Divenire e coscienza

Abstract

The downgrading of the becoming as outward seeming, rather than the proclamation of the being as inward reality, is the still challenging legacy of the Eleatic school. Moving from this issue, I firstly propose a modernized version of the dispute on becoming between the Eleatic philosophers and Heraclites. A logical analysis of becoming will be aimed at showing the inconsistencies unavoidably produced when an analytical formulation of becoming is pursued. Then, a change of perspective on becoming is explored, from the classical, ontological (and logical), perspective to a phenomenological one, arguing that the problem of “what is” becoming should be, ultimately, left to physics. The starting point of the phenomenological analysis of becoming will be the theory of time in consciousness by Edmund Husserl.
The Husserl’s phenomenology of time will be the framework of an analysis of event as a consciousness’ production, as the consciousness’ construction of becoming, to the extent that events are to be considered as “temporal object”, produced by the intentionality of the consciousness, focused on time. Modal categories will then be briefly considered from the phenomenological standpoint. In the conclusion, I propose a reinterpretation of the Eleatic notion of being in the phenomenological context: the inconsistencies raise when becoming is thought by means of the linguistic–logical categories, while in that context being and becoming are no longer conflicting.