Preliminary notes

Phenomenology and pragmatism constitute two major contemporary philosophical traditions, whose historical and theoretical entanglements have long been the subject of study and critical attention. The present issue of Azimuth aims to focus on a number of theoretical issues around which the intersection between the two traditions is played out today from a perspective that transcends scholastic and geographical boundaries and the topic of reception itself. In particular, the problem-which has always remained central to phenomenology since Husserl's late philosophy-of the ante-predicative, the pre-categorical, the aesthetic and sensible (extra-logical) foundation of logical-conceptual thought constitutes the most fruitful theoretical knot for a declination of phenomenology in the pragmatist sense (i.e., of pragmatism in the phenomenological sense). At the center of this issue, therefore, are the lines of convergence on the axis of the theory of perception and sensation, which, moreover, constitute the premises of the different meanings of truth, evidence, and judgment in the two traditions. Central, exemplarily, to the reflections of Husserl and James is the problem of the correlation between the physical and the psychic in a non-dualistic perspective: James' notion of "pure experience" as preceding the cut between subject and object refers, in Husserl's thought, to intentionality as the original correlation of subjectivity and objectivity. The ways in which pure experience and intentionality are modulated determine the different accents placed by the two philosophers on the egological or objective side, as well as the different foundations of the intersubjective connection: in both cases, the problem of the relationship between concept and percept is diriment and projects two ways of understanding experience that are not necessarily alternative but, depending on the phenomenon under consideration, possibly complementary.