ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PHENOMENOLOGY IN LATVIA: 1920-2020 Текст научной статьи по специальности «Философия, этика, религиоведение»

HORIZON 10 (1) 2021 : I. Research : M. Kûle : 15-44

ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ • STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY • STUDIEN ZUR PHÄNOMENOLOGIE • ÉTUDES PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUES

I. ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ

ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЯ В ЛАТВИИ PHENOMENOLOGY IN LATVIA

https://doi.org/10.21638/2226-5260-2021-10-1-15-44

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PHENOMENOLOGY IN LATVIA: 1920-2020

MAIJA KULE

Dr. habil. phil., Professor.

Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, University of Latvia. LV-1940 Riga, Latvia. E-mail: fsi@lza.lv

Looking over a hundred years, it should be acknowledged that phenomenological studies in Latvia were initially carried out in the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, starting with 1) Husserl's studies and criticism of solipsism (T. Celms), 2) phenomenological analysis of forms of community (K. Stavenha-gen), and 3) development of cognitive phenomenology in Ladusans' many-sided gnoseology. It was not possible to work on phenomenology during the harsher years of the Soviet regime (1945-1970), but in the mid-1970s, a phenomenological circle emerged in Riga under the influence of Nelly Motroshilova and Merab Mamardashvili. Its focus was on the issues of consciousness and language, on phenomenological ontology, communication, time-consciousness. Since 1990, phenomenological studies have been expanding, four international conferences have been held in Latvia in cooperation with the World Phenomenology Institute, nine monographs on phenomenology have been published, and 56 articles from Latvia have been published in Analecta Husserliana. Themes of papers and presentations included historicity, space and time, passions, teleology, educational philosophy, aesthetics. Since 2005,

© MAIJA KULE, 2021

nine phenomenology-related doctoral theses have been defended in Riga. Over the last decade, greater focus has been given to applied phenomenology, its relationships with medicine, social media, violence research. Phenomenologists influenced a transformation of classical philosophy towards wider horizons and reflected the necessity to consider concepts of life, nature, body, we-consciousness, it also opened the way for contemporary perspective dialogue with cognitive sciences, linguistics, identity studies and psychoanalysis.

Keywords: phenomenology in Latvia, Husserl, Celms, Stavenhagen, Ladusans, Motroshilova, Mamar-dashvili, Riga Phenomenological Circle, Tymieniecka, critical realism, cognition phenomenology, eco-phenomenology.

СТОЛЕТИЕ ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИИ В ЛАТВИИ: 1920-2020 гг.

МАЙЯ КУЛЕ

Доктор философских наук, профессор.

Институт философии и социологии, Латвийский Университет. LV-1940 Рига, Латвия. E-mail: fsi@lza.lv

С высоты столетия можно увидеть, что феноменологические исследования в Латвии впервые стали проводиться в 20-30-е годы XX-го века, начиная с 1) работ по философии Гуссерля и критике солипсизма (Т. Целмс), 2) феноменологического анализа форм общественной жизни (К. Ставенхаген), и 3) разработки когнитивной феноменологии в разносторонней гносеологии Ладусанса. В течение наиболее трудного периода советского режима (1945-1970 гг.) проводить феноменологические исследования представлялось невозможным, но в середине 70-х годов в Риге появилась группа феноменологов, которые находились под влиянием Нелли Мотроши-ловой и Мераба Мамардашвили. Основные интересы этой группы затрагивали проблемы сознания, языка, феноменологической онтологии, коммуникации и сознания времени. С 1990 г. феноменологические исследования получили широкое распространение: в Латвии совместно с Всемирным институтом феноменологии были проведены четыре международные конференции, издано девять монографий по феноменологии, а в Analecta Husserliana было опубликовано 56 статей, написанных авторами из Латвии. Среди тем статей и докладов были проблемы историчности, пространства и времени, эмоций, телеологии, философии педагогики и эстетики. С 2005 года в Риге было проведено девять защит докторских диссертаций на феноменологические темы. За последнее десятилетие уделяется больше внимания прикладной феноменологии в связи с медициной, масс медиа, с исследованиями проблемы насилия. Феноменологи способствовали созданию более широкой философской перспективы с учетом понятий жизни, природы, сознания, мы-интенциональности; открылись новые возможности для диалога с когнитивными науками, лингвистикой, исследованиями идентичности и психоанализом.

Ключевые слова: феноменология в Латвии, Гуссерль, Целмс, Ставенхаген, Ладусанс, Мотро-шилова, Мамардашвили, Рижский круг феноменологов, Тыменецка, критический реализм, эко-феноменология.

1. FOUNDERS OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS

The development of phenomenology in Latvia dates back at least one hundred years. Interest in this philosophical branch started with Teodors Celms (1893-1989) and his intention to study with Husserl at the University of Freiburg. In 1922, he received financial support—a scholarship from the Latvian Culture Fund—and left for Germany. Celms studied under Husserl in Freiburg for three terms from 1922 to 1923. Another Latvian philosopher, Pauls Dale, joined him for several months. In the eyes of Latvian intellectuals, Freiburg was one of the best places for education due to the brilliance of its philosophical life.

Celms had already heard about Husserl during his studies at the Moscow University (1917-1920) and had been influenced by the ideas of Russian neo-Kantian Georgy Ivanovitch Chelpanov. One serious book redirected Celm's interest away from the neo-Kantians. It was Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen. Celms read its Russian translation, the Prolegomena zur reinen Logik part to be exact. He examined it studiously and then decided—"I must go to Germany and meet Husserl personally!" (Kule, Muizniece & Vegners, 2009, 41-46). Celms, who was fluent in Russian and German, was able to fulfill his dream after returning to Latvia—he was granted access to the highest level of German philosophy. The only hindrance was his bad health—he had fallen ill with tuberculosis while in Moscow. Hence, he had not been conscripted into the army, having instead been sent to work as an orderly in Russian military hospitals. However, something good did come of this as well—it was in the hospital that Teodors met his future wife, a Russian woman called Vera Vihrov, whom he married and brought back to Latvia in 1920.

Philosophy in the Baltic States (Kule, 2007, 39-55) was a mixture of scattered influences from German, Russian and sometimes Polish philosophical schools. In the 1920s and 1930s Latvian philosophy witnessed rapid development. There were representatives of Bergsonism (P. Jurevics), neo-Kantism (P. Zalite, V. Frosts), personalism and "energetic idealism" (P. Dale), philosophy of education, psychology, and education problems (J. A. Students). There were also neo-Thomists (P. Strods), positivists (R. Vipers). Spanish philosophy of culture and existentialism of Ortega y Gasset were the fields covered by K. Raudive, literary hermeneutics by Z. Maurina. An important source of ideas was the Tartu (Dorpat, Terbat) University in Estonia, especially in the field of personalism (J. Osis).

Over the centuries, philosophical ideas in Latvia were exclusively connected with the German culture and classical philosophy (Migration of cultures, 2019, 5599). The intellectual life of German-speaking Latvians in the 19th century was dom-

inated by Academia Petrina (opened in Jelgava in 1775) and Enlightenment figures like J. G. Herder, G. Merkel, J. G. Hamann, nicknamed the Magus of the North. German Weltanschauung of the time stands for orientation towards human development, knowledge, morals, and to a very large extent—to Kant's studies (Küle, 2019, 55-91; 2016b, 161-204). Immanuel Kant's three Critiques were published at Hartknoch's publishing house in Riga. French influence came later, mainly through literature and arts; Spanish romantism and national identity philosophy reached Latvia at the end of 19th century (diplomat, philosopher A. Ganivet, who ended his life in Riga). German intellectual environment served as a bridge to European philosophy.

Teodors Celms' position was close to neo-Kantism and Nikolai Hamann. Celms analysed the teachings of Husserl with scrupulous care, focusing mainly on the first period until Cartesianische Meditationen. He recognized the restrictedness of the claims of reason, and the purity of phenomenological thinking, creating a new method and new concepts. But step by step, Celms became more critical. He became famous as one of the profoundest critics of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, as one who tried to find a way out of phenomenological discrepancies and solipsism. Before World War II, there were parallels between some Georgian and Latvian orientations to phenomenology. Kote Bakradze and Teodors Celms studied Husserl's phenomenology together in the University of Freiburg from 1922 to 1923.

Celm's philosophical legacy in German consists of his books Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls; Vom Wesen der Philosophie; Lebensumgebung und Lebensprojektion; Subjekt und Subjektivierung. Studien über das subjektive Sein. All these works have been republished in Germany under the title Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls und andere Schriften (Celms, 1993). Celms graduated summa cum laude from the University of Freiburg in 1923 and received a doctorate in philosophy on the basis of his dissertation Kants allgemeinlogische Auffassung vom Wesen, Ursprung und der Aufgabe des Begriffes. He was later offered the post of research assistant in the journal Deutsche Literaturzeitung für Kritik der internationalen Wissenschaft, where he published critical reviews on M. Heidegger, M. Scheler and others. His main philosophical book Der phänomenologische Idealismus Husserls was translated into Spanish and published in Madrid in 1931. This work remains relevant to this day. Its importance was recognized by Garland Publishing in New York, which re-printed it in 1979. During the 1930s, Celms published several books in Latvian—Tagadnes problemas (Problems of the Present,), and Patiesiba un skitums (Truth and Appearance), as well as separate articles in encyclopedias and journals. The themes of culture, structures of consciousness, existence of the human being, life and society occupied a prominent place in his philosophical articles and lectures at the University of Latvia. (Küle, Muizniece & Vegners, 2009, 117-158).

B. Waldenfels places Teodors Celms alongside such figures as Jose Ortega y Gasset, Jan Patocka, Roman Ingarden, Marvin Farber, Hajime Tanabe and Shuzo Kuki (Waldenfels, 1992, 42). Celms has also been mentioned as a Latvian phenomenologist in Herbert Spiegelberg's history of phenomenology (Spiegelberg, 1994, 266-267).

In 1925, Celms decided to return to the University of Freiburg, where he participated in two seminars—on phenomenology by Husserl and on Kant by Jonas Cohn. He received an excellent letter of recommendation from Husserl: "...Celms has experienced gratifying growth. In my workshop, he portrayed himself as a mature philosopher. He was at the top of my philosophical seminar." (Husserl, 1994, 67-68).

Some months later, Celms sent a reply to Husserl: ".my deepest desire is to be able to do everything within my power to justify the high expectations you have for me." (Husserl, 1994, 65). But high praise from Husserl was not enough to earn a professor's seat at the University of Latvia. Some colleagues in Riga recognized phenomenology as a new kind of scholastic teaching without any perspective. Celms' habilitation dissertation received fierce criticism—part of which lacked any justification. Such conditions prevented the creation of an academic school of phenomenology in Latvia. Celms was more active on the international level.

The way in which Celms criticizes Husserl's phenomenology, places him close to the Munich-Göttingen school. What interested Celms in phenomenology was: 1) reality, 2) transcendentalism, 3) transcendental subjectivity and concrete life (Küle, 1998, 295302). He has analysed Husserl's efforts to overcome the limitedness of the transcendental subject and expressed doubts about the possibility of its "pure" essence. Celms started a discussion with Husserl and recognized Kant's type of transcendentalism as very abstract and "foreign to life processes." His idea was to develop the "transcendentalism of life." Tymieniecka therefore has recognized Celms as the forefather of life phenomenology. The concepts of "living being," "life," "Other" appear regularly in Celms' works.

At the end of the Second World War Celms emigrated to Germany, then moved to the USA (1949-1989). He worked at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. In the USA he continued philosophical studies mainly on the basis of German philosophical tradition and wrote a manuscript Phänomen and Wirklichkeit des Ichs. Studien über das subjective Sein (Celms, 2012). He did not feel like accepting either positivism, or materialism that is inclined to view the material world without the presence of the subject. Celms analysed seven types of subject's philosophy. According to him, the question in phenomenology is how to combine the subject that belongs purely to the soul (rein seelischer) with transcendental subjectivity (Subjektheit). He believed that the central question of 20th century philosophy was still about the problem of the subject's relations with the outer world.

Therefore, the main objections Celms raised against Husserl's phenomenology concentrate around two themes: firstly, the possibility for phenomenology to grasp objective reality independently from consciousness or the subject's immanence and, secondly, the possibility for phenomenology to break out of the vicious circle of solipsism (Guerrero, 2017) and solve the problem of intersubjectivity. Celms recognized that the former distinction between idealism and realism gives place to a new kind of distinction between I-philosophy (Ich Philosophie) and World-philosophy (Weltphilosophie). Husserl, as Celms sees it, belongs to the I-philosophy, which completely subjugates being to spiritualization (Durchgeistigung). Celms shows that the theme of reality is not adequately substantiated and calls Husserl's teachings solipsism and spiritual metaphysics. But in his works on culture, on social and psychological problems Celms relies, to a great extent, on the phenomenological teachings about the role of a subject (Celms, 2014). What he attempts to bring into existence is not so much transcendental, phenomenologically reduced, pure forms, but rather ones that are content based on concrete realities and psychological motivation. Celms outlines a shift towards the connection of phenomenology with the theme of life, which is further developed by contemporary phenomenology of life and hermeneutics of culture.

Celms often compares the approach used by Husserl to that of Kant, reminding of the limitations of the philosophy of transcendentalism. If different forms of transcendental philosophy view pure consciousness as transindividual consciousness, then Husserl, according to Celms, poses the problem of the transience of experience brimming with individual consciousness. The world in Husserl's teachings is an idea motivated by interconnected experiences, which resembles Kant's approach, as the world itself is attributed with existence. In Celm's view, Husserl's phenomenology is one-sided rationalism (Kule, 1998; Rozenvalds, 1993; Buceniece, 1996).

Celms writes that, in comparison with Husserl's next work Ideen, Logische Untersuchungen is limited in two aspects: the work does not examine all possible objectivities, apart from logical idealities (called Bedeutungseinheiten), and all possible modes of consciousness, apart from logical experiences (Erlebnisse), understood by Celms as the experiences of thinking and cognition. This observation testifies to the fact that, in Celm's opinion, phenomenology is not paying enough attention to "psychology." It is obvious, that classical phenomenology has constantly and fruitfully balanced on the line between singling out logically and epistemologically fixed content and responding to the appeal of inexpressible and inimitable consciousness-being and its fading acts. It has also balanced on the brink of waging a fierce battle with "psycholo-gism" and "diving" from the logical phenomenological springboard into the depths of psychologized phenomenology. What can be seen here are two ways which exert

influence on the understanding of the human being and the solution of the theme of intersubjectivity.

The way which we conditionally define as "psychological" is paying increasingly greater attention not to through what we cognize (will, evaluate, and other modes of consciousness), but to who experiences it. The "psychological" reading is to see in his teachings the aspects which are devoted to the description of subjectivity, the "filling" of the transcendental I with personal qualities, or, in a wider sense, humanizing it.

The history of phenomenology shows that the notions of "the Other," "life," and "life world" have been important since Husserl's time. This approach does not mean that phenomenology is being turned into psychology (to be precise, we should note that it was Husserl who created phenomenological psychology); it means that philosophy turns to a subject that is alive, rather than logically defined in his or her modes of givenness.

The fundamental idea expressed by Celms in his phenomenological studies is that he can make use of only one part of phenomenology, namely, the reflexive method, as he considers phenomenological philosophy in its entirety to be an instance of hopeless idealism. Husserl claims that the life he writes about in phenomenology is not the actual life but only a phenomenologically purified life, and that concrete subjectivity is not actually existing concreteness, but only its phenomenological ideal, etc. Such excuses render phenomenological investigations more complicated and open to different interpretations.

Celms concludes that Husserl's phenomenology cannot cope with the question of intersubjectivity, it only manages to substitute monistic solipsism with pluralistic solipsism. To save the situation one should recognize the pregiven harmony (prasta-bilierte Harmonie) described by Leibnitz (Celms, 1993). However, in Celms' opinion, that would be the creation of new metaphysics.

Wrapped up in the immanence of a separate subject, Celms links it with Hus-serlian thought about immanent historicism. After Husserl had read Celms' book, the two met and the old professor said that Celms interpretation is too sharp, rejecting the critique therein.

Celms was a critical realist in some of his theoretical positions, and not a classical phenomenologist and direct follower of Husserl.

Kurt Stavenhagen (1884-1951) was another thinker of the phenomenological movement in Latvia. Before World War II he worked at the Herder Institute in Riga. He was the founder of the Institute and later, in 1928, became a professor. Stavenhagen studied philosophy and classical philology in the University of Gottingen (1904-1909) and returned to Riga after his studies. His contacts with Latvian professors and fac-

ulties of the University of Latvia were weak because the language of instruction was mainly German and the Institute had German students. It seems that there were some psychological discrepancies as well—Germans had lost their previous social status and felt themselves as a national minority in Latvia. Stavenhagen belonged to the Baltic Germans and left Latvia in 1939, when he got a professor position in the University of Königsberg, the University of Hamburg, working later at the University of Göttingen.

Some famous German philosophers, including Martin Heidegger, were invited as guest lecturers to Herder Institute. Heidegger's visit was very short, lasting only for a few days from September 11th to September 14th in 1928 (Bicevskis, 2011). Celms, of course, was well-versed in Heidegger's teachings but there is no proof that he attended the lecture or met Heidegger personally in Riga. Heidegger's lecture was devoted to an analysis of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as he was working on Kant and metaphysics at the time. In his recollections of the visit Heidegger described the colour of the Baltic sea, fog, rain, but did not have much to say about the people of Latvia. Heidegger's visit demonstrated that Latvian culture before World War II developed in relatively close relationship with Germany, but in Latvia of the 1920s and 1930s intellectual space between Latvians and Germans was divided and interest in studies of Kant dominated.

Stavenhagen's main phenomenologically orientated book is Heimat als Grundlage menschlicher Existenz (Stavenhagen, 1939). He also published Herder in Riga (1925); Achtung als Solidaritätsgefül und Grundlage von Gemeinschaften (Stavenhagen, 1931); Das Wesen der Nation (Stavenhagen, 1934). His phenomenological teachings are based on Alfred Schütz's and Max Scheler's ideas about emotional values and feelings (Buceniece, 2002, 313). In 1957, a posthumous edition of Person und Persöh-nlichkeit. Untersuchungen zur Antropologie und Ethik was published. He published an interesting article about Heidegger's guest-lecture at the Herder Institute.

Stavenhagen was not a direct follower of Husserl, but used his phenomenological method to describe different forms of community (Rozenvalds, 2000, 2001). Like Teodors Celms, he belonged to the Munich school and drew inspiration from A. Pfänder, A. Reinach, and others. But there was a substantial difference between them. For Celms, intersubjectivity was one of the main problems in phenomenology—he saw the danger of solipsism. Whereas for Stavenhagen, there was no theoretical problem because he recognized already-existing communities, which have been constituted by people's emotional a priori. His understanding of we-consciousness was different from that of Celms, who expressed doubts about the solution of Egolo-gical problem in phenomenology.

Stavenhagen's main interests were individuals (persons), their respect and dignity in relation to community. Stavenhagen described nations not only as spiritual and

pragmatic forms of common living, which create a specific feeling of "we," but also analysed nations as historical subjects. Concrete people ought to live as moral and social parts of a universal and historical process. The feeling of "we" is not absolute, it exists as an ideal. He discussed different forms of common life as family, nation-state, community (Gemeinschaft), Homeland (or Motherland/Fatherland, in German Heimat) stemming from constitution of togetherness and dignity. Togetherness for him was a real phenomenon. To his mind, nation is not to be constructed with the help of the conceptual tools of sociological approach. Nation and people (das Volk) are of existential nature, they require everyday re-construction. They do not belong to the natural, but to the phenomenological giveness, envisaging, as it does, first and foremost such qualities as responsibility and dutifulness (Buceniece, 2012, 165).

Stavenhagen described nations and people as historically changing phenomena, which realize their essence here and now, in everydayness. His lifetime included years of national-socialistic regime, but Stavenhagen did not take part in the movements of the 1930s, when the German state ideology was based on power and aggressive self-expression. He remained a thinker of the phenomenological trend. His idea about state which can be constituted as a supranational phenomenon sounds very contemporary. State, to his mind, can be ethno-culturally neutral. Individuals and dignity are the main subjects of his investigations, where we can see a lot of ideas of classical liberalism, teachings about morality, education, and peaceful co-existence. Stavenhagen's phenomenological testimony has not been sufficiently interpreted until now and historians of phenomenology should include his merits in the history of this movement.

Another noteworthy student of Husserl from Riga is Erika Sehl (Bicevskis, 2016). After finishing the gymnasium term of 1922 in Riga, she moved to Freiburg im Breisgau on the advice of Kurt Stavenhagen, and began studying at the University of Freiburg, where she took courses with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. In the spring of 1934, she began to work as Stavenhagen's assistant at the Herder Institute, and submitted her habilitation thesis Historisch-kritische Studien zur Entstehung des Empfindungsproblems. Stavenhagen looked for two reviewers of Sehl's dissertation, but could not find any. He then decided to send Sehl's work to Heidegger and Pfänder (letter from December 12, 1934). Due to a lack of archive it is not currently possible to assess Sehl's success in phenomenology from that point on.

Stanislavs Ladusäns, S. J. (1912-1993) is the most prominent representative of Latvian Catholic academic philosophy of the 20th century, who has developed cognitive phenomenology, many-sided gnoseology and humanism. There are not many interpretative studies about the philosopher in Latvia because he spent a large part of his life in Brazil. During the Soviet time, there were little contacts with him. Among

the publications on Ladusans, the voluminous monograph of Mara Kiope should be noted: Presence. Life and Work of Latvian-Brasilian Philosopher Stanislavs Ladusans (Kiope, 2015). A gifted, hard-working man, professor Ladusans once told to us after returning to Latvia that "a nation can be recognized as fully developed only when some talented philosopher publishes his metaphysics. I think I'll have to do it for Latvians." He was right because philosophers were no longer directed to study and write heavy metaphysical treatises. Ladusans was able to achieve his aims thanks to his excellent education, strong faith, and world mission as a Jesuit. Unfortunately, his work lacks enthusiastic followers in Latvia, who could further develop the impressive foundations Ladusans established on critical realism, cognition phenomenology, and many-sided gnoseology. Philosophical spirit turned to more secular, post-structural and post-modern matters. His research has received international recognition as he has presided over four World Christian congresses of Catholic philosophy, has published numerous books in Portuguese and in Latvian, and has been a full member of the Roman Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Ladusans attended the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome (1936-1938) and, in 1938, defended his promotional work on the origin of the causality and truth. While studying at the Gregorian University, a renaissance of St. Thomas teachings was developed with the new approach in epistemology and metaphysics. Belgian Jesuit Joseph Maréchal tried to explain synthesis between Acquinas and Kantian transcendentalism. This impressed Ladusans a lot and he always recognized that the problem of transcendentalism is very attractive in philosophy. We saw the same trend in Teodors Celms' discussions of transcendentalism with Husserl.

Ladusans returned later to the Gregorian University (1944-1946) in Rome, where he worked on his doctoral thesis on Kant and St. Thomas Aquinas, comparing intelligible in sensibili, that he defended in 1946. Mara Kiope describes a very interesting fact regarding Ladusans at the Vatican archives—his manuscript is placed in the secret part of the archives and can only be viewed by a reader once in their lifetime, and the author can never look through it again.

After World War II, Ladusans moved to Brazil where he spent the rest of his life. He developed naturally critical realism, drawing on the ideas of such outstanding religious philosophers as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and contemporary thinkers J. Maréchal, B. Lonergan, E. Gilson, J. Maritain, P. Ricoeur, and others. Ladusans was informed about M. Heidegger, E. Husserl, but he viewed phenomenology through the eyes of neo-Thomism. He believed that theology must be a close relative of natural sciences, philosophy, and should avoid false traditionalism. He has published works on Multidimensional Humanism, Current Trends of Philosophy in Brazil,

Partial and Complete Thought Originality of Christian Philosophy, Truth and Intellectual Safety, Christian-Philosophical Social Analysis (compiler), Current Bioethical Problems (compiler) and many articles, papers, newspaper's interviews. The aim of his critical gnoseology was to overcome the relativity of cognition by conducting a critical dialogue with scientism, neo-Positivism, pragmatism, and traditionalism. The final result of critical reflection must be the formation of an integral science of the human being with a deeper dimension of humanism and universal ethics. Over the course of his life, Ladusans met many prominent philosophers, including Edith Stein, Mircea Eliade, with whom he discussed metaphysics and phenomenology. After returning to Latvia, he noted excessively great pragmatism, simple-minded syncretism, abandonment to worldly comforts. In the summary of his book in Latvian he wrote: "If the contemporary world is in a terrible crisis because of a variety of strained forms of subjectivism, the truth, absolute in its authenticity, is capable of relieving it from delusion, deception, and violence" (Ladusans, 1994, 150). As a truthful Catholic philosopher, he believed in universal, absolute truth and was not tempted by subjective and sceptical relativism. Phenomenology for him was only one part of his large metaphysical-epis-temological project. Ladusans believed that in order to renew gnoseology as a fundamental discipline of philosophy it has to be linked with cognition phenomenology that enables us to objectively analyse the natural constitutive elements of human cognition of truth. To his mind, phenomenology is a method of many-sided gnoseology and he names it "cognition phenomenology." It establishes that the knowledge of truth is naturally inherent to man. Ladusans points out that phenomenology, as a promising starting point, includes in its circles of revival not only gnoseology, but also logic, metaphysics, ethics, and religious philosophy. He believed that the phenomenological method could be of benefit for the critical explanation of human consciousness and perception (Ladusans, 1994, 32). The task of the phenomenological method is to perform a universal gnoseological examination of human pre-philosophical knowledge (Ladusans, 1994, 33).

Ladusans considers phenomenology of cognition to include research in: (1) the phenomenology of human spirit where the critical problem of cognition is to be found; (2) fact or phenomenon of natural, innate recognition of truth; (3) the constitutive elements of the fact or phenomenon of natural recognition of truth; (4) the dynamic structure of the phenomenon of natural recognition of truth.

Ladusans' main philosophical work is written in Portuguese: Gnosiologia Plu-ridimensional. Fenomenologia do Conhecimento e Gnosiologia Critica General (Ladusans, 1992). From 1992 to 1993, he "back-translated" his book into Latvian, but two other parts still exist only in their Portuguese editions. He uses the concept of

conhecimento, which could be translated as recognition and means that philosopher describes the phenomenological level of the gnoseological process. He never developed Husserl's phenomenology as such, but used phenomenological concepts, spoke about intentionality and tried to connect the teaching of St. Acquinas and Kant about human reason and human development.

Ladusans explained multidimensional humanism on the basis of critical realism. It is interesting, how widespread critical realism has been among philosophers who belonged to Latvia's phenomenological movement—Celms, Stavenhagen, Ladusans. "Phenomenologically critical realism analyses and clearly admits as irrefutable man's natural cognition in all its authentic structure. [...] philosophically it creates an organic critical teaching on man's recognition abilities and limits—gnoseology" (Ladusans, 1991, 28).

The way Ladusans uses phenomenology is as pre-gnoseology and as a tool in the search for the constitutive elements of natural cognition of truth. In the philosophical process people base judgement on objective evidence. Complete reflection, which is inherent to the human being, makes the cognition of truth objective and absolute, leading us to conscious intentionality—thus the phenomenological and critical point of view is elucidated in the conception of many-sided gnoseology. In this perspective, cognition acquires its meaning from the thing (die Sache, as it is expressed by Husserl in his standpoint Zu den Sachen selbst). Understanding means discovering the intuitively recognized truth in complete reflection, where the predominant part belongs to covert reality.

The restoration of the Republic of Latvia in 1991 made it possible for Professor Ladusans to return to his native country and teach students at the Roman Catholic Seminary in Riga. His books published in Latvian are Many-Sided Gnoseology: Cognition Phenomenology and General Critical Gnoseology, (Ladusans, 1994) and Philosophy of Religion (Ladusans, 1995). Speaking at the University of Latvia in 1991, Ladusans stressed that phenomenology and hermeneutics represented a great step forward towards revitalizing Western philosophy. According to Ladusans, who could read texts in Russian, crisis of philosophy was clearly defined by Vladimir Solovyov in his dissertation Krizis Zapadnoi filosofii (Crisis of the Western Philosophy, 1874). Solovyov critically examined radical rationalism and radical empiricism, the two forms of pure subjectivism, categorically discarding them as erroneous trends in the sphere of philosophy because they had driven reality out of both the cognising subject and the cognised object. Unfortunately, Ladusans said, Solovyov was unaware of the philosophical revival that came later, i.e., the phenomenologically hermeneutical movement that enabled the revival of the whole building of philosophy by rectifying its gnoseological

foundations. He was convinced that the dark labyrinths of modern and contemporary philosophy are so vast that even Husserl could not find his way through all of them, remaining in Kant's transcendental subjectivism, without harmonising the authentic demands of being, essence, and values.

He is convinced that in philosophy stress should be laid on naturally critical research that is based on cognition phenomenology, achieving thereby reasonable gnoseological harmony that includes subjectivity and objectivity, sentient cognition, and intellectual cognition in all its forms. In its complete form, phenomenology includes promising starting points of not only gnoseology, but also logic, metaphysics, ethics, and religious philosophy.

2. SOVIET PERIOD 1945-1970-1991

Unfortunately, World War II, which was followed by the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet empire, put an end to the studies of phenomenology. Teodors Celms emigrated to the USA. Kurt Stavenhagen was in Germany. Stanislavs Ladusàns lived in Brazil. Young Latvian philosophers had no possibility to continue the ideas of the pre-war authors. All philosophical works based on phenomenology from the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the works written by émigré Baltic intellectuals were hidden in special library stocks or destroyed.

Interest in phenomenology was revived only in the 1970s, when the Department of Philosophy was opened in the University of Latvia (1966), and doctoral studies in philosophy started. Professional philosophers in post-war Baltic states appeared only in the 1960s and 1970s. Eastern Soviet-style Marxism was more political and practical, Western Marxism was more sophisticated, humanistic, orientated towards social and cultural criticism, and some Baltic philosophers, already in the 1970s, tried to follow the Western kind of Marxism.

In the 1980s, there were a lot of free-minded philosophers among the Marxist propagators. Their works featured superficial use of quotes from Marxist literature, and they had a deep-seated desire to find out more about philosophy in the rest of the world. A typical phenomenon in the Baltic states was the so-called half-Marxism with an orientation towards Western philosophical ideas (phenomenology, existentialism, philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology, modern aesthetics). It is interesting to compare interest about phenomenology in the USA and the USSR. In the USA, interest in phenomenology began to develop in the 1950s and 1960s and expanded into the 1970s and 1980s. Interest prospered in the USSR as well, where the ideological system was closed to Western philosophy, but at the same time philoso-

phers started to read Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre (who had to be criticised from Marxist positions in accordance with demands from Communist authorities. The official Marxism of the USSR did not accept the "grafting" of phenomenology to dialectical materialism). It should be noted here that the first objective publications on phenomenology appeared in Tbilisi, Moscow, Riga (Kule, 1997, 713-718).

One of the issues that drew the attention of Latvian scholars to phenomenology was the idea that the existing social and cultural reality is filled with "converted forms." The Husserlian principle of "Back to the things themselves!" did not possess a political context, but, firstly, a cultural and methodological one. Yet, in the course of the development of Latvian philosophical thought of the 1970s and 1980s, it acquired critically reflexive undertones.

The inspiration to turn to the studies of phenomenology came to Riga from Muscovite professors, namely from the Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Nelly Motroshilova visited the State University of Latvia, starting from 1979, and afterwards told colleagues how happy she was to meet doctoral students deeply interested in the contemporary trends of Western philosophy. During the 1970s, several doctoral students in Riga began to work on dissertations discussing the views of Husserl, Dilthey, Heidegger, Gadamer, von Hildebrandt, Scheler, Munich-Gottin-gen school. In Latvia, Motroshilova supervised the doctoral theses of Ella Buceniece and Juris Rozenvalds, and in Russia—the thesis of Victor Molchanov, among others. Forty years later Motroshilova described Buceniece as a girl who always wanted to give things a phenomenological description, but first and foremost, she wanted to see them. Phenomenological experience has been realized in everyday life. Doctoral students from Riga, for their part, remember Motroshilova as a smart and attractive personality that influenced not only rational thinking, but also the understanding of fashion, politics, and Western culture. Due to the long-lasting impresion she left behind, she was given a nickname in Riga—"philosophical mother"!

Nelly Motroshilova was the initiator of the Riga group of phenomenologists during Soviet times and remained its leader for a long time. The Riga Phenomenological Circle came into existence under her leadership in the 1970s. Riga became famous in the former Soviet Union mostly because of its phenomenology studies and activities. It is mentioned in two world encyclopaedias: Encyclopaedia of Phenomenology (Kule, 1997, 715) and Phenomenology World-Wide. Foundations—ExpandingDynam-ics—Life-Engagements. Encyclopedia of Learning (Buceniece, 2002, 312-316).

The Riga group had close ties with Lithuanian philosophers Tomas Sodeika, Arunas Sverdiolas, and Russian phenomenologist Viktor Molchanov. Molchanov defended his candidate of philosophy thesis in Riga. Why there and not at home? Let's

just say that Riga was on the Western side of the USSR and offered more intellectual freedom than universities in Rostov-on-Don or Moscow. Molchanov remembers this personal story, "At Rostov-on-Don there was no promotion commission in history of philosophy. At the Institute of Philosophy (Moscow) such a commission had been established and then closed. In the autumn of 1979, Nelly Motroshilova concluded that Riga could be the best place to defend the thesis. [...] dissertation was defended in June 1980 thanks to Motroshilova's and A. F. Zotov's recommendations." (Molchanov, 2007, 13). He refers to the collaboration with the Riga group as "phenomenolo-gical conspiracy" (Molchanov, 2015, 13). The core of the circle was formed by Mara Rubene and Andris Rubenis, Maija Kule and Rihards Kulis, Juris Rozenvalds, Ella Buceniece, and in Vilnius—by Arunas Sverdiolas, Tomas Sodeika, and Algis Degutis. Molchanov visited conferences in Riga every year and was the author of serious phe-nomenological articles, published in volumes from 1981 to 1991, on phenomenology and hermeneutics. Four books were published in Russian by the Riga Phenomeno-logical Circle before 1991: Kritika fenomenologicheskogo napravlenia v sovremennoi burzhuaznoi filosofii (Riga, 1981); Problema soznania v sovremennoi burzhuaznoi fi-losofii (Vilnius, 1985); Problemi ontologiji v sovremennoi burzhuaznoi filosofii (Riga, 1988); Fenomenologia v sovremennom mire (Riga, 1991). The word "criticism" was, at the time, a mandatory part of Soviet discourse when it came to Western philosophy. Jadwiga Smith wrote in the "Phenomenological Inquiry" that the book Fenomenologia v sovremennom mire testifies to the important role phenomenology plays in the former Soviet Union (Smith, 1993, 164).

The first book contains nine articles. Considering the totalitarian background of the USSR in 1981, these articles represented an unexpected development because phenomenological topics were hardly discussed among Marxists (Motroshilova, 1981). Ella Buceniece wrote about modern irrationality; Motroshilova explained the phenomenological method; Maija Kule compared phenomenology and hermeneu-tics; Mara Rubene analyzed Husserl's views on inner-time consciousness; Viktor Mol-chanov looked at the concept of reflection in the context of time-based processes; Rihards Kulis analyzed the issue of historicity in Heidegger's philosophy in relation to Husserl's phenomenology; Juris Rozenvalds focused on the subjective idealism of Husserl; Andris Rubenis wrote on the teachings of the Riga-born philosopher Nikolai Hartmann on moral values; while Lithuanian philosopher Thomas Sodeika turned to Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, looking at the issue of objectivity of the cognition. At the time of Soviet dogmatics, it was like a breath of fresh air in the philosophical, Russian-speaking space of the USSR. It is interesting to remember that the Institute's director was suspicious and did not want to include this book in the publi-

cations plan, but the younger generation managed to get it included as a special case in the socialist emulation campaign, and, therefore, after a series of discussions, the book was successfully published.

The visiting professors from Moscow—Nelly Motroshilova, Piama Gaidenko, Tamara Kuzmina, Sergey Averintzev—stimulated a deeper interest in phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, Western cultural history during the lectures they gave in Riga from 1980 to 1986. They belonged to the generation whose spiritual formation was influenced by criticism of the anti-democratic and anti-humanistic essence of orthodox Marxism and by the rehabilitation of the human personality and freedom as such. They created a favourable atmosphere in which attempts were made to evaluate the on-going processes in the world irrespective of Soviet ideological dogmas. The same process of awakening could be recognized in Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia.

The authors of phenomenologically-oriented books performed number of cultural functions during the Soviet time—they learned themselves and tried to teach students about Western contemporary philosophy; they translated the texts of famous phenomenologists; they made interpretations, bringing innovation to them; they directed the integration of the Baltic philosophical thought into world philosophy. The beginnings of phenomenological studies in Riga caused some embarrassment among the representatives of Soviet power, yet they were not forbidden. Andris Rubenis was criticized for his small book Phenomenology (in Latvian) by the Central Committee of the Communist party in Latvia because the work contained "intolerable objective bias towards such bourgeois trend as phenomenology" (Rubenis, 1983). Despite the fierce criticism, he continued to work as lecturer at the Riga Technical Institute.

The way Husserl was interpreted in the Riga editions differed from the approach in the Western editions—the researchers were not interested in the epistemological aspects of phenomenology, focusing instead on the ontology of consciousness. Against the background of the reigning dialectical materialism, where consciousness has been recognized as derived from the social being, phenomenologists turned it upside down. Placing the ontology of consciousness in the forefront was most unusual at the time. Several propositions were outlined about the ontological status of myth, phenomena of culture, and history. These views, in their turn, changed the basic premises of the humanities and compelled them not to regard objects of investigation as phenomena that have been derived from a certain substance (socio-economic basis) but to treat them within phenomenological being as meaningful phenomena.

The Riga Phenomenological Circle initiated a book in Russian on phenome-nological ontology (Kuzmina, Kule, Rubene & Chuhina, 1988), which consisted of four parts and included in the addenda the translation of the first part of the second

volume of Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen; a partial translation of Max Scheler's work On the Phenomenon of the Tragic; the translation of a passage from J.-P. Sartre's Situations /—"The Main Idea of Husserl's Phenomenology: Intentionality"; and the translation of Hedwig Conrad-Martius' Die Transzendentale und die Ontologische Phänomenologie. Such an extensive offer of translated Western philosopher works was most unusual at the time, given the Soviet ideological standpoint.

The first opportunities to have phenomenology-related foreign trips for the Riga circle occurred starting from 1986—the time of the perestroika movement in the USSR. Maija Kule and Victor Molchanov took part in a conference on Husserl and Hegel in Belgrade in 1987. Ella Buceniece and Maija Küle, as well as Victor Molch-anov and Tomass Sodeika, were among the speakers at an international conference in Santiago de Compostella (Spain, 1988). Every trip required a permission from the USSR Academy of Sciences and a Secret Service officer. The young philosophers from Latvia, Lithuania, and Rostov-on-Don received permission after declaring their theoretically neutral, phenomenological thesis before a special Soviet commission. It should be noted, however, that Moscow did not allow Nelly Motroshilova and Merab Mamardashvili to travel to the Santiago de Compostella conference—the reason why their application was rejected is not known to this day.

Marina Bykova recalls an important event—a roundtable on phenomenology in Moscow, in which the Riga phenomenology circle participated. She writes in the Journal of Russian Philosophy:

Yet a true radical change began to take shape in 1988, when the Russian leading philosophical journal Voprosy filosofii [Questions of Philosophy], in collaboration with the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, organized a special roundtable devoted to phenomenology. [...] The discussion focused on such issues as the subject matter of phenomenology, its place in the history of philosophy, and its significance for contemporary philosophical scholarship, in particular for cultural studies. Attended by leading Russian (Soviet) phenomenology scholars of the time, such as Nelly V. Motroshilova, Merab K. Mamardashvili, Anatoly A. Mikhailov, Viktor I. Molchanov, Viktor V. Kalinichenko, Juris I. Rosenwalds, Maya Kule, Rihards R. Kulis, Mara A. Rubene, the roundtable was a big success. Removing any ideological (and political) restrictions imposed upon the phenomenological studies in Russia and openly addressing the question of the legitimacy of Husserl's phenomenological concepts, it opened a path toward productive phenomenological studies and created new opportunities for established scholars and beginning students alike. (Bykova, 2016, 5)

Bykova's memories are accurate—the roundtable played a very important role in the awakening of Russian philosophy and widening phenomenological interpretations.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Georgi Tsintsadze, Givi Margvelashvili visited Riga and influenced Latvian philosophers to study Heidegger's philosophy (namely the concept of Dasein and will) and hermeneutics (the concept of understanding). The most effective base for collaboration with Georgia was phenomenology. An important philosophical figure, who has influenced a phenomenological offshoot, was Zurab Kakabadze and his appeal of "Back to man himself!" Kakabadze interpreted human freedom and creativity as the deepest inner feelings and the highest stage of the general tendencies of being. Young philosophers from Latvia (as well as from Vilnius, Kiev, Moscow etc.) were enthusiastic to follow Kakabadze and after him—Mamar-dashvili. Kakabadze has published his works in the Analecta Husserliana, where many publications of Riga phenomenologists later on appeared. The President of the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning, Anna-Teresa Ty-mieniecka, included Zurab Kakabadze on the list of councillors of the Institute (1976), next to Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, Gerhardt Funke, Joseph Kockelmans etc. Thus, many Latvian philosophers, being associated with the World Phenomenology Institute, came close to Kakabadze's ideas.

In the 1970s, Nelly Motroshilova highlighted the lectures of Merab Mamardash-vili as a unique source for philosophical studies (Motroshilova, 2007). Mamardashvili was one of those philosophers who contributed to the revival of phenomenology in Latvian philosophy. The course of lectures on ancient philosophy, Descartes, Kant, physical metaphysics that Mamardashvili delivered in Riga (1970-1980s) made a great impression on critically minded students. He was definitely a thinker of the Socratic type. The philosopher explained that the converted forms or quasi-objects of ideology dictate certain rules. The process of phenomenological substitution takes place. Consciousness is not transparent; it cannot be described by means of simple reflection because there are obscure dependencies and it is not possible to exert direct control over them. To have access to these dependencies phenomenological purification (reduction) is required. Ideology acts in the capacity of glue for social structures and human minds. It is essential to perceive, comprehend and evaluate these ideological structures as independent ontological phenomena, based on converted forms.

In 1979, Mamardashvili gave six lectures on consciousness (published in 1984) to the overcrowded Auditorium 1 of the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University of Latvia in Riga. Many young Baltic philosophers visited these lectures and summer schools in Riga and Vilnius during the 1980s. Mamardashvili's opinions helped philosophers build self-confidence, promote their research independence, and increased their desire to bring Western philosophy to Latvia. He considered phe-nomenological issues in philosophy independently of Husserl; it seems that studies

of Hegel's and Marx's theory led him to the philosophical recognition of situationally conditioned consciousness.

Mamardashvili's works have been influenced by M. Foucault, J.-P. Sartre, M. Heidegger (he disliked Heidegger's philosophy), E. Cassirer, M. Merleau-Ponty, etc., but not in a direct way—Mamardashvili's style and expressions always created new philosophical feelings. According to Mara Rubene, "Mamardashvili is not interested in reality, but in implementation, not in essence, but in happening and event." (Rubene, 2011, 90). One could name many personalities in Latvia who have recognised the importance of Mamardashvili's teachings and performances—prof. Rihards Kulis, prof. Andris Rubenis, prof. Mara Rubene, researcher Ansis Zunde, prof. Igors Suva-jevs, journalist Uldis Tirons. Mamardashvili had a personal reason to pay many confidential visits to Latvia—in the 1970s, Riga was the residence of his beloved woman Zelma Haiti, who later emigrated to Israel. Interest in Mamardashvili's philosophy in Latvia is illustrated by the fact that students have organized many Mamardashvili Readings (Riga, University of Latvia, 2010, 2011, 2013) and released some materials in digital format.

Seven doctoral dissertations on phenomenology were defended in Latvia in 1980-1990s. Authors were Mara Rubene, Ella Buceniece, Maija Kule, Andris Rubenis, Rihards Kulis, Juris Rozenvalds, Larisa Cuhina (Dr. habil. phil.); Arunas Sverdiolas, Tomas Sodeika, Arvydas Sliogeris (Dr. habil. phil.) in Lithuania1; and Ulo Matyuss in Estonia. Interest in phenomenology during Soviet times became a trend of modern studies in philosophy.

3. PHENOMENOLOGY IN LATVIA AFTER 1990

After it had published several books, the Riga Phenomenological Circle started to gain strength. Books were an important start for relations with Anna Teresa Tymieniecka (1923-2014), who learned about this circle from Nelly Motroshilova. The intellectual bridge helped to establish relationships: Moscow-Riga-Boston-Riga. Contacts between European and US universities and Baltic philosophers were a rarity before 1990, and the few that did take place only did so with the permission of Communist Party officials. Tymieniecka was one of the first not to ask for permission because she considered herself to be a free person in a free world, one who is interested to meet thinkers criticized by official power. In 1986, she published a review on one of

1 History of phenomenology in Lithuania is described by Arunas Sverdiolas and Tomas Kaceraus-kas' in the paper "Phenomenology in Lithuania" (Studies in East European Thought, 61 (1), 2009, 31-41). Many events and topics are similar to the Latvia's case.

the Riga Phenomenological Circle's books in the journal "Phenomenological Bulletin" (USA), calling it a little Latvian surprise among native communists.

In the 1990s, Lester Embree (USA) asked me to write an article titled Phenomenology in the USSR for the Encyclopedia of Phenomenology (Kule, 1997, 713-718). As meaningful pre-war figures, I have mentioned the names of Alexei Losev and his Filosofiya imeni (1927) as well as Mikhail Bahktin and his dialectic phenomenology of personality. Weakening of the totalitarian system in the 1960s was an opening to begin studies of phenomenology in many USSR republics, including Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazahhstan etc. Among Russians, N. Motro-shilova, P. Gaidenko, T. Kuzmina, M. Kissel, L. Ionin, V. Molchanov became experts in the phenomenology of consciousness, time, space and social processes. Piama Gaid-enko, Tamara Kuzmina, Mihail Kissel, and Alexei Bogomolov acquainted their readers with phenomenology as a forerunner of existentialism, philosophical hermeneutics, modern epistemology. They were advisors and reviewers of doctoral dissertations in Latvia. Nelly Motroshilova, as indicated previously, was the leading professor behind the development of phenomenology in the Soviet Union (Motroshilova, 1968).

Starting from the 1990s, Baltic history, culture and literary heritage was rapidly re-evaluated and rehabilitated; this process is still ongoing. Mara Rubene has published articles on time in phenomenology and three books in Latvian (one translated into Lithuanian in 2001) on philosophy of the present time—From Present Time to PRESENT (Rubene, 1995) and Aisthesis, Mimesis, Theoria (Rubene, 2010), Da Capo (Rubene, 2020); Ella Buceniece investigated the problem of teleology, the concept of Lebenswelt and intersubjectivity, and published a book titled Reason isn't Illusion (Buceniece, 1999); Andris Rubenis busied himself with phenomenological ethics (Rubene & Rubenis,1993) and history of culture; Rihards Kulis analysed the principle of historicity in phenomenology and existentialism and translated the works of I. Kant, L. Feierbach, M. Weber, M. Heidegger, J. Habermas and E. Husserl into Latvian. Larisa Chuhina has written articles about Max Scheler (Chuhina, 1993), axiology, philosophical anthropology (Chuhina, 1991; Kovalchuka, 2014) and published a book titled Chelovek i ego tsennostnij mir v religioznoi filosofii (Riga, 1991). The phenomenological trend has been explained in Maija Kule's book Phenomenology and Culture (Kule, 2002), the applied method—in her monographs Eurolife: Forms, Principles and Feelings (Kule, 2006) and The Way Things Ought to Be (Kule, 2016b).

Since 1990, Latvia has hosted four (1990, 1991, 1993, 2006) international phenomenology conferences in collaboration with the World Institute for Advanced Phe-nomenological Research and Learning (USA) and its founder and leader (President) A-T. Tymieniecka. She was a very creative personality, who developed a new school—

phenomenology of life. Later, it was named the philosophy of the New Enlightenment or eco-phenomenology. She took philosophy into an unusual field, that is, following the logos through the labyrinth of life and Universe. Human beings should be interpreted as the Human Condition within the unity of everything-there-is-alive. Tymieniecka's philosophy dares to look into the Universe and finds logos there. Her philosophy is useful for today's eco-philosophy and for the practical measures to harmonise human relationships with nature. Phenomenology, discussing creative imagination, gives a new basis for interdisciplinary dialogue and understanding between Western and Eastern cultures because Tymieniecka has emphasized the necessity to study Islamic philosophy in the context of phenomenology and attached importance to Illuminationism and Sufism. Tymieniecka disagreed with feminism, but many professional female philosophers turned to phenomenology under her influence, thus stimulating gender balance in philosophy.

Her phenomenological movement was independent from bureaucratisation because it has been based on a private, internationally known institution and a worldwide net of collaborators from the USA, Poland, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Argentina, Canada, South Africa, China, Greece, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, Russia, Serbia, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, Azerbaijan, and other countries, relying on the philosophical interests of professors rather than formal cooperation agreements between universities. Tymieniecka's philosophical interest was orientated towards optimism, a multi-layered system, teleological process expressed into logos, aesthetical dimension interpreted by ontopoiesis, the importance of life preservation and development of human individual capacities. Although she lived in the USA, Anna-Teresa was not a typical Americanized philosopher, one who would like to inform the world of the analytical and pragmatic philosophy that was reigning there at the time. Her life experience was much more complicated—escaping from Poland under Soviet rule, mastering the French, and later the American philosophical experience, working in US universities, then giving up her academic career and looking for an independent path in philosophy—she possessed an outstanding talent for recruiting researchers to the trend of phenomenology. She had a brilliant ability to organize conferences anywhere in the world, even including cooperation with Islamic universities.

In the Acknowledgements of the Baltic volume of Analecta Husserliana (vol. 39) Tymieniecka writes: "Latvian colleagues [...] in this period in which hopes for the freedom of the mind were glimmering in the longlasting darkness of the past, considered phenomenology [.] 'a window opening upon the world' " (Tymieniecka, 1993a, xi). It should be considered as a clear message in the global philosophical process—over the course of the 1990s, philosophers in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia,

Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary have become part of the phenomenological trend, eagerly studying the ideas of phenomenology, free of any ideological entanglements.

Looking back at the stage of investigations of 1985-1990, one must say that Tymieniecka's arrival in Riga in 1990 was a call to give up Marxism (already a self-evident choice), give up the trend of transcendentalism, refuse to align with the realism of the Munich-Gottingen school, and a suggestion to take from phenomenology what she saw as the most important—the ideas about life (life and vitality), responsibility for all living beings on the Earth and in the Cosmos, the creative act, spirituality in the sense of development of logos that exists over everything. Today, it sounds like topical, "green deal" related thinking based on re-interpreted phenomenology.

Tymieniecka, seeing the activities of the Riga school of phenomenology, offered to organize in Riga the 25th international conference under her guidance and titled "Reason, Life, Culture." The title was broad, but most appropriate to the period. The year 1990 was an extremely crucial time of transformation in Latvia and across the entire USSR. Peculiarly, the USSR Academy of Sciences allocated, in 1990, about 40 thousand USSR rubles for the organization of the Riga phenomenology conference, which would have been a substantial financial support for the invitation of foreigners to philosophical enterprises that were deemed worth supporting at the time. However, the money never reached Riga because of political turbulence.

Tymieniecka was in some sense the voice of freedom in Riga. Around the year 1990, when it was not yet clear in what direction the world history would turn, what would happen to the USSR, and to the Baltic region—not many Western philosophers were willing to come to Vilnius, Riga, Tallin, or Moscow. Caution urged people to wait. Tymieniecka's life, however, was full of ardour; she understood that real philosophy is necessary whereever historical changes take place. She mentioned the fact that she had invited about thirty American philosophers to the Riga conference in 1990, yet only three of them were ready to cross the ocean to go to the restless Baltic region. The philosopher shares her ironical thoughts about a philosophy that carries the idea of freedom, however, when there is need to help this freedom come into being one must be present, one should not fear and refuse to participate as her colleagues had done. (Tymieniecka, 1990, 217).

It was also essential that the 25th congress was attended by Russian philosophers who had been cooperating with the Riga Phenomenological Circle for some time already: Victor Molchanov's paper on "Consciousness, culture, pluralism"; Maria Kozlova's "Husserl and Wittgenstein on culture"; K. Dolgov's "Esse intentionale et esse cognitum seu objectum"; Helena Gurko's "Heidegger's hope"; I. V. Kosich's "Phenome-

nology of politics"; as well as the reports presented by A. Pigalev, Irina Vdovina. These were high-level thinkers among Russian intellectuals; people who had mastered phenomenology at a time when Soviet power disliked it. The journal Phenomenological Inquiry (vol. 14, 1990) wrote about the 25th conference in Riga: "Held at such a critical historical hour as this is for this part of Europe, our congress benefited from the enthusiasm of the moment and from the eagerness to express long repressed ideas and personal interests. Indeed, quite unexpectedly, the congress grew to the large size of 35 speakers due to the great interest of young scholars from the Baltic states. [...] We entered this part of the world relatively unknown to phenomenology with enormous joy" (Tymieniecka, 1990, 223). V. Molchanov concluded during his interview that, "Phenomenology is the center around which many other trends might unite. And not because phenomenology would be better than some other system of philosophy, but because at its center is located a man's live consciousness that is thematically forever present whether we speak of values, natural sciences, social conflicts, or whatever. I should say [Molchanov.—M. K. ] that investigating the objective without linking it to the subjective is a philosophical crime!" (Kule & Molchanov, 1991, 137).

After the successful conference, members of the World Phenomenology Institute wanted to return to Latvia for the next, the 27th conference titled "Toward the phenomenological concept of life." This time, we organized it at the spa city Jurma-la in September 1991. The agenda featureda prominent philosopher from Germany Thomas Seebohm and a celebrated US philosopher Calvin Schrag with his paper "The consequences of post-modernity for phenomenological thought." Afterwards, Schrag commended the conference by saying, "I happen to know phenomenology, but it was the first time in my life that I saw a variety dance show, which has widened my ordinary life-experience, it was so impressive!"

In 1991, a new book was being prepared in Riga—Fenomenologia v sovremen-nom mire. The editors—Maija Kule and Victor Molchanov—noted that phenomenology with its observational (descriptive) method is not an apology of everything that exists as the critics try to present it. Description does not mean justification or apology, and it is far from sociopolitical apology, but turning to the level of the formation of sense in the human experience. The clearness of sense that appears in one's consciousness is also a reflection of a clear and orderly life. Phenomenology rejects the idea of construing senses (as many social sciences in the 21st century are keen to), but insists on the necessity to allow the sense to appear, to be grasped, understood.

The mentioned publications in Russian, the 25th and the 27th international conferences in Latvia, the strengthening of the circle of followers enabled the preparation of the Baltic volume in the series of Analecta Husserliana, vol. 39 (1993b). It should

be considered a clear message in the global philosophical process—Latvian philosophers, together with their friends in Lithuania, Russia, Poland, Hungary, have become part of the phenomenological trend and are eagerly studying the ideas of life phenomenology, free of any ideological entanglement.

In 1993, an international conference was organized in Riga on the topic of The Phenomenology of Life as the Starting Point of Philosophy: Bios, Ethos, Transcendence. Pope John Paul II, during his visit to Baltics in 1993, supported phenomenological philosophy because he himself had worked out the phenomenology of person and action. He had always been a supporter of Tymieniecka's philosophical investigations and was a personal lifelong friend of hers. In his letter to Latvian philosophers (November 11, 1993), the Pope stressed that philosophers in Latvia are on the right path in looking for expression of life and a man in the 20th century, when living and the meaning of life is denied in all possible ways. (letter published in Muzigais [Eternal], 1995, 4). The philosophy circles were enthusiastic, knowing the Pope's treatise The Acting Person (Analecta Husserliana, vol. 10), his books on ethics, education, and doctoral thesis on Max Scheler. East-European philosophers who investigate phenomenology see in his phenomenological works a struggle for individual human activities and responsibility.

The Pope's thoughts on the value of life are the new holding points in the multiplicity of philosophical roads in the Baltic states and the Central- and East-European countries. Tymieniecka, being close to the Catholic line of thought, always insisted that the value of metaphysics should not be forgotten, as it allots life interpretation a deeper basis and forms as a starting point of philosophy. This is further attested in Daniela Verducci's book La fenomenologia della vita di Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Prova di sistema (Verducci, 2012, 147).

The 55th international phenomenology conference in Daugavpils University (2006) is noteworty because its conclusions were reflected in writings of Analecta Husserliana, vol. 95, "Education in Humane Creative Existential Planning." In Word of Appreciation Tymieniecka summarized relationships with Latvian phenomenolo-gists by saying: "The planting of phenomenology of life in the soil of Latvia received striking recognition" (Tymieniecka, 2008, x). The same year, Latvians, together with the World Phenomenology institute and German phenomenologist Elisabeth Stroker, celebrated the centenary of Teodors Celms. Needless to say there was a fundamental disagreement between guests from the USA and Germany; from the one side, there was absolutely free interpretation of Husserl's testimony, and from the other side, a scrupulous, German style analysis. Many German phenomenologists never recognized Analecta Husserliana studies and did not cite them, convinced as they were

that phenomenology must not be transformed in this way. It became a problem of the centuries—what is phenomenology? In 2012, Riga phenomenologists organized an international conference on "How can we be together? Social phenomenology on the formation of unities," which already demonstrated how much the phenomenological circle has grown by involving new philosophers from Georgia (Mamuka Dolidze), Estonia (Tonu Viik), Lithuania (Dalius Jonkus), Germany (Paul-Gabriel Sandu), the UK (Hin Mao) Italy (Marko Simionato) etc. The post-Soviet era no longer placed any obstacles to international development. Viik started to develop phenomenology of culture and found close relationships with Latvian thinkers on the question of culture and the subjective I. He writes:

We can proceed from individual experiences even if we will focus at the transcendental mechanisms of meaning-formation that are communal. By doing this, we arrive at the phenomenology of collectively structured, or what is the same—communally constituted, and yet individual experiences, which form the very subject of investigation of cultural phenomenology. (Viik, 2016, 164)

Phenomenology of culture is a turning point that is supported by many Latvian authors.

Congresses, conferences, and symposia at World Philosophy Congresses (2008, 2013) have widely represented and demonstrated the spread of different offshoots in phenomenology throughout the world—among the speakers were philosophers from Spain, Mexico, Belgium, India, Rumania, Canada, Russia, Italy, and Latvia. The wide circle of international philosophers taking part in Tymieniecka's conferences (a total of 64 by 2019) and 121 volumes of Analecta Husserliana (Kluwer Academic Publishers, later Springer) are a testament of worldwide collaboration and an open intellectual space for dialogue.

Fifty six scientific papers from Latvia and by Latvians abroad have been published in Analecta Husserliana volumes, starting from 1993-2020 (Kule, 2016a, 315321). It includes analysis of phenomenology of culture, life, intersubjectivity, space and place, time, sound, sub-consciousness, identities (from Latvia—Maija Kule, Ri-hards Kulis, Ella Buceniece, Velga Vevere, Ineta Kivle, tElga Freiberga, Mara Rubene, Andris Rubenis, Giulio Lo Bello, Janis Vejs, Mara Stafecka, Zaiga Ikere, Karlis Rut-manis, Rinalds Zembahs) Analecta Husserliana has also featured collaborators with the Riga Phenomenological Circle—prof. Tonu Viik from Estonia, Mamuka Dolidze from Georgia, Carmen Cozma from Romania, Daniela Verducci from Italy, Konrad Rokstad from Norway etc. At a time when analytical philosophy was indisputably dominating on the forefront of American philosophy, the Analecta Husserliana year-

book, edited by Tymieniecka, entered the circles of English-speaking philosophers with unusual themes: spatiality, linguisticity, phenomenology of embodiment, phenomena as desert, sea, air, earth, fire, silence, etc. A great debt of gratitude is owed to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, who was never deterred by tumultuous political changes and held a strong belief that phenomenology of life and ethics should be helped throughout the transitional period and different crisis. She kept phenomenology far from political and religious theories. Tymieniecka's aim was forming philosophy where man is not understood as Ego, but manifests himself or herself, just like all live nature, in the process of individualization among everything-there-is-alive.

4. PHENOMENOLOGY IN LATVIA AFTER 2005

During the last fifteen years, phenomenology in Latvia has made a noticeable turn towards practical matters and ethics—philosophy of body, suffering, illness, medical practice, phenomenological analysis of social media, terrorism, violence. Researchers have also focused on the early phenomenology of the Munich-Gottingen school, aesthetical experience. The youngest generation in Riga is interested in contemporary stoicism, feminist philosophy, critique of neo-liberalism, interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophy, and "thought experiments" in analytic philosophy. Notable enthusiasts of phenomenology include Uldis Vegners, Mara Grinfelde, Ineta Kivle, Mara Kiope, fIeva Lapinska, tElga Freiberga. Between 2005-2020, eight doctoral dissertations on phenomenology have been defended in the University of Latvia in Riga. Ineta Kivle studied sound, speech, voice and music in phenomenological perspective (Kivle, 2008, 2009). Mara Kiope wrote a dissertation on possibility of the truth experience in linguisticity (Kiope, 2008). She started by analysing St. Acquinas' teachings of the inner word, then moved to the phenomenologically orientated hermeneutics, M. Heidegger's and H.-G. Gadamer's philosophies about language and truth. Zanete Narkevica devoted her dissertation to the imagination and creativity of language in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (Narkevica, 2009). Aigars Dabolins remained faithful to Husserl and defended his thesis on intersubjectivity. He has studied relations of time-consciousness and social being in transcendental phenomenology (Dabolins, 2010). There was a dissertation on phenomenological aesthetics—Karlis Verpe wrote his thesis on "Pictorial (re)presentation: an investigation into phenomenological conceptions of image consciousness" (Verpe, 2012). He tried to understand the potential and limits of the phenomenological concept of image consciousness in contrast with theories of the picture in the semiotic field. Girts Jankovskis returned to the other kind of phenomenology—to Hegel's dialectics and defended his promotion work on

"Understanding of knowledge in Hegel's phenomenology of spirit. Analysis of herme-neutic dialectics" (Jankovskis, 2013). In 2015, three dissertations followed—Igors Gu-benko on Derrida, Elvira Simfa on Kant's anthropology and Maris Kulis on historically-communicative model of truth. Kulis published a monograph (Kulis, 2021) where demonstrated evolution of the concept of "truth," which for long time has been interpreted from the positions of epistemology as a result of a subject's active cognition, and now is contrasted with socially communicative processes, intersubjectivity and truth within linguisticity. Linda Gedina spent a significant amount of time working on Heidegger's ideas, text's translations and defended her thesis on "The language structure in the existential analytic of Martin Heidegger and its poetic aspects" (Gedina, 2019).

In 2017, an international conference took place in Riga. "Phenomenology and Aesthetics. The 3rd Conference on Traditions and Perspectives of the Phenomeno-logical Movement in Central and Eastern Europe" with the participation of phenom-enologists from Poland, Lithuania, Hungary. Uldis Vegners and Mara Grinfelde are among the founders of the Central and East European Society for Phenomenology, with Vegners being its Secretary-General. It shows that young phenomenologists from Riga have already become active on a global scale. Vegners has formulated a hypothesis that the Now is a qualitative and an ultimately inwardly non-changing self-identical unity in opposition to the Now understood as a formal temporal aspect or even an idealized abstraction (Vegners, 2016, 234-235). He is certain that his conception of the Now avoids the critique of the metaphysics of presence. Grinfelde tries to provide answers to the question how, and based on what, we experience that we experience. She asks whether there is something that appears unconditionally and incomprehensibly. Questions open up the possibility of reinterpreting phenomenology and turn to J.-L. Marion's teachings about saturated phenomena. She concludes, contrary to views put forward by Marion, that not all saturated phenomena are absolute, but only internally undifferentiated saturated phenomena are absolute. "Marion's ideas concerning God without being, excess, idol, icon and the saturated phenomenon offers the possibility of posing questions about God and religious experience from a new perspective" (Grinfelde, 2016, 323). Dissertations and monographs of the young generation testify that the interest in phenomenology is widening—it is no longer only about Husserl as the founder and Heidegger as the developer, but about ecological, medical, socially practical, and religious offshoots of phenomenology.

From 2015, another phenomenological offshoot appears in Latvia in collaboration with the Heidegger's Society. Prof. Raivis Bicevskis, together with Ineta Kivle, deputy director of the Academic Library of the University of Latvia, organized an

international conference in 2019 with the title "Let Things to Be!," devoted to Hus-serl's 160th and Heidegger's 130th anniversary. The thematic scope of the conference included such problems as being, existence, temporality, intersubjectivity, empathy, aesthetical and moral dimensions of contemporary phenomenology.

Future development of the phenomenological movement in Riga is orientated towards collaboration with Martin-Heidegger Gesellschaft, European Division of the World Phenomenology Institute, eco-phenomenology, interpretation of phenomenological method in social media studies, investigation of phenomenologically practical ethics, studies of works by Celms, Ladusans and Stavenhagen and translations into Latvian.

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