Book review of Rollinger & Sowa's 2004 translation of Husserl's own later collection of manuscripts on transcendental idealism (and realism): It has long served the interests of certain partisans to paint Husserl as a Cartesian philosopher of consciousness, as a man who, like his early modern predecessor, was obsessed with demonstrating that the ‘‘data’’ of conscious experience constitute an epistemological fundamentum inconcussum. Husserl thus becomes a stock character in those narratives of modern philosophy which see it as having been dominated (...) by a poisonous Cartesian subjectivism prior to the arrival of one or another of philosophy’s great twentieth-century saviors (typically one chooses either Heidegger or Wittgenstein here). On the other side, it has long been common for Husserlians to brush aside this character- ization of Husserl as a gross oversimplification and indeed fundamental mis- understanding of his thought, one resting on a lack of any real familiarity with his writings and ideas.We are thus presented with the paradox that while many of the most conscientious of Husserl’s expositors could read him as an anti- Cartesian philosopher, other, generally less sympathetic but often not less intelligent readers could come to the exact opposite conclusion... (shrink)

It is often said that by rejecting the representationalist model of mind, phenomenology makes a decisive advance over empiricism. Yet despite such pronouncements, the arguments Husserl uses to refute representationalism have received scant critical attention, and upon examination many turn out to be obscure. I argue here that some of Husserl's best known anti-representationalist arguments fail. I end the paper, however, by suggesting that if these unsuccessful arguments are paired with certain methodological considerations taken from Husserl's mature philosophy, they may (...) provide adequate grounds for a rejection of representationalism after all. (shrink)

The main aim of this dissertation is to trace the systematic development of Husserl's early theory of intentionality, particularly as it reflects and influences his understanding of the mind-world relation. The dissertation is divided into two parts. ;In the first part, I trace the historical roots of phenomenology back to Husserl's teacher Franz Brentano. I argue that for Brentano, intentionality is a purely mental relation between a mental act and a mentally immanent intentional object or content. I also argue that (...) Brentano embeds this view in a roughly Lockean or "critical realist" position which adds a third element to the two elements of the intentional relation, viz., a really existing, extramental or worldly object---or, as Brentano prefers to call it, "thing." This "thing" is not psychologically accessible but is rather hypothesized by the natural scientist as a causal explanation for our intentional experiences. ;In the second part of the dissertation I chart the course of Husserl's early intellectual development in the period immediately following his philosophical apprenticeship under Brentano, again focusing on intentionality. I document Husserl's initial adoption of the Brentanian view, as well as his growing doubts about Brentano's immanentism. Through his work on the problem of nonveridical intentionality and the descriptive psychology of perception, Husserl is led to reject altogether the idea that intentionality is a genuine relation and to adopt instead an adverbial account which explains intentionality as an exclusive feature of mental acts, one that can be studied without any reference to the objects at which these acts aim. In the Logical Investigations , this conception of intentionality is coupled with a Cartesian, epistemologically oriented methodology to yield a conception of the philosophical study of the mind and its experiences in which no reference is made to the objects of the real world. I conclude the dissertation by indicating briefly how Husserl in subsequent years would augment and deepen this position through his concept of the noema. (shrink)

Despite its title, then, Derrida and Husserl is primarily about Derrida, and only secondarily about Husserl. A reader who approaches the book with the hope of gaining some perspective on the Husserl–Derrida debate will come away disappointed: the Husserl one finds is in every case Derrida’s Husserl, and no attempt is made to see things through Husserl’s eyes. Consequently, where Husserl is concerned, Lawlor’s analysis comes off as a something of a broadside. Where Derrida is concerned, on the other hand, (...) the book has much to offer. (shrink)

Luft’s contribution to this emerging wing of Husserl scholarship lies in the way he forces us to consider the possibility that certain fundamental Husserlian principles—most importantly, the “principle of all principles,” that is, the notion that intuitive demonstration is the indispensable bedrock of phenomenological philosophy—must be called into question when one attempts to advance beyond mere phenomenological description and develop a phenomenological system. It is both a basic conviction and a central conclusion of the book that “when one harbors pronounced (...) systematic aspirations, as Husserl does, one cannot dispense with speculative thinking”. Drawing on his intimate knowledge of Husserl’s late manuscripts on the reduction, Luft attempts to demonstrate this conclusion by contrasting Husserl’s approach to the issue of phenomenology’s systematic character with Fink’s outline of a phenomenological system in the Sixth Cartesian Meditation. Fink’s “merit,” Luft argues, is to have shown that phenomenology “cannot do without reflection on its systematic character”. More controversially, however, Fink also claims that such reflection “cannot itself proceed phenomenologically—or at least not only phenomenologically”. Husserl no doubt disagreed, but Luft, following Fink, argues that the systematic character of phenomenology “cannot be analyzed in the ‘straightforward’ manner” of standard phenomenological analysis. (shrink)

These volumes make available for the first time in English the full texts of two of Heidegger’s most significant lecture courses: Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit: Einleitung in die Philosophie, delivered in the summer semester of 1930, and Vom Wesen der Wahrheit: zu Platons Höhlengleichnis, delivered in the winter semester of 1931–32. They contain full translations of Volumes 31 and 34 of the Gesamtausgabe of Heidegger’s works. Coming at a crucial turning point in Heidegger’s career, the lecture courses treat two (...) central and interrelated themes in his thought—freedom and truth—pointing forward toward important developments in his subsequent philosophy and shedding valuable light on a number of key concepts and themes in Being and Time. Just as importantly, they contain sustained engagements with three major figures in the history of philosophy: Aristotle, Kant, and Plato. (shrink)