Review: The Development and Systematic Role of the a Priori in Husserlian Phenomenology (original) (raw)
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Introduction to "Husserl and Other Phenomenologists"
Introduction to "Husserl and Other Phenomenologists" , pp.465-466, 2016
This introduction appears in a special issue "Husserl and other Phenomenologists" which i edited for The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms, 21, 5-6, 2016)
Husserl and Other Phenomenologists
Husserl and othe Phenomenologists , 2016
This article addresses a basic question: what elements in Husserl’s phenomenology can account for the variety of post-Husserlian phenomenologies? The answer, I suggest, is that Husserl’s idea of reality, particularly his notion of givenness vis-à-vis self-givenness, facilitated the work of his followers by offering them at once a firm ground and a point of departure for their inquiries. However, adopting Husserl’s phenomenology as their starting point did not prevent his followers from developing their own independent phenomenological theory. Moreover, despite the elusive particulars that shape one’s individual experience of the world, so it transpires, Husserl’s thinking which was different and beyond their own observations and actual experiences, namely, transcendent, appears to have been a genuine guide along their path to achieve meaning. This interpretation thus gives precedence to a metaphysical point of departure, that is, to Husserl’s idea of reality as ‘givenness’, in launching phenomenological investigation—over any specific aspect of his work—as that which continues to sustain phenomenological discourse. (This article appears in a special issue "Husserl and other Phenomenologists" which i edited for The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms, 21, 5-6, 2016)
Phenomenological Reviews, 2020
We can think of the Husserlian phenomenological project and the history that surrounds it as the passage "from visible graces to secret graces", borrowing the expression with which Alain Mérot (2015) describes Poussin's artistic work. In Mérot's words, the visible graces are those of rigour (diligentia), order and visual eloquence with which Poussin always sought to show the clarity he was voluntarily seeking in all things. These visible graces make possible, in Pousin's work, the realization of "secret graces", which are those inexplicable and never totally expressed graces that support the deep and dark unity of the world, inseparable from the delectation that his work offers. It is because of the transmission of hidden graces that Poussin, according to Mérot, is accessible only to those who are both intelligent and sensible. Moreover, it is precisely because of the transmission of these secret graces that his work needs, in order to exist in all its fullness, a community of chosen people to whom it can be addressed. Like Poussin's work, facing the path of making grace visible by combining various techniques from the history of painting, Husserl's work is a work in progress, a work that is always preparatory: "Everything I have written so far is only preparatory work; it is only the setting down of methods" (Husserl, 2001a). We can say in this sense that, insofar as the contemplation of a painting by Poussin makes us participants in the grace made visible and not sufficiently expressed (secret), the methods of the phenomenological vision are put into practice by every reader of Husserl. In this way, everyone who sees through Husserl, irremediably leaves aside, in her or his reading, something that cannot be said. It is for this reason, perhaps, that phenomenology continues creating interpretative divergences even so many years after the method's foundation. Nevertheless, this is the same reason why phenomenology must confront other traditions of thought (from positivism to structuralism, among others) in front of which it still has something to say. This book presents us with the panorama of these divergences, establishing the center of the discussion in the semantic richness of the notion of “subject(s)”. Thus, we can understand this book as the discussion of the subject(s) as the main theme, or main themes, of phenomenology. But we can also understand this book as the discussion of whether the main theme of phenomenology – expressed in the imperative to go back to the “things themselves” – revolves around the notion of subjectivity (subject), although transcendental, or of the multiplicity of subjectivities (subjects). Moreover, the main interest of this book is that it is situated in the field of the most recent of Husserl's readers, which allows us to question the relevance of the phenomenological method in front of the themes of contemporary philosophical debate.
The central thesis of this paper is to specify the main features of Husserl's phenomenology and also its significance in philosophy. The first section of this paper will examine Husserl's main features of phenomenology, which are; the mind and the body, the epoché, consciousness and intentionality, inter-subjectivity and also the life-world. Then, I will proceed to examine the importance of Husserl's theories in philosophy.
A Decisive Obscurity in Husserl's Phenomenology
Husserl's lifelong interest and vocation was to found an unshakeable basis for sciences and philosophy in general. This motive can be traced back to his Philosophy of Arithmetic and pursued up until his last posthumous book, namely The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. His tireless endeavour culminated in a transcendental phenomenology which he thought it would be the ultimate foundation for the apodictic establishment of sciences and philosophy. Moreover, he thought that it would bring about the promise of the philosophy as a rigorous science which can play the role of a first philosophy with respect to objective sciences. But with the advent of transcendental phenomenology, one of the most stubborn and vital problems becomes the relation of this transcendental phenomenology with the previous so-called psychological phenomenology, which still works within the natural attitude. Husserl himself was aware of the difficulties of a sufficient elucidation of the way one can access the transcendental realm without falling back to the natural attitude. Consequently, he tried many ways of preparing fruitful introductions to transcendental phenomenology. My attempt in this paper is to shed light on his evolutionary attempt to present transcendental reduction in the different stages of his work and finally arrive at an obscurity which does not finally find its proper solution in Husserl's phenomenology. As I assume, this obscurity remains not only within the edifice of Husserl's phenomenology, but continues to influence the further reception of his phenomenology which was vacillating between Husserlian conception of phenomenology and Heideggerian conception.
Springer Verlag, 2023
This text examines the many transformations in Husserl’s phenomenology that his discoveries of the nature of appearing lead to. It offers a comprehensive look at the Logical Investigations’ delimitation of the phenomenological field, and continues with Husserl’s account of our consciousness of time. This volume examines Husserl’s turn to transcendental idealism and the problems this raises for our recognition of other subjects. It details Husserl’s account of embodiment and examines his theory of the instincts. Drawing from his published and unpublished manuscripts, it outlines his treatment of our mortality and the teleological character of our existence. The result is a genetic account of our selfhood, one that unifies Husserl’s different claims about who and what we are.
Philosophical Inquiries X/2 , 2022
Dan Zahavi's latest book on Husserl has many merits. Not only does it offer a clear, sharp, and detailed reconstruction of the Husserlian phenomenological project, but it also stands out for its ambitious aim of highlighting the usefulness of a sound reading of historical texts to address theoretical questions. To do this, Zahavi choses to focus less on the analyses Husserl devoted to various concrete topics than on the general "methodological and metaphilosophical" (p. 2) aspects of his philosophy. These latter correspond to the three topics evoked in the book's subheading, which one might summarize into three questions: What does a phenomenological method amount to? Is phenomenology necessarily a transcendental philosophy? And what (if any) metaphysical implications does it entail? Despite the massive interpretative work that Husserlian scholarship has been undertaking during the last decades, a great deal of unjustified prejudices and misunderstandings on these issues remains. Thus, for instance, Husserl's approach is often misinterpreted as introspectivist, internalist, representationalist, phenomenalistic, solipsistic, Cartesian-to mention only a few. Throughout the book, Zahavi sweeps away many of them one by one, by showing them as baseless when compared with a cautious reading of Husserl's theses. Admittedly, not all the controversies faced in the book derive from such superficial and rough readings. Quite the contrary, most of them have challenged appreciable scholars, and even the phenomenologists who worked close to Husserl himself. This is chiefly the case for the question as to how to understand Husserl's claim of idealism. And, as I perceive it, the several reflections carried on are basically different steps to address and settle this issue and discuss its main implications, in the light of contemporary philosophy. In this sense, the core of the book is represented by chapter 4, in which Zahavi illustrates the kind of idealism Husserl was committed to. The three forerunning chapters deal with the methodological role of reflection to carry phenomenological investigation (ch. 1) and with Husserl's conceptions of phenomenology before (ch. 2) and after (ch. 3) the so-called transcendental turn.
Philosophy, Phenomenology, Sciences: Essays in Commemoration of Edmund Husserl.
This volume brings together essays by leading phenomenologists and Husserl scholars in which they engage with the legacy of Edmund Husserl’s philosophy. It is a broad anthology addressing many major topics in phenomenology and philosophy in general, including articles on phenomenological method; investigations in anthropology, ethics, and theology; highly specialized research into typically Husserlian topics such as perception, image consciousness, reality, and ideality; as well as investigations into the complex relation between pure phenomenology, phenomenological psychology, and cognitive science. TABLE OF CONTENTS: Preface by U. Melle PART I The Nature and Method of Phenomenology 1 Husserl on First Philosophy by R. Sokolowski 2 Le sens de la phénoménologie by M. Richir 3 Transzendentale Phänomenologie? by R. Bernet 4 Husserl and the ‘absolute’ by D. Zahavi 5 Husserls Beweis für den transzendentalen Idealismus by U. Melle 6 Phenomenology as First Philosophy: A Prehistory by S. Luft 7 Der methodologische Transzendentalismus der Phänomenologie by L. Tengelyi PART II Phenomenology and the Sciences 8 Husserl contra Carnap : la démarcation des sciences by D. Pradelle 9 Phänomenologische Methoden und empirische Erkenntnisse by D. Lohmar 10 Descriptive Psychology and Natural Sciences: Husserl’s early Criticism of Brentano by D. Fisette 11 Mathesis universalis et géométrie : Husserl et Grassmann by V. Gérard III Phenomenology and Consciousness 12 Tamino’s Eyes, Pamina’s Gaze: Husserl’s Phenomenology of Image-Consciousness Refashioned by N. de Warren 13 Towards a Phenomenological Account of Personal Identity by H. Jacobs 14 Husserl’s Subjectivism: The “thoroughly peculiar ‘forms’” of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind by S. Crowell 15 “So You Want to Naturalize Consciousness?” “Why, why not?” – “But How?” Husserl meeting some offspring by E. Marbach 16 Philosophy and ‘Experience’: A Conflict of Interests? by F. Mattens PART IV Phenomenology and Practical Philosophy 17 Self-Responsibility and Eudaimonia by J. Drummond 18 Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer phänomenologischen Theorie des Handelns: Überlegungen zu Davidson und Husserl by K. Mertens 19 Husserl und das Faktum der praktischen Vernunft:Anstoß und Herausforderung einer phänomenologischen Ethik der Person by S. Loidolt 20 Erde und Leib: Ort der Ökologie nach Husserl by H.R. Sepp PART V Reality and Ideality 21 The Universal as “What is in Common”: Comments on the Proton-Pseudos in Husserl’s Doctrine of the Intuition of Essence by R. Sowa 22 Die Kulturbedeutung der Intentionalität: Zu Husserls Wirklichkeitsbegriff by E.W. Orth 23 La partition du réel : Remarques sur l’eidos, la phantasia, l’effondrement du monde et l’être absolu de la conscience by C. Majolino 24 Husserl’s Mereological Argument for Intentional Constitution by A. Serrano de Haro 25 Phenomenology in a different voice: Husserl and Nishida in the 1930s by T. Sakakibara 26 Thinking about Non-Existence by L. Alweiss 27 Gott in Edmund Husserls Phänomenologie by K. Held"
Journal of Philosophical Investigations , 2019
In this paper I discuss some significant aspects of Husserl's phenomenology which could not be adequately known without studying the manuscripts, unpublished during his lifetime and then published gradually since 1950 by Husserl Archives in Leuven founded by Father van Breda in 1939. The aspects I discuss here are listed under 6 subjects: Husserl's phenomenological analyses of the constituting corporeal subjectivity, Husserl's phenomenological analysis of the conditions of possibility of representifications, concept of I-consciousness, conception of transcendental subjectivity as intersubjectivity, the development of Husserl's conception of phenomenological philosophy, and Husserl's metaphysics. This paper is drawn from, and an extension of, a lecture given at the Catholic University of Louvain in the occasion of 80th anniversary of the foundation of the Husserl Archives.