orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the influence of Husserl’s phenomenology upon Schutz’s phenomenological sociology. In developing his phenomenologicalsociology, even though Schutz was deeply influenced by Weber, he considers that the interpretative sociology developed by the latter has some difficulties. It is Husserl’s phenomenology that enabled him to overcome the difficulties of Weber’s interpretative sociology and to found a phenomenological sociology as an interpretative sociology in a true sense. In section 1, I will deal with the significance and difficulties (...) of Weber’s interpretative sociology. In section 2, I will deal with the influence of Husserl’s phenomenological psychology and furthermore, in section 3, the influence of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology on Schutz’s phenomenological sociology. In section 4, I will mention that there are some motives in Husserl’s later phenomenology that could be useful for the development of the phenomenological sociology. (shrink)

In phenomenology, theories of empathy are intimately connected with the question of how it is possible to have insight into the mind of the other person. In this article, the author wants to show why it is self-evident for us that the other person is having experiences. In order to do so, it is not enough to discuss the phenomenon of empathy with a starting point in the already constituted adult person; instead the article presents a genetic approach to (...) human development. The author thus contrasts Edith Stein’s discussion of Einfühlung (empathy), which takes its starting point in the experience of the grown-up, with Max Scheler’s discussion of Einsfühlung (feeling of oneness), where the relation between mother and infant is taken as one example. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the world of the infant is read as one way of developing Scheler’s theory of intersubjectivity and of Einsfühlung. This genetic approach is developed further into a phenomenological analysis of the experience of the fetus and of birth. The author argues that the analysis of the fetus highlights the distinction between knowing that another person is having experiences, and knowing the specific content of the other person’s experiences. The fetus does not experience different persons, but has a pre-subjective experience of life that includes what is later experienced as belonging to “another.” Later in life, the experience of empathy, as an experience of a specific content, can be developed from this experience. In this way empathy and Einsfühlung can be understood as complementary rather than as competing phenomena. (shrink)

Hegel is known for coining the word “phenomenology” as a description of the methodological approach that he pursues in the famous work that bears this title. It has long been an open question the degree to which the later philosophical school of phenomenology in fact follows the actual method developed by Hegel or if it merely co-opted the name and applied the term in a new context. While Husserl was dismissive of Hegel, the French phenomenologists were generally (...) receptive to Hegel’s conception of phenomenology. This chapter argues that there are in fact some important points of continuity and that the French phenomenological school’s understanding of Hegel as a forerunner of their movement is quite legitimate. (shrink)

I will survey a number of ways in which presence and absence are described in Husserl’s philosophy. Some of them appear in the Logical Investigations, Husserl’s first major philosophical work, and they provide the stimulus and motif that later develop into his full phenomenology. In the Investigations Husserl examines signs, images, words, and perceptions, and in each of these a special play of presence and absence takes place.

This chapter contains sections titled: Husserl's Phenomenology Phenomenology and History Heidegger Later Developments in Phenomenology Prospects for a Phenomenological Philosophy of History References.

Recent scholars have followed Martin Heidegger in distinguishing his change in approach from the "Turn," which properly belongs to the matter itself. While the distinction significantly clarifies Heidegger’s one topic, it still leaves open Heidegger’s motive for changing his approach to that topic. This paper argues that the motivation is fundamentally phenomenological in character and responds to the peculiar nature of the matter. Heidegger’s change is the immanent development of phenomenology from a program of research about the concealed into (...) a phenomenology of the self-concealing. The former roots concealment in Dasein’s falling; the latter in the historical unfolding of disclosure. (shrink)

After Husserl, the study of phenomenology took off in different directions. The ambiguity inherent in phenomenology - between conscious experience and structural conditions - lent itself to a range of interpretations. Many existentialists developed phenomenology as conscious experience to analyse ethics and religion. Other phenomenologists developed notions of structural conditions to explore questions of science, mathematics, and conceptualization. "Phenomenology: Responses and Developments" covers all the major innovators in phenomenology - notably Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and the (...) later Heidegger - and the major schools and issues. The volume also shows how phenomenological thinking encounters a limit, a limit most apparent in the aesthetical and hermeneutical development of phenomenology. The volume closes with an examination of the furthering of the division between analytic and continental philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928–1938Nicolas de WarrenRonald Bruzina. Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink: Beginnings and Ends in Phenomenology, 1928–1938. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. xxvii + 627. Cloth, $45.00.Edmund Husserl defined a new field and method of philosophical research that required the employment of students in the pursuit of a rigorous and elusive science called transcendental phenomenology. (...) Husserl's most famous student, Heidegger, quickly proved a disappointment to the phenomenological cause, and it is in the shadow of Heidegger's waywardness that Eugen Fink, known primarily as the author of spirited defenses of Husserl's thinking, developed a close intellectual relationship with Husserl as his assistant from 1928 until 1938. Fink's collaboration with Husserl and his metaphysical recasting of phenomenology are the principal themes of Bruzina's scrupulously researched study, largely based on Fink's unpublished writings.A first chapter presents a narrative of Fink's significant influence on Husserl's thinking and writing. In chapter two, "Orientation I: Phenomenology Beyond the Preliminary," Bruzina details how Fink further developed Husserl's phenomenology in a systematic and self-critical direction. Whereas Husserl cautiously argued that the noetic-noematic schema "runs through all levels of constitution," including the seemingly intractable level of absolute time-consciousness, Fink—under the influence of Heidegger—rejects the universality of the "apriori-correlation" and its attending "philosophy of reflection." Working out the "being of transcendental subjectivity" and its distinctive temporality is, for Fink, the "remaining task of phenomenology." Bruzina pursues the confrontation between Husserl and Heidegger in Fink's thinking in chapter three, "Orientation II: Whose Phenomenology?" According to Fink, Husserl remains "blind to transcendence," yet Heidegger remains blind to "constitution" (132). What emerges from this chapter, however, is the significance of Hegel as Fink recasts the difference between Husserl and Heidegger into a difference between a philosophy of reflection and a philosophy of Being. Against this backdrop, Bruzina signals Fink's proposal to re-think the concept of origin in a speculative register of the "meontic," that is, as "non-being."Before launching directly into Fink's "meontic" recasting of metaphysics, Bruzina presents three thematically defined chapters. In chapter four, "Fundamental Thematics I: The World," Bruzina discusses Fink's sublimation of Husserl's "natural attitude" into the concept of "world-captivation" and his charge that Husserl presupposes the horizon of the world as a whole. Chapter five, "Fundamental Thematics II: Time," examines Fink's writings on time-consciousness. A first set of writings speaks to the task of rendering Husserl's "Bernau Manuscripts" into a publishable form; a second set reflects Fink's intention to complete his own larger work on "Time and Temporalization." Both projects were abandoned, the later manuscript destroyed by Fink himself. Fink emphasizes the "special character of retention-protention intentionality as depresencing (Entgegenwärtigung), providing therein the basic consideration for addressing the question of finiteness in the stream of consciousness" (261). This insight allows Fink to propose a critique of Husserl's "presentialism" and his own thesis that "the Absolute is origin" in both a temporal and non-temporal sense, as the "excess/superabundance (Überschwang) of depresencing," further characterized the Plotinian idea of "emanation" (273). "Life" and "Spirit" are the final set of fundamental themes discussed by Bruzina in chapter six. For Fink, the essence of life is conceived as the "play of being," which he understands with a Nietzschean emphasis on "creation" (333). The "self-realization" of life in its creative self-performance delivers a "meontic" definition of the absolute; subjectivity is displaced (entstellt) in its self-performance such that it remains incomplete, a "metaphysical gap in the cosmos" (341).In chapter seven, we arrive at the "critical-systematic core" of Fink's "meontic" speculations. Here, much of Fink's pronouncements are a heady mixture of Heidegger and Plotinus. Bruzina admits that Fink "freely draws" from the traditions of Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism; yet a quick attempt to distance Fink from his sources remains unconvincing. The "radical difference between the One of ultimate origin and all else" (448) that Bruzina takes as the exceptional focus of Fink's thinking is also of metaphysical concern in... (shrink)

After Husserl, the study of phenomenology took off in different directions. The ambiguity inherent in phenomenology - between conscious experience and structural conditions - lent itself to a range of interpretations. Many existentialists developed phenomenology as conscious experience to analyse ethics and religion. Other phenomenologists developed notions of structural conditions to explore questions of science, mathematics, and conceptualization. "Phenomenology: Responses and Developments" covers all the major innovators in phenomenology - notably Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and the (...) later Heidegger - and the major schools and issues. The volume also shows how phenomenological thinking encounters a limit, a limit most apparent in the aesthetical and hermeneutical development of phenomenology. The volume closes with an examination of the furthering of the division between analytic and continental philosophy. (shrink)

The life-world is a central topic of Husserl’s phenomenology. He addresses this issue in some of the works published during his lifetime and attempts to analyze the life-world extensively in many of his works and posthumously published research manuscripts. The life-world is one of the topics that have been discussed most extensively in phenomenology. However, there are many misunderstandings of Husserl’s phenomenology of the life-world. One misunderstanding concerns the variety of concepts of the life-world in Husserl and (...) the possibility of developing various fields of the phenomenology of the life-world. It is the aim of this paper to show that Husserl has a pluralistic concept of the life-world, which makes it possible to develop various fields of the phenomenology of the life-world. I will introduce the monistic view and the pluralistic view of the concept of the life-world in Husserl and will clarify what the life-world is, thereby showing that the monistic view of the concept of the life-world in Husserl is not legitimate. However, even though Husserl has a pluralistic concept of the life-world, nowhere does he systematically clarify the various concepts of the life-world. Hence I will sort out and clarify various concepts of the life-world such as the narrower concept and the wider concept, the general concept and the particular concept, the natural concept and the transcendental concept, and the empirical concept and the eidetic concept. Based on the discussion of the various concepts of the life-world in Husserl, I will assess the monistic view and the pluralistic view of Husserl’s concept of the life-world so that we can better understand his various concepts of the life-world. (shrink)

I Ricœur's account of the distinction between phenomenological and cosmological time My theme concerns the notions of time and space in Ricœur's thought with special emphasis on its relation to Phenomenology. As I understand it, in Temps et récit and again in La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli Ricœur proposes an opposition between subjective/phenomenological time and objective/cosmological time. In La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli he introduces a parallel distinction between lived space and geometrical space. We can state Ricœur's position in Husserlian terms (...) and say that he is developing different regional ontologies, while I shall argue in these remarks that a certain fundamental ontology is required which will unify these different notions of space and different notions of time. Cosmic time is characterised by Ricœur as constituted by the distinction between earlier and later and by a general notion of the instant. The phenomenological notion of time is characterised by the distinction between the past and the future and its privileged instant is the present. In the third part of Temps et récit Ricœur argues for the autonomy of each notion. This autonomy is a necessary step in developing a third notion of historical time as a bridge between these two notions, the cosmic and the phenomenological. (shrink)

The article explores a gradual refinement of the notion of reflection in Husserlian phenomenology. In his early period, Husserl takes phenomenological reflection to attain adequate evidence, since its object is self-given in an absolute and complete manner. However, this conception of reflection does not remain unchanged. Husserl later realizes that immanent perception or phenomenological reflection also involves a certain horizonality and naivety that has to do with its temporal nature and must be queried in a further critical, apodictic (...) reflection. Focusing more on the notion of apodicticity than adequacy, Husserl subsequently ascribes a new methodological role to reflection: instead of a mere epistemic warrant that guarantees for us the ultimate truth of our experiential life once and for all, phenomenological reflection ensures the strictness of phenomenology insofar as it entails an ethical-existential dimension as the norm of a life-form where the subject pursues full self-understanding and self-justification. (shrink)

Empiricism had dominated scientific activities for about three centuries but beginning with the 20th Century a new philosophy, phenomenology, began to develop and certain scientists who conducted research with humans began to turn to phenomenology as the basis for their scientific work rather than empiricism. What was known as the Utrecht School in Holland just after World War II, psychologists at Duquesne University during mid-twentieth century, pedagogists in Canada at about the same time and nurses later in (...) the twentieth century all began to base their research on phenomenological philosophical principles rather than on empiricism. Certain philosophers criticized the approach of these scientists and offered their own praxis based directly on phenomenological philosophy. However, one of the members of the Duquesne University’s group strongly criticized the evaluation of his approach by the philosophers and demonstrated the significant errors of their criticism. The psychologist then clarified his scientific phenomenological approach toward psychological phenomena and emphasized the role of the phenomenological epoche’ and reduction for Husserlian scientific phenomenology. (shrink)

The return to religion in contemporary continental philosophy is characterized by a profound sense of intellectual humility. A significant influence within this discussion is Heidegger’s anthropology of finitude in Being and Time and his later critiques of onto-theology. These critiques, however, were informed by Heidegger’s earlier phenomenology of the lived experience of religious humility performed alongside his reading of Martin Luther’s theology. This article shows that for Luther and Heidegger, religious humility is foremost an affection structured according to (...) the enactment of one’s dissimilitude from God and resulting existential tribulation. During a seminal period in his development, Heidegger’s phenomenology of humility changed from an Eckhartian conception of detachment culminating in the unio mystica to a Lutheran conception of humiliation and Anfechtung . Heidegger’s break from a mystical phenomenology of humility parallels Luther’s own break from that tradition, and anticipates contemporary developments in the continental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a comparison between the philosophies of Husserl and James in relation to their concepts of experience. Whereas various authors have acknowledged the affinity between James’ early psychology and Husserl’s phenomenology, the late development of James’ philosophy is often considered in opposition to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. This is because James’ radical empiricism achieves a non-dual dimension of experience that precedes the functional division into subject and object, thus contrasting with the phenomenological analysis of the (...) dual structure of intentionality. However, I argue that the later “genetic” development of phenomenology converges with some central aspects of James’ radical empiricism. This is because genetic phenomenology leads us to conceive of the flow of primal impressions as a fundamental dimension of experience that precedes the subject-object duality and is at the base of the process of co-constitution of the subject and the object in reciprocal dependence. At the same time, Husserl conceives of the impressional core of experience as structured by formal conditions that depend on the concrete constitution of an embodied subject. For this reason, I argue that Husserl’s genetic phenomenology can complement James’ radical empiricism, thus leading to the development of the doctrine of pure experience as a form of empirical and not metaphysical realism. (shrink)

In Speech and Phenomena and other works, Derrida criticizes Husserl’s phenomenology and attempts to pave the way to his deconstructive philosophy. The starting point of his criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology is his assessment of the latter’s phenomenology of language developed in the Logical Investigations. Derrida claims that Husserl’s phenomenology of language in the Logical Investigations and the subsequent works is guided by the premise of the metaphysics of presence. The aim of this paper is twofold: on (...) the one hand, it aims to show that Derrida’s criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology of language is off the mark and, on the other hand, it aims to reveal that the phenomenology of language goes far beyond the scope of the Derridian deconstructive philosophy of language. (shrink)

In this paper, I will examine the possibility of first philosophy from a phenomenological point of view. I will do this by assessing Levinas’s criticism of Husserl’s conception of first philosophy. In Sect. 1, I will delineate Husserl’s conception of first philosophy. In Sect. 2, I will introduce Levinas’s conception of ethics as first philosophy and sketch out his criticism of Husserl’s conception of first philosophy. In Sect. 3, I will assess Levinas’s criticism of Husserl’s conception and show that from (...) a phenomenological point of view, it is possible to develop first philosophy only in a relative sense and not in an absolute sense. The possibility of first philosophy in a relative sense implies that both Husserl’s and Levinas’s conceptions of first philosophy have some limitations and should be revised, since in a certain way, they are each conceived from an absolute point of view. In Sect. 4, I will show that the conception of first philosophy in a relative sense is a phenomenological one and sketch out some basic features of first philosophy in a relative sense. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Inventing Philosophy’s Other: Phenomenology in America by Jonathan StrassfeldGregory FloydSTRASSFELD, Jonathan. Inventing Philosophy’s Other: Phenomenology in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022. 363 pp. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $30.00Recent years have witnessed an increase in scholarly attention paid to the intellectual history and development of socalled Continental philosophy. That attention has turned to not only key figures and philosophical schools but also to the historical (...) factors, social conditions, and institutions that have aided, hindered, and otherwise directed its itinerary across the European continent and eventual migration to the “new world.” Edward Baring’s Converts to the Real: Catholicism and the Making of Continental Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2019) is a well-researched and intricate account of the European development of phenomenology’s growth from “a provincial philosophy of southwest Germany into a movement that spanned Europe.” Baring argues convincingly that European networks of Catholic scholars and institutions were essential to the dissemination of the ideas and works of early phenomenologists, and his work offers a salutary reappraisal of neoscholasticism as a vibrant, internally diverse, and philosophically sophisticated movement attentive to and engaged in the dominant questions of its day. The various contributors to the 2020 volume, The Catholic Reception of Continental Philosophy in North America (University of Toronto Press) take up the story as it begins again amid American and Canadian Catholic institutions of higher learning. They offer an extended account of the historical, institutional, and conceptual relationships between Catholicism and Continental philosophy on North American soil up to the present day.To these, Jonathan Strassfeld’s Inventing Philosophy’s Other: Phenomenology in America offers a necessary complement. Strassfeld tells another and essential side of the story focused on eleven “elite” universities—Harvard in particular—and the way in which American scholars in the first half of the century and European émigrés in the second half set the conditions for an at times fruitful at times fraught engagement with Continental thought in America. Key to that analysis is the contention that in the first half of the twentieth century, Harvard and other leading institutions that would later become bastions of analytic philosophy were the first to take interest in phenomenology sending scholars to study with its founders and engaging a tradition that they [End Page 366] “encountered as a work in progress” and as possessing natural points of contact with various strands of American philosophy such as new realism, critical realism, pragmatism, and the philosophy of language.Strassfeld then documents the reversal of that early philosophical pluralism and the foreclosure of the possibility of philosophical integration due to the rapid ascendancy of analytic philosophy between 1950 and 1969, showing that foreclosure to be neither a necessary outcome nor the triumph of a superior philosophical approach: “[B]oth the intra-university mandates of new interdisciplinary formations and changing inter-university dynamics of hiring and promotion after World War II transformed the ecosystem of philosophical reproduction catalyzing the rise of analysis and decline of humanistic pluralism in American philosophy.”The consequence of the decrease in faculty specializing in phenomenological and Continental areas from elite institutions was twofold. First, Continental philosophy increasingly “relied on a network of departments and organizations that were defined by the resistance to the practice and influence of mainstream American philosophy.” Second, it became of increasing interest to nonphilosophical disciplines such as sociology, psychology, geography, architecture, and anthropology, which sought to transcend culturally ascendant forms of scientific reductivism. In both ways, Strassfeld argues, Continental thought became “an unassimilated other” within the American academy.In telling this story, Inventing Philosophy’s Other uses a distinctive alphanumeric structure. One set of numbered chapters introduces the essential doctrines and early figures of phenomenology and chronicles its varied transpositions on American soil. These numbered chapters are punctuated by a set of shorter alphabetic chapters that present portraits of American-born or expatriated phenomenologists. The dual structure of the work tells the story of phenomenology in America along two axes: an intellectual history of ideas, institutions, and social practices as well as an interpenetrating history of constitutive figures.A major strength of Strassfeld’s work is that he brings a historian’s care... (shrink)

Edmund Husserl published in his lifetime only works which represent a compilation of individual phenomenological analyses or which have the character of an introduction to his phenomenology. It always made him uneasy that he did not publish any systematic work in phenomenology. In his later years, from the beginning of the 1920s, he tried several times to write such a work, but in vain. The masterplan for this work, which his assistant Eugen Fink sketched out in 1930/31 (...) is preserved. According to this plan, the Phänomenologie der Instinkte has attracted very little attention in Husserl studies until now, takes a central and fundamental position in the whole system of his mature transcendental phenomenology. In this book, Nam-In Lee reconstructs the Phänomenologie der Instinkte on the basis of the already published works and, above all, of the unpublished manuscripts of Husserl. Moreover, he draws out the consequences which the Phänomenologie der Instinkte bears for the whole system of phenomenology. Transcendental phenomenology, in its form of a genetic phenomenology of which the Phänomenologie der Instinkte is the concluding part, can, according to him, no longer be considered as one-sided philosophy of consciousness in the traditional sense, as it has often been thought of hitherto. Thus, the author presents a new face of phenomenology; one which has scarcely been noticed in the field of Husserl studies until now. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:M. C. Dillon LOVE IN WOMEN IN LOVE: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS Despite his sexism, his turgid prose, and his antiquated social conscience, Lawrence is on every bookshelf. This is not merely because of the vicarious erotic entertainment to be found in the saga of John Thomas and Lady Jane, but because Lawrence remains a major guru of romance. We take him seriously, look to him for guidance, measure ourselves (...) against Ursula and Birkin. If he is on our shelves—and his thoughts not far from our pillows—then his ideas starid in need of scrutiny. Women in Love is as much a treatise as a novel: we witness more talking about than making of love. The agon of ideas engulfs the agon of flesh. Hence, the book suits the present purpose. It cannot be taken as Lawrence's definitive statement on love—later works, notably Lady Chatterly's Lover, move in different directions—but it is his most philosophical treatment and, I think, most clearly expresses his conceptual framework, the parameters which define and limit his thinking. What he says about love in Women in Love may therefore illumine his depictions of the behavior of lovers in other works. Lawrence is a romantic. In the popular sense of the word he is one who makes of romance or erotic adventure a dominant life value. Lawrence is also a romantic in another sense insofar as he takes the transcendence or unattainability of the other as essential to the project of loving. These two senses are conceptually compatible but existentially in conflict. That is, if one's major undertaking in life is to seek erotic satisfaction, and if one desires only so long as the object is beyond reach, then one has established the groundwork for continual frustration. This, I will try to show, is what Lawrence has done. I Many writers have tried to bring the ideas implicitly present in and constitutive of romantic love to the level of explicit reflective awareness. 190 M.C.Dillon191 The most successful treatment I know is given by a writer who did not know—or at least did not say—that he was writing about romantic love. Sartre purports to reveal the inner structures of love itself—the unqualified, unrestricted essence of love. As I have tried to show elsewhere,1 he fails at this. But he succeeds admirably in unveiling the inner contradictions of romantic love. Our project here is to draw upon Sartre's insights: first, to develop a conception of romantic love, and then to discern the model of Eros which informs Women in Love. The key idea in romantic love is transcendence. Something is transcendent when it is beyond me, when I cannot adequately prehend it conceptually or master it with my will. The role of transcendence in romantic love is demonstrated clearly in Denis de Rougemont's book on Love in the Western World.2 There he shows that Tristan's passion for Iseult is directly proportional to her distance from him: he is increasingly attracted as she becomes further removed. On the other hand, when through various deeds of gallantry and subterfuge, he succeeds in winning her to his side, he loses interest and must create circumstances which put her again beyond his reach. The culmination of romantic love, according to de Rougemont, is death—it sets the other absolutely beyond reach. It also arrests and preserves at their apices the youth and beauty of the lovers and the intensity of the erotic relationship. It is, I believe, this complex of ideas that led Kierkegaard to this cynical reflection on the nature of romantic love: "When two beings fall in love with one another and begin to suspect that they were made for each other, it is time to have the courage to break it off; for by going on they have everything to lose and nothing to gain."3 The same idea, qualified by increased optimism, underlies Stendhal's notion of crystallization in his book On Love.* Love is predicated on the attribution of perfection to the beloved. Just as a plain bough emerges from the salt-saturated waters of the Salzburg mines encrusted with beautiful crystals... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate, if there is a principal disagreement between Husserl's early concept of expression and his later discussions on gestures. In the early work Logical Investigations (1900–1901), Husserl quite bluntly excludes gestures from the category of meaningful expressions; thirty years later (1928), in the second volume of Ideas, he argues to the contrary that gestures are meaningful and expressive in the very same way as linguistic units, words and sentences. The question of (...) this paper is: What happened in Husserl's thinking in the two decades between Investigations and the last versions of Ideas II? I argue that the disagreement between Husserl's early statement and his later discussion on gestural expressions is due to a refinement in his account of embodiment. I claim that Husserl did not abandon his concept of expression, but dismissed his early analysis of embodiment as simplistic and as motivated by a certain preconception about the relationship between nature and spirit. This change became possible for him as he developed conceptual and methodic tools for distinguishing between different meanings of the body: the physical thing or the mere material body, the perceived body, and the sensuous body. The difference between the body as a physical thing and the body as a sensuous-spiritual unit proves to be crucial to the understanding of gestural expressions. (shrink)

Fifteen essays by as many contributors with a summative introduction by Edie. The contributors are Dreyfus, Adamczewski, Earle, Compton, J. E. Smith, J. M. Anderson, Natanson, Silber, Crosson, Molina, G. E. Myers, Tillman, W. J. Richardson, Langan, and Findlay. All of the essays were presented in one form or another at one of the last three meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Some of them have been considerably reworked and expanded, the most important of which is (...) John Silber's fifty-seven page paper, "Being and Doing." Silber subjects the contemporary analytical version of voluntary responsibility, as found paradigmaticaliy in H. L. A. Hart's work, to a severe critique, arguing that a notion of status responsibility which involves following intentions and motives back to their pre-thematic roots in attitudes and a whole style of life, or way of being, is more consonant with human experience and nature than the antiseptic notion of responsibility developed by Hart. Even Hampshire takes his lumps at Silber's hands. Other excellent papers include Findlay's "Essential Probabilities," which can be read as a plea for a material logic, and Richardson's "Kant and the Late Heidegger," which uses Heidegger's reflection on the Kantian problematic to examine the issue of the continuity between the early and the later Heidegger. Not all of the essays approach the standards of these three, but for a collection of papers that have only the meeting of the same society in common, this is better than most.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This article examines some of the phenomenological features in Lev Vygotsky’s mature psychological theory, especially in Thinking and Speech and The Current Crisis in Psychology. It traces the complex literary and philosophical influences in 1920s Moscow on Vygotsky’s thought, through Gustav Shpet’s seminars on Husserl and the inner form of the word, Chelpanov’s seminars on phenomenology, Bakhtin’s theory of the production of inner speech, and the theoretical insights of the early Gestalt psychologists. It begins with an exposition of two (...) central Husserlian schemas: part-whole theory and the thesis of the naïve standpoint, both of which Vygotsky was clearly familiar with. This is followed by an account of the reception of phenomenology in early Soviet Russia. The article’s central sections are concerned with a careful unpacking and critique of Vygotsky’s employment of Husserlian method and analysis in his later doctrine of the ‘inner plane of speech’, his use of part-whole theory, and his identification of Husserl’s position with an untenable version of idealism. The article closes with the contention that Vygotsky misrepresents the phenomenological analysis of meaning formation and appropriates basic Husserlian conceptual terms in his elaboration of the ‘inner form of the word’; but Vygotsky does so in such a way that he enriches our descriptive access to the individual development of humans’ dynamic use of language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility: Husserl and Fink on the Phenomenologizing Subject by Denis DŽANIĆD. J. HobbsDŽANIĆ, Denis. Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility: Husserl and Fink on the Phenomenologizing Subject. Cham: Springer, 2023. x + 236 pp. Cloth, $119.99Denis Džanić’s Transcendental Phenomenology as Human Possibility, despite its superficially historical focus on a specific period of collaboration between Edmund Husserl and his somewhat wayward protégé Eugen (...) Fink, addresses key systematic issues in transcendental phenomenology, namely, how the act of phenomenologizing should be understood in connection with the specific human beings who aim to become phenomenologists, and what the answer to this question tells us about both the genuine subject of phenomenology and the motivation for phenomenologizing. These questions are important for our understanding of not only the historical development of phenomenology but also the practice and goals of phenomenology—specifically, for a conception of phenomenologizing as a project in which we, as particular, historical, empirical figures, might want to engage.Much of the book focuses on laying the groundwork for understanding these complicated issues both historically and systematically. Džanić does an admirable job of tracing the rapidly evolving interactions between Husserl and Fink, both as intellectual collaborators on this philosophical project and as a pair of very human figures who ultimately found themselves pursuing quite different solutions to the problems of the subject and origin of phenomenology. He focuses particularly on the Sixth Cartesian Meditation, Fink’s attempt to extend Husserl’s famous text to include a phenomenology of the act of phenomenologizing itself (including Husserl’s marginal comments on the text), although he draws on a number of other significant texts and manuscripts (mostly Husserl’s, albeit with an extended aside on Heidegger) wherever they are helpful for explicating the complex evolution of Husserl’s thought on the subject. Admittedly, the book thus takes on a challenging task—both because of the difficult nature of this topic and because of the obscurity of the technical terms required to discuss it. However, despite the necessarily enigmatic character of the relevant language, Džanić’s attempts to explore the main outlines of this issue are worthwhile, particularly due to his ability to resist the temptation to view Husserl’s thought here as monolithic.In the early chapters, Džanić explicates in detail the rather complicated solution that Fink proposed to this difficulty, namely, the abandonment (to some extent) of the ultimately human origin of phenomenology in favor of a fundamentally nonhuman (and eventually meontic) conception of the transcendental ego, which generated a great deal of elaborate and (at least in the Sixth Meditation) inadequately supported speculation. For Fink, both the motivation to phenomenologize and the act of phenomenologizing itself ultimately stem from a source that is fundamentally prior to—in a(n onto)logical rather than temporal sense—any empirical ego or empirical act of phenomenologizing, a source that merely “enworlds” itself (in various complicated senses that Džanić does [End Page 145] an admirable job of clarifying) in the apparently anthropologistic, everyday world of individual phenomenologists. Džanić calls this interpretation of phenomenology Fink’s “epistemological anti-humanism,” and it serves as the basis for one potential (radically anti-Heideggerian but nevertheless somewhat disappointing) solution to the question of why we should phenomenologize at all. As Džanić notes, this solution was at least briefly taken up by Fink’s mentor Husserl himself, although the degree to which Husserl actually endorsed this path beyond the level of a fleeting flirtation remains questionable. Ultimately, as Džanić rightly highlights and as becomes abundantly clear in Husserl’s (often rather scathing) notes on Fink’s Sixth Cartesian Meditation, he abandoned this interpretation.Accordingly, in the later chapters of the book, Džanić traces Husserl’s ultimate development of a quite different solution to the problems of the origin and motivation of phenomenology—a solution that, unlike his brief foray into Finkian grandeur, views the act of phenomenologizing as essentially rooted in human possibility (that is, as part of the famous lifeworld that features so prominently in Husserl’s work, especially in the Crisis and other late texts). After his collaboration with and... (shrink)

Max Scheler and Mencius both take feeling to be the origin of value and could therefore be considered to be proponents of axiological sentimentalism. Despite the great spatial and temporal distance between them, there are striking similarities between the theories of value they developed. It should be noted, however, that there are also some differences between them that are mainly derived from some difficulties with their theories of value. These difficulties should be removed so that a better theory of value (...) could be developed. It is accordingly the aim of this paper to promote a phenomenological dialogue between Scheler and Mencius that could lead to such a better theory. In Sects. 1, 2, I will first delineate Scheler’s theory of value and feeling, then that of Mencius. In Sect. 3, I will point out some difficulties with the two theories and promote a dialogue between them that would improve each theory. In Sect. 4, I will conclude with some remarks concerning the future task of the phenomenological dialogue between Scheler and Mencius. (shrink)

Husserl is the philosopher who transformed the geological metaphor of sedimentation into a philosophical concept. While tracing the development of Husserl's reflections on sedimentation, I argue that the distinctive feature of Husserl's approach lies in his preoccupation with the question concerning the origins of sedimentations. The paper demonstrates that in different frameworks of analysis, Husserl understood these origins in significantly different ways. In the works concerned with the phenomenology of time consciousness, Husserl searched for the origins of sedimentation in (...) the field of subjective experience, and more precisely, in impressional consciousness. By contrast, in the later works concerned with history, he maintained that the origins of sedimentations lie in the field of historical past that stretches beyond the reach of individual experience. Building on the basis of these resources, I argue that the Husserlian concept of sedimentation has three distinct components of senses: static, genetic, and generative. In the static sense, sedimentations are modifications of retentions and necessary conditions of recollection. In the genetic sense, sedimentations are necessary for the formation of types, habits and moods, and as such, they shape present experiences. In the generative sense, sedimentations refer to what consciousness inherits from the historical tradition. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on how Aquinas’ solution of the problem of the persistence of eucharistic species and other scholastics’ reactions to it opened up certain conceptual possibilities in the Scholastic Aristotelian tradition that would not have been there without it, and which, therefore, were pointing the way toward later conceptual developments in the post-medieval and early modern philosophical traditions in logic, and metaphysics.

This article presents a developmental model of phenomenological consciousness in early childhood . A 3-stage developmental model is constructed, based on the understanding of phenomenological consciousness as modeling activity structured by the directedness at/by the world in general and directedness at/by directedness in particular. Thereby, it is demonstrated that it is in the interaction with other people and the structure and content of their phenomenological consciousness, i.e., their directedness and their modeling of the world, that the development of fully accomplished (...) phenomenological consciousness takes place. The developmental model is empirically substantiated on the basis of a review of empirical investigations which traditionally has been framed in terms of the "theory-of-mind"-theory, but which in this article shall be reframed in terms of directedness and phenomenological modeling. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Horst Ruthrof revisits Husserl's phenomenology of language and highlights his late writings as essential to understanding the full range of his ideas. Focusing on the idea of language as imaginable as well as the role of a speech community in constituting it, Ruthrof provides a powerful re-assessment of his methodological phenomenology. From the Logical Investigations to untranslated portions of his Nachlass, Ruthrof charts all the developments and amendments in his theorizations. Instead of emphasising the definition and meaning (...) of words, Husserl's later writings point to the variation produced by a community of speakers in the act of communicating. Essential to this linguistic meaning is the intersubjective character that Ruthrof argues is so emblematic of Husserl's position. Using his concepts of intimation, introjection, reciprocity, and voice further outlines a theory that is intersubjective and communal. Bringing his study up to the present day, Ruthrof discusses metal time travel, the evolution of language, and protosyntax in the context of Husserl's late writings, progressing a comprehensive new phenomenological ontology of language with wide-ranging implications for philosophy, linguistics, and cultural studies. (shrink)

It is the aim of this paper to develop the phenomenology of phronesis through a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of phronesis by employing different kinds of phenomenological reductions. In section 1, I will show that phenomenological reduction is identical with a change of attitude and that we have to employ different kinds of phenomenological reductions in order to interpret Aristotle’s theory of phronesis phenomenologically. In section 2, employing different kinds of phenomenological reductions, I will attempt to develop the (...) phenomenological psychology of phronesis through a phenomenological interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of phronesis. In section 3, employing different kinds of intersubjective reductions, I will clarify intersubjective aspects of phronesis. In section 4, adopting these insights, I will try to resolve two of the many difficulties of Aristotle’s theory of phronesis. In section 5, I will conclude with two remarks concerning the future tasks of the phenomenology of phronesis. (shrink)

The development of genetic phenomenology marks a change in Husserl's thinking which occurred between 1917 and 1921. Much of the second half of his philosophical life was devoted to genetic phenomenology as a supplement to the static phenomenology of his earlier writings. I argue that the development of genetic phenomenology, which involves a regressive inquiry into the genesis of the ego and of meaning, coincided with and made possible a greater emphasis on ethical and intersubjective positions (...) in Husserl's later writings. ;I trace the development of three prominent themes in Husserl's thought: time-consciousness, intersubjectivity, and ethics. In each case it is possible to see that prior to 1917 Husserl's phenomenology was not equipped to address such topics with the complexity they require. Static phenomenology has a rigid structure focusing on complete constitution of meaning by an already fully active ego. This position lacks the framework for investigating the development of the ego itself and of the transformation of meaning through time. In moving his thought beyond that rigid structure and addressing questions of historicity, Husserl began to incorporate an understanding of intersubjectivity based on the sedimentation of meanings built up through successive generations. Such an approach provides a way to think plurality in community without either the elimination of ethical foundations or the elimination of the importance of inherited convictions. The same sensitivity to the historical development of meaning made possible the later Husserl's theory of renewal and critique of history and tradition. ;This study concludes that Husserl's static phenomenological investigation into essences in combination with his genetic inquiry into origins provides a model of philosophical thinking that offers a balanced account both of individual freedom and of historical and traditional context. The goal of this project is to demonstrate that Husserl's later understanding of the human being as inheritor of an ethical tradition, but as still responsible for the taking-up of that tradition, would not have been possible had he not developed genetic phenomenology as an explanatory supplement to static phenomenology. (shrink)

Husserl’s first work formulated what proved to be an algorithmically complete arithmetic, lending mathematical clarity to Kronecker’s reduction of analysis to finite calculations with integers. Husserl’s critique of his nominalism led him to seek a philosophical justification of successful applications of symbolic arithmetic to nature, providing insight into the “wonderful affinity” between our mathematical thoughts and things without invoking a pre-established harmony. For this, Husserl develops a purely descriptive phenomenology for which he found inspiration in Mach’s proposal of a (...) “universal physical phenomenology.” To account for applications to any domain, Husserl envisages a theory of all possible deductive systems, which he develops extensively in his Göttingen lectures wherein he engages with Hilbert’s work on deductive systems for geometry, real arithmetic, and physics. This leads Husserl to formulate claims of decidability and proofs of completeness for various arithmetics that result from his analysis of Kronecker’s general arithmetic. Careful attention to these proofs seem to show that Husserl was not oblivious to problems that underlie our incompleteness theorems, namely that of showing that some inversions of his algorithmic arithmetic are undefined. His growing preoccupation with the issue of a pre-established harmony between mathematical thought and reality motivate his pursuit of a “supramathematics” of all possible complete theory forms to demystify such harmony, by having such a form on hand for describing any empirical domain. He soon decides that a transcendental idealism of nature will reveal the wonderful affinity of thoughts and things comprising such harmony, to be a wonderful “parallelism of objective unities and constituted manifolds of consciousness.” But the paradoxes of logic and set theory cloud the clarity of mathematics, which Weyl would restore with Brouwer’s intuitionism and Hilbert with his metamathematics. Husserl informed Weyl that his student Becker had formulated a phenomenological foundation not only for Weyl’s generalization of relativity theory but also for the Brouwer-Weyl continuum. But Weyl eventually rejected much of Becker’s work, especially when it became clear that his phenomenological intuitionism could not account for the success of Hilbert’s transfinite mathematics in quantum physics. Becker responded to this “crisis of phenomenological method” with his mantic phenomenology celebrating the magic of mathematical mysticism, which Husserl finally rejects in favor of a pluralistic phenomenology of mathematics and nature. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain how the insights Weyl gleaned from Husserl played an important role in his scientific work, and then how Einstein’s major work exhibit important parallels to Weyl’s work, thereby establishing phenomenology both as an indirect historical influence and a systematic underpinning for Einstein’s work in theoretical physics. In so doing, this paper seeks to show how some of the most basic problems that Einstein addresses have a kinship not just to problems addressed in a completely (...) different context by Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and his circle, but also to perennial problems in ontology and epistemology that go back to Kant, Hume and Leibniz. The conclusion seems to suggest that it not only shows how phenomenology both historically and systematically provides a backdrop for Einstein’s work; my thesis actually situates issues in twentieth-century scientific thought against the backdrop of a philosophical development, and perhaps the most original idea of this study consists not just in showing how phenomenology influenced Einstein, but also how Einstein’s work on relativity had an important influence on the work of Edmund Husserl in Crisis of European Sciences and in his later works. (shrink)

In this essay, I begin by observing that dialectic is the method Aristotle explicitly associates with the activity of philosophizing, both when he introduces dialectic in the Topics and also, with some refinements and developments, in the methodological discussions of later works, the opening pages of the Physics being taken as exemplary. I then interpret these passages, attending very closely to the argument, the imagery, and the etymological resonances of Aristotle’s terminology. This leads me to argue that dialectic, (...) in both its earlier and later forms, is best understood as a proto-phenomenological method, which is to say, a method of clarifying what is already presenting itself in the initial, especially promising, pre-philosophical ‘appearances’ of one’s subject matter, for which Aristotle’s term is ἔνδοξα. Finally, given that this proto-phenomenological dialectic is a method for arriving at an understanding of ‘what is,’ its employment seems to entail a quite radical underlying Aristotelian ontology. That is, Aristotelian thought would seem to be aimed not at objective being, but rather at phenomenal being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking by Stephen CritesLawrence S. StepelevichStephen Crites. Dialectic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel’s Thinking. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Pp. xvii + 572. Cloth, $65.00Unlike either Wittgenstein or Heidegger, or his contemporary, Schelling, there is really no “Early” or “Later” Hegel. The fundamentals of his system were, if not always fully articulated, nevertheless present from (...) the very beginning of his career. There is, in Hegel, a remarkable consistency in the development of his thought, in which the elements that comprised his final system can be detected in his earliest efforts—and it is only in this sense that one can speak of an “Early” or a “Later” Hegel. That his final expression was indeed the result of an effort, a struggle to fuse and clarify seemingly disparate elements, is the thesis of Professor Crites. In this case, the specific disparate elements that are considered are those which confronted Hegel from his earliest days as a student of theology, those elements expressed in the “Christian Drama.” Crites sets out the eight revered acts of this drama: the creation, the fall, God’s covenant with Israel, the incarnation, the death and resurrection of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the mission of the Church, and the last judgment. It is his contention that Hegel “critically engaged the claims of this mythos and the social practices associated with it.” And so, the essence of Crites’s well-written and well-researched study is to set out how this drama served as a “template that affected the way he framed other topics in the ever-widening range of his philosophical inquiry.” It is to his credit that Crites does not consider his own explication of Hegel’s preoccupation with the gospels as some sort of a “secret” key that could unlock the full meaning of Hegel’s philosophy, but nevertheless, as he rightly stresses, this preoccupation cannot be ignored—for it ultimately exercised a crucial role in the formation of that which is now taken as Hegel’s mature thought.Unlike most studies of Hegel’s development—and there are more than a few—Crites avoids taking a retrospective posture, a concluding a priori stance which would allow him to point out where and why this or that particular element was rejected or retained by Hegel, His method is historical, intent upon following Hegel’s own sometimes tortured development, until, finally in this course, we reach a point where we suddenly see that Hegel “shows clear signs of becoming what we can only call a Hegelian—or better still, he shows signs of being Hegel!”The source of this inner development begins, and is traced from, Hegel’s initial appearance as “The Model Pupil of Stuttgart” to that moment in when he stands revealed as embodying that Absolute Knowledge which concludes the Phenomenology. This path from Stuttgart to Jena, which Hegel himself might have had in mind when he spoke of the philosophical “highway of despair” is detailed by Crites with a sure hand. Every stumbling block is noted, and every new resolution ıs marked, from those first essays composed during the bitter days as Hauslehrer, through the steady advances [End Page 540] of “the Jena ‘Philosophy’ ” until the passage completes itself in the Phenomenology and its termination in the “Recollection and the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit.”More than half of Crites’ extensive study is devoted to explicating how the subject of religion is dealtwith in the course of the Phenomenology. In this survey of Hegel’s most well-known work, its fundamental leitmotif emerges clearly into focus: the identification of the “portentous power of the negative” with the Death of God. This death, which is philosophically reflected in dialectical negativity, is the central moment of the gospel drama. In this act, Absolute Spirit must itself suffer and die, for “Not only the Christian God incarnate, but the absolute spirit suffers, suffers its Golgotha and dies.” It is only from this sacrifice that new life can arise—for out of it comes “the resurrection of a new human-divine totality.” What Hegel has retained of the gospel... (shrink)

Classical ethology encourages a causal approach to animal behaviour, using Tinbergen's four questions concerning evolution, function, mechanism and development of behaviour. It sets aside the study of mental processes, which could otherwise help to unify our picture of the relationships between animal and environment. Here the steps in research focused on the psychological meaning of a peculiar behaviour in the mouse — carrying its tail — and what this implies regarding the mouse's cognitive world are given. Initial empirical observations suggested (...) epistemic choices concerning space and object notions in the mouse; this led us to go beyond the first stage in exploring the significance of this behaviour. Later experiments showed the limitations of an explanation based on a cause-effect relationship. An interpretative model integrating a phenomenological conceptual framework is proposed. (shrink)

Out of the wide variety of themes covered by Husserl's phenomenology and later developed by Heidegger, Merleau Ponty, and others in different possible directions, the present work attempts to indicate the few features of the method that derives from Edmund Husserl's basic themes of the phenomenological movement and its methodology. Barua explores the manner in which this method has been applied to the study of art and religion by other phenomenologists and accordingly introduces the problem of this profound (...) bulk, namely, the phenomenological approach to religion, mostly in their terms. (shrink)

Phenomenology since Husserl has always had a problematic relationship with empirical science. In its early articulations, there was Husserl's rejection of ‘the scientific attitude’, Merleau-Ponty's distancing of the scientifically-objectified self, and Heidegger's critique of modern science. These suggest an antipathy to science and to its methods of explaining the natural world. Recent developments in neuroscience have opened new opportunities for an engagement between phenomenology and cognitive science and through this, a re-thinking of science and its hidden assumptions (...) more generally. This is so partly because of the shortcomings of conventional mechanistically-conceived science in dealing with complex and dynamic phenomena such as climate change, brain plasticity, the behaviour of collectives, the dynamics of various microbiological processes, etc. But it is also due to recent phenomenological scholarship focussed on the ‘embodied’ phenomenology of Husserl's Ideen II and Merleau Ponty's later ontology of nature which have helped to extend the insights of phenomenology beyond the narrowly ‘human’ to an understanding of nature (which includes the human) more generally. Thus recontextualised, phenomenology is well placed to examine some of the assumptions that give rise to the reductionism and associated scientism which has characterised conventional science in its approach to the study of natural processes. In light of this, it might be suggested that the ‘anti-science’ of early articulations of phenomenology is more a hostility to the underlying assumptions of science as conventionally understood than to science itself e that it is scientism rather than science that is targeted. In this paper, I aim to show how a phenomenological naturalism might be seen as a necessary step towards the development of a non-reductionist and non-scientistic approach to scientific inquiry. A key to this is a reconceptualization of nature as inclusive of meanings and of mind. It is a conception developed by Merleau-Ponty, especially in his later ontology of nature, and one that is shared by American pragmatist philosopher of science, C.S. Peirce (1839e1914). For both philosophers, meaning must be understood in terms of an ontology which is relational rather than atomistic, and dynamic or processual rather than static and substance-based. For Merleau-Ponty this is an experientially-derived ontology; for Peirce it is a more conceptually-based one. In this paper, I explore this connection between these two philosophers in two stages. The first is by reference to Peirce's theory of signs or semiotics. More specifically, I look at the application of this theory to the study of biological processes as developed in Peirce-inspired biosemiotics. In the light of this, I suggest that Merleau-Ponty's account of intentional relations in nature might be articulated as semiotic relations, and can serve as a philosophical basis for a non-reductive biological science. I then turn to questions relating to the ontology of nature. I explore Merleau-Ponty's experientially-based “ontology of flesh” and Peirce's distinctive form of naturalism to show affinities at this ontological level. These affinities consist in commitments to a reality that includes possibility, meaning, temporality, and final causation e that is, an ontology which is far more inclusive than that of conventional positivistic science. Peirce's broader scientific metaphysics enables us to extend Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological naturalism beyond the biological to the physical sciences. Whilst Merleau-Ponty's ontology of nature provides the experiential basis necessary for a critique of scientism, Peirce establishes the relevance of that ontology for a re-conceived empirical science. (shrink)

"Understanding Phenomenology" provides a guide to one of the most important schools of thought in modern philosophy. The book traces phenomenology's historical development, beginning with its founder, Edmund Husserl and his "pure" or "transcendental" phenomenology, and continuing with the later, "existential" phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The book also assesses later, critical responses to phenomenology - from Derrida to Dennett - as well as the continued significance of phenomenology (...) for philosophy today. Written for anyone coming to phenomenology for the first time, the book guides the reader through the often bewildering array of technical concepts and jargon associated with phenomenology and provides clear explanations and helpful examples to encourage and enhance engagement with the primary texts. (shrink)

The article explores novel directions in the phenomenology of economics. It analyzes how the approaches of Till Düppe and Alfred Schütz, both inspired by Edmund Husserl, may shed light on the historical development of economics. I examine the substance and meaning of economics in the context of the forceful criticism of the whole discipline recently raised by Düppe. This examination uncovers important weaknesses and omissions inherent in Düppe’s argument against the economists’ scientific aspirations. The analysis of the social scientific (...) endeavors by Alfred Schütz who develops a phenomenologically informed ‘telescopic’ concept of an ideal type is then shown to be a more fruitful and methodologically rigorous way towards understanding the developments within economics. The Schützian view permits us to see how abstract economic models originate in the experience of the life-world and are continuous with it. Accordingly, the historical development of economic science may be viewed as consisting from two broadly defined phases, where at first the formalism is steadily increasing (the ‘zooming out’ phase) and later the discipline converges back to context-specific empirical examinations (the ‘zooming in’ phase). A case study concentrating on the economic theory of politics illustrates that both the drive towards abstraction that has culminated around 1950s and the more recent ‘zooming in’ is methodologically legitimate from the phenomenological point of view. I conclude that economics has never been completely severed from the paramount reality of the everyday life and for decades the interconnection has been growing stronger by the day. (shrink)

This paper pursues three goals: First, to develop a lateral reading of Camus’ Stranger. A lateral reading is characterized by the displacement of the central conflict. In the case of The Stranger, I argue that the central conflict in the novel lies in the relation between the author and the protagonist, not, as direct readings would have it, in the relation between the protagonist and his predicament. Second, to spell out more precisely why it should be read as an anti-existentialist (...) novel. Here I argue that a lateral reading shows that the foundational existentialist opposition between telling and living is ironically dismantled by the very lateral structure of the novel. Third, to develop the notion of a lateral reading with a view to its potential advantages. Here, I point out that literalism involves positionalism and dynamicism. Positionalism refers to the reduction of fictional entities to their role in relation to each other. Dynamicism refers to the resulting view that those roles are further reducible to forces. I conclude that the lateral reading, with its commitments to positionalism and dynamicism is a model generalizable to the analysis of other fictional works. (shrink)