Philosophical Subjects in E. Minkowski’s Work

Abstract

Eugène Minkowski (1885-1972) is the founder of phenomenological psychopathology in France. He developed, based on ideas of Bergson, Husserl and Scheler, a peculiar variant of philosophical anthropology, which is based on the concept of life time (le temps vécu). Considering the problem of time as one of the main problems of modern culture, he saw the man’s task in learning to live spontaneously and freely in time. Realizing time as becoming in the Bergsonian sense, as the essence of being itself, as a synonym for life, Minkowski reinterprets the concept of élan vital, avoiding resorting to the sphere of biological facts and highlighting the phenomenological approach. From his point of view, the individual and personal impulse with which the person is asserted in the surrounding world representing the superindividual factor, inseparably connected with the human consciousness, plays the most important role. Criticizing traditional psychology, as well as Freudian psychoanalysis, Minkowski develops his own concept of the unconscious. In an effort to determine the nature of the difference between the psyche of a patient and a healthy person, he links this difference to whether the “élan vital” inherent in each person manages to harmonize his contact with reality.