The Phenomenology of Testimony

From Inner Truth to Shared World
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-72678-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 27, 214 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 226 mm, Gewicht: 476 g

Reihe: Studies in Contemporary Phenomenology

Testimony is a central topic in contemporary philosophy, with a vast array of disciplines, from epistemology to testimonial literature, demonstrating considerable interest in it. Among these approaches, phenomenology and hermeneutics offer exemplary ways of capturing essential dimensions of testimony that are often overlooked. This volume explores the fundamental issues at stake in such a hermeneutical phenomenology, by developing new insights into the defining role testimony holds in shaping personal identity and human reality in general. By examining how testimony is engaged in the creation of a common world that includes singular experiences, the eleven essays collected here provide thought-provoking questions for other concerned disciplines, including history, sociology, and ecology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Heiden, Gert-Jan van der

Marinescu, Paul

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Erkenntnistheorie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Phänomenologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Notes on Editors

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: on the Stakes of a Phenomenology of Testimony Gert-Jan van der Heiden and Paul Marinescu

1 The Temporality of Witnessing Cristian Ciocan

2 A Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Witnessing and Testimony: on Being-There-With and Being-Gathered-Around Gert-Jan van der Heiden

3 The Experience of Testimony: from the Individual to the Collective Paul Marinescu

4 Portrait Painting, Photography, and the Subliminal Testimony of the Environing Life-World Jeffrey Andrew Barash

5 Testimony as Articulation of Natality: an Arendtian Approach to Bearing Witness Ileana Bortun

6 Arendt’s Phenomenology of Identity Aoife McInerney

7 Summoning Witnesses: Arendt’s Practice of Quoting in Her Last and Unfinished Book Project, The Life of the Mind Wout Cornelissen

8 Testimony of an Exile from Language within Language—or How to Read Genet with(out) Sartre Dorothée Legrand

9 Testimonial Literature and the Meaning of the Past: the “Other” Narratives of the Gulag in Women’s Memoirs Lovisa Andén

10 Witnesses of Fake History Roland Breeur

11 Topical Issues in Testimony: Literature, Digital Communication, and Ecology Jean-Philippe Pierron

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Gert-Jan van der Heiden is professor of metaphysics at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He has published on continental philosophy with an emphasis on hermeneutic phenomenology, including The Voice of Misery: A Continental Philosophy of Testimony (2020).

Paul Marinescu is a researcher at the “Alexandru Dragomir” Institute for Philosophy, Romania. He coedited several journal issues and collective volumes devoted to the phenomenology of history, memory, violence, and testimony, including “The Articulation of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics in Paul Ricœur” (2023).