The Invisible and the Hidden within the Phenomenological Situation of Appearing

Abstract

This study focuses on various phenomenological conceptions of the invisible in order to consider to what extent and in what way they involve moments of hiddenness. The relationship among phenomenality, invisibility, and hiddenness is examined in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Henry, and Merleau-Ponty. The study explains why phenomenologists prefer speaking about the invisible over a discourse of the hidden. It shows that the phenomenological method does not display the invisibility as a limit of experience but rather as a dynamic component of relational nature of any experience, including the religious one. Special attention is paid to topological moments of the relationship between the visible and the invisible.

Keywords

• the invisible
• the hidden
• phenomenology
• appearing
• phenomenological situation
• husserl
• heidegger
• henry
• merleau-ponty