"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)

In Being and Time, Heidegger explicitly defers any consideration of ourselves (Dasein) as embodied. I try to account for Heidegger's reluctance to talk about 'the body' in connection with his explication of Dasein, by arguing that doing so would be at odds with the kind of investigation his 'phenomenology of everydayness' is meant to be. That Heidegger omits discussion of the body in Being and Time might lead one to think of the human body in terms of the other categories (...) Heidegger deploys: readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand (Being and Time) and biological organisms (Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics). I argue that any such identification ought to be resisted, as these categories serve only to deprive our bodies of their specifically human dimension. Indeed, by surveying the failure of these categories as proper to the human body, we gain further insight into Heidegger's initial deferral: only given the existential analytic can one begin to offer a proper account of ourselves in bodily terms. (shrink)

David Bloor has claimed that Wittgenstein is best read as offering the beginnings of a sociological theory of knowledge, despite Wittgenstein's reluctance to view his work this way. This leads him to dismiss Wittgenstein's many self?characterizations as mere ?prejudice?. In doing so, however, Bloor misses the import of Wittgenstein's work as a ?grammatical investigation?. The problems inherent in Bloor's interpretative approach can be discerned in his attitude toward Wittgenstein's use of imaginary scenarios: he demands that they be replaced by real (...) natural history and real ethnography. This demand is misplaced. The very self?characterizations Bloor dismisses show how imaginary scenarios have a place in his philosophical project simply by being imagined. Three examples are examined and presented in such a way as to make Bloor's demand for replacement increasingly more difficult to comprehend: while in the first case, the demand seems simply beside the point, in the second and third cases, it becomes difficult to say just what would count as replacements. Wittgenstein's imaginary scenarios are thus best read not as suggestions for further empirical research, but as devices to aid in recovering the naturalness and familiarity of our concepts, which is precisely what one would expect from them as part of a grammatical investigation. (shrink)

Interpretations of Heidegger's Being and Time have tended to founder on the question of whether he is in the end a realist or an idealist, in part because of Heidegger's own rather enigmatic remarks on the subject. Many have thus depicted him as being in some way ambivalent, and so as holding on to an unstable combination of the two opposing positions. Recently, William Blattner has explained the apparent ambivalence by appealing to Kant's transcendental/empirical distinction. Although an ingenious reading of (...) Being and Time, there are a number of difficulties involved in cashing out its central claims. I argue that it fails, moreover, to capture Heidegger's avowed animus toward both realism and idealism. After criticizing Blattner's reading, I recount several features of Heidegger's ?existential analytic? of Dasein in Division I of Being and Time and connect them with his (slightly later) notion of world?entry. This latter notion provides a way of explaining how Heidegger retains a realistic conception of natural entities, while offering an overall view that cannot be identified with either realism or idealism. (shrink)

In her 1988 paper, “Losing Your Concepts,” Cora Diamond explores the interplay and overlap among different forms of conceptual loss. Diamond’s discussion emphasizes the difficulty of measuring the effect of conceptual loss, owing in part to the difficulty of determining the extent of a concept’s entanglement with other aspects of the life where that concept has its home. Diamond’s remarks are instructive for gathering and assessing Wittgenstein’s scattered remarks on the concept of hope and the questions he raises regarding what (...) it would mean to lack the concept of hope altogether. The problem Wittgenstein’s remarks reveal is the instability between the notion of a life without hope and the putatively different notion of a life without the concept of hope. I argue in the paper that the case of Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus provides a vivid illustration of this instability. (shrink)

Scepticism about phenomenology typically begins with worries concerning the reliability of introspection. Such worries concern the accuracy or fidelity of descriptions of experience to the experience itself, although if pressed, such worries ultimately call into question the very idea of the experience itself. This chapter considers scepticism in both its epistemological and ontological varieties and questions whether either form genuinely engages phenomenological method, properly understood. Starting from the problematic identification of phenomenology with introspection and drawing upon considerations from the work (...) of Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the chapter argues that phenomenological reflection, in its concern for essential structures, is largely unaffected by worries concerning how best to capture the details of particular episodes of experience. Moreover, many of the sceptical challenges phenomenology is alleged to face presuppose an overly objective understanding of experience that phenomenology typically rejects. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the underlying motives for phenomenological scepticism. These motives have little if anything to do with worries about introspection and the like, but instead involve scepticism about the viability of transcendental philosophy. The real challenge phenomenology confronts is one of establishing the legitimacy – and authority – of its distinctive methods in opposition to naturalism. (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

Naturalism in twentieth century philosophy is founded on the rejection of ‘first philosophy’, as can be seen in Quine’s rejection of what he calls ‘cosmic exile’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology falls within the scope of what naturalism rejects, but I argue that the opposition between phenomenology and naturalism is less straightforward than it appears. This is so not because transcendental phenomenology does not involve a problematic form of exile, but because naturalism, in its recoil from transcendental philosophy, creates a new form (...) of exile, what I call in the paper ‘exile from within’. These different forms of exile are the result of shared epistemological aspirations, which, if set aside, leave open the possibility of phenomenology without exile. In the conclusion of the paper, I appeal to Merleau-Ponty as an example of what phenomenology without epistemology might look like. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Overview Epistemology and Explanation Subject and Object; Dasein and World Dasein, Reality, and Explanatory Priority Truth and Being True.

As the title – Husserl’s Legacy – and subtitle – Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy – make clear, Dan Zahavi’s new book is centrally concerned with developing and defending a particular account of Husserl’s legacy. Rather than tracing lines of influence or measuring the impact of various of Husserl’s ideas, Zahavi is interested in Husserl’s legacy in a different and more demanding sense that pertains to what he refers to as ‘the overarching aims and ambitions of Husserlian phenomenology’. He is (...) interested in the continued significance and relevance of Husserl’s philosophy as a comprehensive philosophical system that accordingly stakes out a position on fundamental questions concerning the mind, experience, and the nature of reality; hence the subtitle’s trio of phenomenology, metaphysics, and transcendental philosophy. The legacy that concerns Zahavi lies here, with how the first two notions find their completion in the third: properly understood, Husserl’s transcendental philosophy, which offers a phenomenological form of transcendental idealism, offers a powerful philosophical vision that is directly relevant to contemporary philosophical concerns.1 1 Thus Zahavi is interested in Husserl as a systematic philosopher, whose system is not just of historical interest, a relic from our philosophical past; in keeping with the notion of a legacy, Husserl’s philosophy is something whose inheritance might profit us here and now. (shrink)

This chapter explores Wittgenstein’s contrast between attitudes and opinions in characterizing my relation toward the other as ensouled. I begin with what I call a privileging reading, which accords to the notion of attitude a kind of depth in relation to opinions. On this reading, the attitude Wittgenstein gestures toward provides the backdrop for the kinds of opinions that make sense in my relation to the other. Read with only a slight shift of emphasis, Wittgenstein’s remark allows for a similar (...) sounding, but ultimately quite different, reading, which is exemplified in Daniel Dennett’s notion of the intentional stance. The different ways of construing Wittgenstein’s contrast make a difference in terms of how we understand Wittgenstein’s thought in relation to—and as having some bearing upon—scientific naturalism. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Wittgenstein’s frequent and pervasive of the adjective “complicated.” I begin by comparing and contrasting the adjective’s use in the Tractatus and the much later manuscripts on the philosophy of psychology. While there are a number of important and illuminating affinities between these uses, I argue that these need to be balanced against the wide disparities between them: in contrast to the Tractatus, the later philosophy preserves a sense of “surface” complexity while jettisoning the idea of (...) a deep—but hidden—simplicity that logical analysis promises to reveal. The notion of a surface must thus be reconceived as complicated in terms of its “spread” rather than in relation to what lies “beneath” it. Wittgenstein’s later appeals to what is complicated need to be read in tandem with his critique of the idea of there being an “absolute sense” of “simple.” Doing so prevents our seeing in his later appeals to complexity a new, more substantive notion of complexity that a more adequate philosophical theory must capture or reflect. On the contrary, the appeal to something as complicated plays a recollective and corrective role that challenges the viability of a theoretical-explanatory perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Wittgenstein’s frequent and pervasive of the adjective “complicated.” I begin by comparing and contrasting the adjective’s use in the Tractatus and the much later manuscripts on the philosophy of psychology. While there are a number of important and illuminating affinities between these uses, I argue that these need to be balanced against the wide disparities between them: in contrast to the Tractatus, the later philosophy preserves a sense of “surface” complexity while jettisoning the idea of (...) a deep—but hidden—simplicity that logical analysis promises to reveal. The notion of a surface must thus be reconceived as complicated in terms of its “spread” rather than in relation to what lies “beneath” it. Wittgenstein’s later appeals to what is complicated need to be read in tandem with his critique of the idea of there being an “absolute sense” of “simple.” Doing so prevents our seeing in his later appeals to complexity a new, more substantive notion of complexity that a more adequate philosophical theory must capture or reflect. On the contrary, the appeal to something as complicated plays a recollective and corrective role that challenges the viability of a theoretical-explanatory perspective. (shrink)

This paper examines Moore’s account of Husserl in chapter 17 of The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics. I consider in particular the threat of a gap between natural sense-making, which takes place within what Husserl calls the “natural attitude,” and phenomenological sense-making, which is made from within the perspective afforded by the phenomenological reduction. Moore’s concerns are an echo, I suggest, of the radical account of Husserlian phenomenology developed by Husserl’s student and final assistant, Eugen Fink, in his Sixth Cartesian Meditation. (...) Fink’s account shows just how wide a gap there is between natural and phenomenological sense-making. Given that gap, I argue that it is not clear whether phenomenological sense-making really can make sense of natural or ordinary sense-making, nor is it clear that we can even make sense of that kind of sense-making at all. (shrink)