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thing like the “absolute moment” to speak in the terms of Gadamer. Indeed, the work of Anna-

Teresa Tymieniecka represents, truly, a “new Copernican Revolution” in philosophy, as is already

recognized by many thinkers. Phenomenology of Life has now become topical in the field of re-

search. In recent years doctoral dissertations and master’s theses have been devoted to it (inter alia

at the University of Lublin, at Rome’s Lateran University, at Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi). We have

in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka an extraordinary “functionary of humanity” – the role Edmund Husserl

claimed for philosophers. The magnetic figure who organized the Third World Congress of Phe-

nomenology was the nucleus-soul of the gathering of scholars in the field of phenomenology who

came to Oxford.

To turn to the proceedings of the Congress, around 150 individuals met in its framework, repre-

sentatives of philosophy schools from all continents – from the United States, Colombia, Argen-

tina, Ireland, Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Swit-

zerland, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Poland, Romania, Finland, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Ni-

geria, South Africa, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Azerbaijan, Australia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and

Japan. A cast of philosophers affiliated with more than one hundred universities, colleges, centers

of research, institutes of the human sciences, phenomenology circles, and academies of the sci-

ences were present at this great event. The great number of congress participants reveals the pres-

tige of Prof. Tymieniecka in all the world and reveals too the ongoing significance of Phenomenol-

ogy, one of the strongest movements in philosophical theory and methodology in our time.

In bringing together scholars of very different points of view, orientations, the Congress has proved

the necessity and the infinite possibilities of the philosophizing endeavor. Under the auspices of the

hermeneutic ‘distancing-proximity’ dyad, a fortunate interdisciplinary communication, a dialogue

between metaphysics, the sciences, the arts has come alive. It has renewed, amplified, and kept

alive the desire-intention and ability to activate the valences of the Socratic-Platonist tradition,

which needs to be intensified as a pathway for humanizing the whole lifeworld. In the words of

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, at stake is a “New Humanism and Enlightenment” that phenomenology

can effectively serve in the name of the genesis and sustenance of an ‘ecology of life.’

The writings of Edmund Husserl and of leading phenomenologists like Roman Ingarden, Mikel

Dufrenne, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Hanna Arendt, Maurice Mer-

leau-Ponty, Edith Stein, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Henry,

Jean-Luc Marion all received valuable scrutiny in papers presented at the Congress. And as an axis,

broad and in-depth analysis focused on the work of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.

Put in relief in the continuous debate over the major theme of the human being’s status in the world

was the uncovering of a portion of the unlimited capacities of creativity – the ‘Archimedean point’

for the Phenomenology of Life. Human Creativity was the red thread of the Oxford congress. It was

stressed by Prof. Tymieniecka in her Inaugural Lecture in the Auditorium of Wadham College

(Monday, August 16). She underlined the directing theme of Logos of Phenomenology and Phe-

nomenology of the Logos.

Prof. Tymieniecka began by “Interrogating the Thread of Intellective Intentionality. In Quest of the

Logos of Phenomenology.” After a critical exposure of Husserl’s itinerary and going beyond his

philosophical reflections and trying to advance toward the solution of the fundamental questions

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for phenomenology, the expositor of the Phenomenology of Life developed the problem of the

‘logos’ as it reveals itself through life or, more precisely, “The Emergence of the Multifold Logos,

through the Unveiling of Phenomena in the Intentional Mode.” Tymieniecka insisted on the fact

that “the logos that humanity has been pondering for centuries and which we cannot fail to encoun-

ter all over again now through phenomenology we may seek to pursue either in full light or by

unearthing it from thus far inaccessible locations as it radiates through the entire sequence of life

and beingness-in-becoming pointing to further areas through the relevancies of each segment.”

In her Thematic Introduction to Phenomenology as the Critique of Reason in Contemporary Criti-

cism and Interpretation, the first of five Analecta Husserliana volumes integrating the papers of the

Congress under the theme Logos of Phenomenology and Phenomenology of Logos, Prof. Tymie-

niecka in addressing the status quaestionis states the work’s purpose: “first, we may and should

bring phenomenology to undertake that inquiry 

[Husserl’s inquiry into phenomenology’s own pro-

cedures along its unfolding path

] in another way in order to see whether it does not then reveal its

innermost thread. Second, we may and can now, with the advent of another essential approach to

phenomenology, one anticipated by many explorations by its leading adherents, specifically, the

Phenomenology of Life, see what this very spread of the phenomenologically inspired effort in its

full expanse teaches us about the ultimate nature of rationality in all its modalities.”

Passing through “a. The Interrogative Thrust Marking Necessary Steps,” and “b. A Fuller Revela-

tion of the Universal Logos in the Critique of Intentional Consciousness,” Tymieniecka’s analysis

reaches the “reason of reasons,” the logos. Hence her masterful Inaugural Lecture focused on some

pivotal issues: “1) the logos of intentional consciousness in its human realm; 2) the intellective

intentionality of human consciousness; 3) a specific modality of the universal logos that manifests

itself to carry the inquiry along and which continues to interrogate even when the intentional vehi-

cle fails; 4) which modality in its universal play manifests itself as a driving force; 5) and what is to

be brought out at this point, that that force’s unique device for progressing towards its aim is an

alternation of impetus and equipoise, that the progress of this force is punctuated.”

Setting up a new track for the effort to reveal the entire “logoic field,” our author underlines her

very own conception of what she calls the “Ontopoiesis of Life.” This constitutes the design in

which – according to Tymieniecka – we can find the “emergence of the logos of life in its construc-

tive elan.” Another course of inquiry, an original one, is proposed: “from intentionality to creativity

in the constitution of givenness.”

This is the point where we encounter one of the relevant categories in the Phenomenology of Life,

namely, that of “the Human Creative Condition.” By the critique of phenomenological reason, the

author’s vision expands into approaching the creative function of the human being as the origina-

tion of human reality. Tymieniecka emphasizes that “for the last three decades I have spoken of the

primogenital priority of the creative act and creative imagination and so rekeyed phenomenology.”

Bringing out into bold relief the process of the “self-individualizing differentiation of originating

life,” a new way to uncover the plane of the logos of life, that of following the “constructive logos,”

is at stake. All here starts from the creative universal flux of life within the world. As Tymieniecka

says, “this phenomenology of creative experience 

[…] reaches the point of the authentic creative

interplay of both human consciousness and the elementary forces from which typically human

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