Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

What's the problem? The relation of phenomenology and science from Deleuze's perspective

Sandro Herr

Tuesday 13 September 2022

15:45 - 16:30

Ex ECA-Aula E

In his major work Difference and Repetition Deleuze presents an argument concerning the relation of philosophy and science that has striking similarity with the phenomenological question of scientific objectivity and the conditions of its existence. For Deleuze, the notion of «problem» plays a crucial role in this regard. Problems have a special status of non-being that only comes into being in a dialectic of problem-posing. Thereby, they share central aspects with phenomenological constitution according to Fink's meontic approach. If a problem then has a solution, only the latter belongs to a scientific realm as its specific object of study. Similar to Husserl's position, the object domains of philosophy (problem) and science (solution) are therefore radically different. In my lecture, I first want to further examine this link between Deleuze's position and phenomenology by pointing out similarities as well as differences. Secondly, I will make suggestions on how a dialectic of problems might be fruitful for the relation between phenomenology and science.