Self-individualization has been interpreted as the process in which the all-embracing Self unfolds into an infinite variety of different individ uals, plants, animals and men. A comparison of the different ways in which the Self manifests itself in the biological and psychological devel opmental processes, or in a visionary image of the undivided Self, reveals the same basic structure of expression. The Self, the one, is represented by a circular domain, and comprises a basic inner duality, the two, creating a paradox of conflicting opposites. In the undivided Self the two give rise to a trinity in which, however, a quatemity is hidden. The latter expresses itself in this world as the four basic forces, the four Elements or the four main archetypes, specifying the possibilities or development in space and time. Self-individualization starts with the first appearance of a primary structure of an individual sub-Self. This is the fifth basic force, the fifth Element. Further development is character ized by four generative principles: 1st, the principle of wholeness: connection and integration (being oriented to remaining whole or restoring wholeness); 2nd, the principle of complementarity and com pensation (a periodic shift between opposing influences); 3rd, the enstructuring principle (causing the relative stability of the spatial appear ance of the manifest structure), and 4th, the principle of gesture (resulting in a gradual stepwise development of that structure into a full-grown individual).

Autorentext
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka is a Polish-born American philosopher, one of the most important and continuously active contemporary phenomenologists, founder and president of "The World Phenomenology Institute".

Klappentext

There is a new rhythm permeating phenomenology, which is re-orienting towards the ontopoiesis of life. There are inflated views abroad that phenomenology has lost its identity and it is fashionable to consider that philosophy has abandoned the `pursuit of truth', which is dismissed as illusory. But the phenomenological philosophy here reincarnated as the phenomenology of life and the human creative condition vibrates with a fresh philosophical faith. The present volume articulates the four main tenets of the ontopoiesis of life: first, the priority of the creative act over the cognitive intentional act; second, the revelation that the Human Creative Condition is pivotal in tracing specifically human powers; third, that the creative act of the human being is the meeting ground for all human endeavours; and fourth, the ontopoietic self-individualisation of life.

Inhalt
Inaugural Lecture.- The Great Plan of Life: The Phenomenology of Life's Return to the Sources of Western Philosophy.- One Life, Logos, Phenomenon.- Life as Logos and Tao: On Husserl's Ideas and the Comparative Study of Western and Chinese Philosophies.- Logos, Telos and the Lived World: A View in Phenomenological Reflection.- The Pseudo-concepts Phenomenon and ????? in the Phenomenological Philosophies: A Viable Alternative.- The Leibnizian Dimension of Husserl's Phenomenology.- Two Self-Individualisation of Life: Ingathering and Outward Radiation.- The Intrinsic Value of Life and the Problem of Natural Teleology.- Predetermination and Change in Living Beings: A Study Based on Nicolai Hartmann's Contribution.- The Self-Individualization of Life: Parallels Between the Generative Principles in Psychological and Biological Development.- Emanuel Swedenborg's Physical and Metaphysical Revelation.- Metaphysics and Vitalism in Henri Bergson's Biophilosophy: A New Look.- Three The Ego, Subjectivity, and the Incarnated Subject.- El Mito de la Subjetividad.- Ortega y Gasset's Executive I and His Criticism of Phenomenological Idealism.- Becoming of Ego and the Incarnated Subject.- Reason in Vital Experience in Ortega y Gasset.- Four Human Creative Virtualities Radiating at Their Peak.- The Creative Source: Rodin.- Visualizing Tymieniecka's Poetica Nova.- Authenticity and Creativity: An Existentialist Perspective.- The Ontology of Artistic Time and the Phenomenology of Husserl.- Five Life Timing Itself Creatively Throughout and Beyond.- A Bridge to Temporality: Phenomenological Reflections on the Presence of Things Past and Future According to St. Augustine's Confessions.- Actio, Passio et Creatio in the Endliche und ewige Philosophie of Edith Stein: APoetico-Personal Response to the Challenges of Postmodernity.- Meister Eckhart on Temporality and the Now: A Phenomenological-Hermeneutical Interpretation.- Zen and Tymieniecka's Three Movements of the Soul.- Six Creative Permeation of Vital Sense: The Aesthetic Sense of Life and Science.- The Imagination as the Origin of Science: Rupture and Continuity with the Quotidian Lifeworld.- From Mourning to Melancholy: Toward a Phenomenology of the Modern Human Condition.- Mimesis, Law and Medicine.- Seven Attunement of Sameness and Alterity in the Cultural and Societal Networks of Life.- A. Schütz: Phenomenology and Understanding Sociology.- A Cultural Archaeology of the Insane Genius.- Schizophrenia as a Problem of the Theory of Intersubjectivity.- Règne animal et humain: Nature intersubjective.- Eight Drive toward the Unity-of-Everything-There-Is-Alive.- Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka's Philosophy of Life and the Fostering of Ecological Thinking.- Spirit in Flames: Toward a Postmodern-Ecological Phenomenology.- On the Mode of Being of Living Beings and Their Environment: Preliminary Ideas for an Ecological Approach in Philosophy.- Index of Names.