be a set of regularities delivered by the senses, but I demonstrate that the regularity conception is not sensitive at all to the problem of experiencing something new. Gadamer’s hermeneutics can be globally taken as a description of not standardizable experiences, and his thorough account of the negativity of experience constitutes an important step in his theory. Adorno, on the other hand, set himself the elaboration of the significance of what he calls the non-identical as a basic philosophical task. Non-identical in his conception refers to the radically singular in its individuality that cannot be grasped by whatever conceptuality. Directed against the dominating character of every concept, Adorno tries to prepare for what is not identical. My paper gives an in-depth analysis of these two views, and also highlights their problematic aspects. Perceptual Experience Katalin Farkas This is a partial defense of a certain theory of perceptual experiences. The characteristic feature of perceptual experiences is that they present an experience-independent world to the perceiver. According to the position defended here, in their original form, sensory experiences are mere modifications of consciousness: they lack any intentional, representational or presentational features. However, when sensory qualities are presented to subjects in a systematic, predictable, coherent and highly predictable manner, we have a tendency to locate the origin of these qualities in the experience-independent world. The paper illustrates with an example how such a process may endow an experience with an experience-independent object.