The question of desire in French phenomenology

Abstract

The author summarizes the results of the significant theoretical advances achieved in respect to the “passionate”, or “suffering”, dimension of human existence, both in its egoist (Husserl, Sartre, Renaud Barbaras) and its ethical variant (Lévinas). The conclusion arrived at is that existence is invariably understood as being humiliated, either by an authoritative Other (as in the first aforementioned case) or by a weak one (as in the second case). To blame are the fundamental premises of phenomenology as such in that it typically connects desire with intentionality.