ASPECT PERCEPTION AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM: PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION OR LANGUAGE GAME?
Abstract
This article explores the phenomenon of aspect as a fundamental philosophical problem situated at the intersection of phenomenology and philosophy of language. The author examines aspect not merely as a grammatical category, but as a philosophical-political tool for interpreting reality—structuring our perception of events, truth, and existence. Special attention is given to the comparison between two major approaches: the phenomenological (E. Husserl, M. Merleau-Ponty) and the linguistic-analytical (L. Wittgenstein), which reveal different modalities of conceptualizing aspect as eidetic experience or as language game. The phenomenological approach is presented through the concept of eidetic reduction aimed at grasping the evident essences (eidōs), enabling philosophical aspect to be understood as an intentionally constituted event. In contrast, Wittgenstein’s perspective presents aspect as visibility informed by a concept – “seeing-as” –realized within language games and devoid of essential content. The author demonstrates how these two perspectives also reflect two models of the political: politics as a space of intentional consciousness and policy as a structurally linguistic practice of governance. A distinctive contribution of the article lies in the inclusion of the Ukrainian linguistic context, which allows the author to uncover profound ontological and political distinctions between the concepts of “present”, “authentic”, “truth” and “veracity”. Through the analysis of verb aspects (perfective / imperfective) in Ukrainian, the author illustrates how grammatical structures shape political imagination and the interpretation of reality. This is especially relevant within decolonial discourse, where language functions not merely as a medium of expression but as a constitutive factor of political subjectivity. The article combines hermeneutic analysis, logical-linguistic critique, and philosophical reflection, opening possibilities for the development of a theory of metapolitics. It offers a new optic for analyzing political language, in which aspect is not treated as a secondary linguistic feature but rather as a key structure of perception, meaning-making, and power. In the conclusion, the author outlines future directions in connection with French phenomenology (J.-L. Marion, P. Ricoeur), speech act theory (J. L. Austin, J. Searle), expanding the scope for interdisciplinary inquiry into the relationship between language, politics, and truthfulness.
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