Ion Tănăsescu, “The Twofold Meaning of Brentano’s “Pure Theoretical Interest” and His Metaphysics and Psychology”, in Susan Krantz Gabriel, Ion Tănăsescu, (eds.), Franz Brentano and the 19th Century Idea of Philosophy as a Science: Upon the Sesquicentennial of Franz Brentano’s Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, De Gruyter, 2025. The thesis of this paper is that Brentano’s theory of the phases of philosophy, his metaphysics, and his psychology are the expression of the fusion of two meanings of “pure theoretical interest”: the traditional meaning of interest in the causes and principles of things and the modern meaning of interest in phenomena and their laws. In the first two parts of the study, I will show how the special attention paid by the current exegesis to Brentano’s fourth habilitation thesis has led to the interpretation of his theory of the phases of philosophy considering only the modern meaning of theoretical interest and leaving aside its fundamental metaphysical-theological dimension corresponding to its traditional meaning. The analysis of these problems constitutes the starting point for establishing Brentano’s position in relation to some of the most important orientations of the philosophy of the 19thcentury: Kantianism and German Idealism, the German Aristotle Revival, and the positive thought of Comte and Mill. The last part of the paper deals with Brentanian psychology and argues that, although it retains an important metaphysical dimension, it is elaborated within the horizon of theoretical interest in the modern sense, i. e., psychology as a science of psychical phenomena working with a method inspired by natural science. At the same time, the study argues that Brentano’s empirical psychology and his descriptive psychology, despite their continuity, constitute two distinct theoretical projects elaborated mainly in the sphere of theoretical interest in the modern sense. To this end, six main differences between Brentano’s empirical psychology and his descriptive psychology are highlighted and analyzed. These differences concern the type of science, goals, methodology, types of laws, classification criteria, and classes of psychological phenomena with which the two psychologies work.

Cristian Ciocan, “The Phenomenology of Fatigue: Effort, Powerlessness, and the Temporal Sedimentation of Weariness”, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2025. This article develops a phenomenological account of fatigue as an existential phenomenon rooted in the dynamics of human effort and temporality. Rather than treating fatigue as a medical or psychological condition, the analysis focuses on how it discloses the limits of our capacity to act and the layered temporality of lived experience. Drawing on the work of Jean-Louis Chrétien, Jean-Yves Lacoste, and Emmanuel Levinas, fatigue is understood as a process that unfolds across distinct phases—from engagement and sustained effort to collapse, exhaustion, and sedimentation—ultimately marking a shift from power to powerlessness. Beyond the binary of physical versus mental exhaustion, fatigue is shown to affect the structure of the self, inscribing itself through repetition and non-recovery. In this way, the experience of fatigue becomes a lens for understanding human finitude, not only as limitation, but as the condition from which rest, recovery, and a possible renewal of agency may arise.

Ion Copoeru, Alina Noveanu, Niels Weidtmann (eds.), Europe – Between Idea, Imagination and Reality , Königshausen & Neumann, 2026. The idea of ​​Europe is based on fundamental philosophical concepts: these include freedom, democracy, the appreciation of the individual, and the appeal to reflexivity and critical reason. Europe’s turbulent history has shown that freedom can degenerate into dictatorship, democracy into anarchy, and rationality can be misused as a pretext for spreading ideologies. The provocations facing Europe today (the threat to democracy from far-right positions, the climate crisis and its social consequences, the war in the East) affect all European countries, albeit in different ways. European philosophy, since its inception situated in the tension between myth and logos, demands of every individual both self-awareness and self-care, as well as the justification for the positions they defend for the good of the community. What is the state of Europe’s self-awareness? What is the current self-understanding of Europeans? This volume attempts to provide a philosophical framework for these questions, from which new approaches to solutions can emerge.

Paul Marinescu, “All the Violence We Cannot See: The Philosophical Question of Blurring Photography”, Res Philosophica, Volume 103, Issue 1, January 2026. This paper addresses the issue of violent images that have been subjected to a specific photographic retouching technique—namely, the blurring of certain visual information. This process is typically used in the case of mass-distributed violent images to protect the dignity of persons depicted in a state of extreme vulnerability. Taking juridical and sociological explanations as a starting point, I explore the reasons behind the visual strategies increasingly adopted by the media for photographic materials documenting violent events in recent history. Then, I highlight the philosophical stakes underlying the media’s choice to blur imagistic violence, focusing on three issues: the effect of the attenuation of visual aggressiveness on the viewer; the tension arising between the desire to see everything and the hiatus produced by blurring in the visual field; and the viewer’s forms of appropriating the content of the violent blurred images.

Nicolae Turcan, “Ascetic Freedom and the Relationship Between Body and Emotions in Eastern Orthodox Spirituality”, Religions, 2026. This study proposes a theo-phenomenological reading of asceticism in Eastern Orthodox spirituality, with particular attention to the Philokalic tradition, analyzing the relationship between the body, emotions, and spiritual freedom. Drawing on the phenomenological distinction between the physical body (Körper) and the lived body (Leib), the article describes asceticism as a limit-experience that de-limits: an exercise of bodily and affective finitude oriented toward the transfiguration of life within the horizon of divine grace. Methodologically, the research combines textual analysis of representative Philokalic authors with insights from modern Orthodox thinkers and phenomenological concepts such as intentionality, affectivity, reduction, and apatheia, in order to describe from within the lived body, the synergy between ascetic will and the working of grace as it manifests itself in lived ascetic experience. Asceticism is presented as a dynamic process unfolding in stages: inauguration through the discovery of finitude; confrontation, in which the limits of the body and emotions are tested; and liberation as apatheia, in which the body becomes co-praying and co-serving with the soul. Emotions are interpreted as an intermediate space between body and soul—as affects of awareness, struggle, and ultimately transfiguration—through which human existence before God is manifested. The contribution of the article lies in articulating a theo-phenomenological model of Philokalic asceticism in which freedom is not the absence of emotions nor the negation of the body, but an affective and bodily reconfiguration through grace, making possible the communion of love with God and with others.

Vasile Visoțchi, “Towards a Phenomenological Understanding of Disembodiment in Schizophrenia”, Husserl Studies, 2026. The aim of this paper is to analyse the experience of disembodiment in light of Husserl’s phenomenology. Given that disembodiment is characterized by a diminished sense of body ownership, it is usually interpreted in a Cartesian manner as involving a mind-body dichotomy. Contrary to this view, firstly, I argue that the dualist interpretation of disembodiment is phenomenologically untenable, because it is incompatible with experiencing one’s alienation in an embodied way. Secondly, I endorse the interpretation of body disownership in terms of multisensory disintegration, and provide a Husserlian reading of this experience by distinguishing among distinct senses of spatiality that are specific to different sense-fields. Specifically, I claim that distinct sense-fields harbour particular centres of orientation, and thus a split between these sense-fields leaves the subject with the discordant sense of inhabiting different points of orientation. Thirdly, I focus on the perturbed sense of spatiality that arises from (i) a vision that is extricated from touch, and (ii) a touch that disengages from vision. Finally, I conclude by stating some limitations of this article, while also suggesting some prospects for further advancements.