The concept of space in the phenomenology of Cassirer, Heidegger and Schmitz

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD Candidate of Philosophy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The concept of space has always been a fundamental theme and issue since the beginning of philosophy and abstract thinking in ancient Greece, and has been fundamentally change due to cultural-historical changes of spatiality throughout the history of knowledge. At the beginning of philosophy, there was a metaphysical question about the beginning or the first cause (arche) of all things, to which the concept of space, as a fundamental concept, is the answer. The main lines of philosophical discourse in ancient Greece, which flowed in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, were conceived in the context of Euclid's geometry and Ptolemy's worldview. In the modern era, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant tried to conceptually influence space with Copernican rotation and Newtonian physics. Finally, spatial imagery is challenged by the application of physiological problems through non-Euclidean geometry, and especially through phenomenology. Hence, the opening of phenomenological concepts in philosophy and other disciplines that focus on the concept of space could be of interest to researchers in the foundations of phenomenology. Therefore, the aspect of effort in this article is the descriptive analytical development of the opinions of three expert phenomenologists (Ernst Cassirer, Martin Heidegger and Hermann Schmitz) on space. These three philosophers base their theories on a critique of the (positivist) way of speaking on space. This approach taken by Descartes and Newton has been completed in recent times. In this article, we discuss the philosophical foundations of these philosophers. We discuss the space with each of these three philosophers in terms of a key concept in their philosophical system. Therefore, for Cassirer, we discuss the concept of symbolic spaces, for Heidegger, the concept of being-in-the-world, and for Schmitz, the concept of surfaceless space and felt-bodily space.

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 15, Issue 34 - Serial Number 34
Articles
2021
Pages 363-380

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