Phenomenology and Ancient Greek Philosophy

Abstract

Sedimented in the “empty intention” moment of intentionality’s normative reference to intuitive fulfillment is the schema of pure concepts separated from intuition, a schema that is constitutive of symbolic cognition in Cartesian science (the mathesis universalis). Fully developed, this schema originates the notion of a formal ontology, whose formal object—the “something in general”—is materially indeterminate in a way that no being in ancient Greek ontology ever was. Three methodological protocols related to overcoming the historical bias inseparable from Husserl’s concept of intentionality are presented for the phenomenological interpretation of ancient Greek thought. One, the privilege of the logical structure of the Aristotelian predication behind Husserl’s concept of categorial intentionality shouldn’t be taken as exemplary of the universal structure of the intelligibility of unity across all historical epochs, particularly when it comes to the whole-part intelligibility of unity for ancient Greek mathematical thought and Plato’s ontology. Two, Husserlian intentionality should not be used as the guiding clue for interpreting ancient Greek ontology. And, three, characterizing the formality of ancient Greek ontology in terms of a formal ontology and its object, the “something in general,” is illegitimate. One specimen of phenomenological interpretation, guided by these protocols, is presented of Plato’s eidetic account of the intelligibility proper to the three kinds of eidetic unity and their opposite in Sophist, 253d-e.