The narrative essence of mind: neuroscience and the phenomenology of stories in Wilhelm Schapp

If the phenomenological approach represented a true paradigmatic revolution within the history of Western philosophical thought, this essay presents W. Schapp’s “philosophy of stories” in terms of a further revolution that occurred within phenomenological thought itself, which can be linked to that of Karl Marx in his time. Reference is made to Schapp’s proposal to shift the orientation of research from the sphere of the ideal (the Husserlian eidos) to the social one introduced by his original phenomenology of perception based on stories. In a second step, the hypothesis presented is that this same aspect of Schapp’s thought can be related to some of the most interesting developments in research on the mind and consciousness that have emerged in recent years within various disciplines: from evolutionary biology to cognitive neuroscience, via contemporary theories of narrative.