Riviste / Discipline Filosofiche / Ontologie fenomenologiche: individualità, essenza, idea / Jean Hering on Eidos, Gegenstand and Methexis: Phenomenological Adventures and Misadventures of “Participation”

The aim of the present paper is twofold. On the one hand, it intends to briefly pave the way for a future exploration of the language and conceptuality of “participation” in the phenomenological movement. On the other hand, it aims at providing an analysis of the manner in which Jean Hering, a former Göttingen student of Husserl’s, resorts to the notion of methexis in his 1921 Bemerkungen über das Wesen, die Wesenheit und die Idee to explain the relation between individual objects and what he calls eide and thereby account for the possibility of “individual essences”. As we shall see, it is precisely the comprehension of the way he employs such a notion that will help us shed light on his ontology, notably on his understanding of the ontological status of individual objects.