This paper investigates the meaning of the smile and how various kinds of disruptions motivate its thematization. In so doing, it broaches experiences in the recent pandemic, as the masked face disrupts the givenness of the smile. Indeed, the paper claims that such a situation affords the possibility of becoming even more attentive to the conditions of meaningfulness at a global scale. It evidences such a claim by first tracing some essential points of the meaning of meaning via the analysis (...) of intentionality in the work of Edmund Husserl and Bernard Lonergan; then, it reviews the classic treatment of the smile’s meaning by Frederick Buytendijk, along with Lonergan’s further clarification of how an pre-thematic or elemental relation between persons conditions the phenomena; it concludes by suggesting how various sorts of disruption might motivate the smile’s thematization, especially in phenomenology’s inquiry back to the elemental dimension of meaning. (shrink)

This paper investigates the meaning of the smile and how various kinds of disruptions motivate its thematization. In so doing, it broaches experiences in the recent pandemic, as the masked face disrupts the givenness of the smile. Indeed, the paper claims that such a situation affords the possibility of becoming even more attentive to the conditions of meaningfulness at a global scale. It evidences such a claim by first tracing some essential points of the meaning of meaning via the analysis (...) of intentionality in the work of Edmund Husserl and Bernard Lonergan; then, it reviews the classic treatment of the smile’s meaning by Frederick Buytendijk, along with Lonergan’s further clarification of how an pre-thematic or elemental relation between persons conditions the phenomena; it concludes by suggesting how various sorts of disruption might motivate the smile’s thematization, especially in phenomenology’s inquiry back to the elemental dimension of meaning. (shrink)

This paper investigates a moment in the history of the phenomenological movement and offers an argument for its enduring significance. To this end, it brings to light, for the first time in a half-century, Manfred Frings’ rejected and so unpublished translation of Edmund Husserl’s Ideas II. After considering the meaning of the term Leib, which Frings renders ‘lived-body’ and to which the editor suggests ‘organism,’ a brief argument for the living tradition of phenomenology is given. It is claimed that the (...) enduring significance of the document is found in the elucidation of the need to renew the phenomenological tradition through a collaboration across generations. Thus, even in its supposed “failure,” Frings’ translation gives data to future thinkers for insight into both their own life and the life of the ideas of phenomenology itself. (shrink)

This is a review of the recent English translation of Edmund Husserl’s lecture series, “First Philosophy.” This translation makes accessible some of Husserl’s focused reflections on the history of philosophy and phenomenology’s place in it.