Abstract

Gurwitsch's concern in this book is with the doing of phenomenology rather than the explication of what other phenomenologists have done. His analyses of Husserl's views, with whom he appears to be in close agreement, are in the service of the concrete phenomenological analyses Gurwitsch himself undertakes. His remarks on William James serve as a further corroboration of the interest practicing phenomenologists are taking in James' thought and the phenomenological strains which run through it. What emerges in Gurwitsch's own thought is a view of consciousness and its objects which parallels in large measure Husserl's middle period investigations, in particular those appearing in the Ideen. Gurwitsch's work is to be praised as an attempt to introduce concrete and sometimes original phenomenological insights into the American philosophical scene.—S. A. E.