Praxis and Structure: Conflicting Models in the Science of Man

In his Fifth Meditation, Husserl appears to confront the problem of solipsism. As a number of commentators have suggested, however, since it arises from within phenomenology itself and the existence of the other is never in doubt, it is not a solipsism in the traditional Cartesian sense. Alfred Schutz, however, appears to understand Husserl's inquiry in precisely these terms. As such, his critical discussions of the Fifth Meditation, as well as his subsequent rejection of transcendental philosophy, might not be well-founded. Yet in spite of this misconstrual, Schutz's criticisms do highlight the problematic relationship between subjectivity and intersubjectivity in Husserl's late phenomenology, and albeit misplaced, ironically, his rejection of the Fifth Meditation forms a coherent response to Husserl's call for a “science of the life-world.” Intersubjectivity, Schutz concludes, must be assumed as a basis for phenomenological investigation rather than derived as a result of philosophical inquiry. “Negatively,” this is clearly a departure from Husserl's project since Schutz inevitably negates the “radical” motif under which phenomenological inquiry ostensibly proceeds. “Positively,” however, the project to which this criticism leads—a “phenomenology of the natural attitude”—represents a legitimate direction for phenomenological study as well as a radical turn within the theory and practice of social science.     

The Fate of Phenomenology in Deconstruction: Derrida and Husserl∗

This paper begins by presenting Lawlor's Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problems of Philosophy, an account of how deconstruction emerges as Derrida discusses Husserl's phenomenology (I.). It then determines the genre of Lawlor's intellectual history. Lawlor writes a continuist narrative history of ideas and concepts (II.). In the subsequent main section the paper uses Lawlor's material to take a position in the debate between Husserl and Derrida (III.). This is done in three parts. The first part reconstructs Derrida's version of Husserlian time consciousness (III. 1). The second part proposes an alternative and revisionist reading of Husserl's theory of internal temporality. On this reading Husserl is a process theoretician of consciousness (III. 2). The third part juxtaposes Husserl and Derrida's critical views (III. 3), arguing that Husserl's fluxive theory of time consciousness does not suffer from the problems Derrida finds in his Husserl. The final section (IV.) points to relativizing consequences for deconstruction and identifies programmatic consequences for phenomenology.     

Logic as a Universal Medium or Logic as a Calculus? Husserl and the Presuppositions of “the Ultimate Presupposition of Twentieth Century Philosophy”

This paper discusses Jean van Heijenoort's (1967) and Jaakko and Merrill B. Hintikka's (1986, 1997) distinction between logic as a universal language and logic as a calculus, and its applicability to Edmund Husserl's phenomenology. Although it is argued that Husserl's phenomenology shares characteristics with both sides, his view of logic is closer to the model‐theoretical, logic‐as‐calculus view. However, Husserl's philosophy as transcendental philosophy is closer to the universalist view. This paper suggests that Husserl's position shows that holding a model‐theoretical view of logic does not necessarily imply a calculus view about the relations between language and the world. The situation calls for reflection about the distinction: It will be suggested that the applicability of the van Heijenoort and the Hintikkas distinction either has to be restricted to a particular philosopher's views about logic, in which case no implications about his or her more general philosophical views should be inferred from it; or the distinction turns into a question of whether our human predicament is inescapable or whether it is possible, presumably by means of model theory, to obtain neutral answers to philosophical questions. Thus the distinction ultimately turns into a question about the correct method for doing philosophy.     

Pragmatic,Existentialist and Phenomenological Interpretations of Marxism

In his book, Hermeneutics and Reflection (2013), Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann outlines what he sees as the fundamental differences between Edmund Husserl’s “theoretical” phenomenology and Martin Heidegger’s “a-theoretical” phenomenology, which he frames in terms of the distinction between “reflective observation” and “hermeneutic understanding”. In this paper, I will clarify the sense of these terms in order to elucidate some of the crucial similarities and differences between Husserl and Heidegger. Against von Herrmann’s characterization of the Husserlian project, I argue that we should not consider these differences in terms of “reflection”, since this runs the risk of misconstruing Husserlian phenomenology with the philosophical tradition he was striving against. Taken together, by way of a close reading of von Herrmann, the following discussion will serve as a brief sketch of the early Heidegger’s turn away from Husserlian phenomenology and toward his own hermeneutic phenomenology.     

Husserl,Givenness, and the Priority of the Self

This article argues that, despite its apparent radicality, Husserl's later, genetic phenomenology ends up confirming and consolidating a very orthodox transcendental egology. First, the article reconstructs an Husserlian phenomenology of givenness; but then, by considering the ambiguous role of intuition, it also establishes (a) the continued prestige of a 'classical' transcendental subject, and (b) the way in which a denial of ontology allows Husserl's transcendental subject to sublate the provocative challenge of primal Gegebenheit . Overall, the article argues that Husserl is subject to a deep egological faultline, brought about by the self-consciously anti-ontological nature of his project: 'givenness without Being', it suggests, necessitates a prioritized and privileged self.     

The Retentional and the Repressed: Does Freud's Concept of the Unconscious Threaten Husserlian Phenomenology?

This paper investigates the claims made by both Freudian psychoanalysic thought and Husserlian phenomenology about the unconscious. First, it is shown how Husserl incorporates a complex notion of the unconscious in his analysis of passive synthesis. With his notion of an unintentional reservoir of past retentions, Husserl articulates an unconscious zone that must be activated from consciousness in order to “come to life.” Second, it is explained how Husserl still does not account for the Freudian unconscious. Freud's unconscious could be called, in phenomenological terms, a repressed retentional zone that differs from both near and far retention. Finally, an analysis is offered for the significance of this psychoanalytic argument for phenomenology. Does phenomenology provide a complete account of the psychical life of the subject without the Freudian unconscious? Does phenomenology suggest, as is often done, that Freud's “discovery” of the unconscious is a fantastical invention? Or, does the Freudian unconscious represent a true stumbling block for phenomenology?     

Neglecting the Question of Being: Heidegger's Argument Against Husserl

This paper claims that the argument Heidegger leveled at Husserl in his Marburg lecture courses trades on a confusion. Heidegger confused neglecting the question of being with presupposing an answer to the question of being. No reasons have been given for thinking that the former is objectionable, and the latter is only as objectionable as the thing presupposed. This paper does not, thereby, show Heideggerian phenomenology is inferior to Husserlian phenomenology; but it does show that Heidegger's so-called “immanent critique of Husserl” was anything but, and hence that Husserlian phenomenology was not (as Heidegger claimed) “unphenomenological”.     

Synthetic Evidence and Objective Identity: The Contemporary Significance of Early Husserl's Conception of Truth

This essay explores Edmund Husserl's significance for contemporary truth theory. Focusing on his Logical Investigations (1900/1901), it argues that early Husserl's conception of truth unsettles a common polarity between epistemic and nonepistemic approaches. Unlike contemporary epistemic conceptions of truth, he gives full weight to “truth makers” that have their own being: objective identity, perceptible objects, and states of affairs. Yet, unlike contemporary nonepistemic conceptions, he also insists on the intentional givenness of such truth makers and on the complexity of the experiences within which propositional truth claims arise. To develop this argument, the essay explains how early Husserl's conception of truth builds on his phenomenology of intentional experience and knowledge. By emphasizing an objective identity between what is signitively meant and intuitively given, Husserl's approach provides a way to resituate propositional truth within a broader and more dynamic conception of truth.     

Phenomenology as first philosophy

The paper interprets phenomenology as a mode of inquiry that addresses fundamental questions of first philosophy, beyond the limitation of the practice by its leading theorists to the study of mere appearances. I draw on Adorno's critique of phenomenology to show that it has typically functioned as a mode of first philosophy, but I part with Adorno to argue that it ought to be practiced as such, to address consciously a sceptical worry about the gap between appearance and reality that Husserl modestly claimed to have bracketed. Noting Husserl's and Adorno's shared worries about the project of first philosophy, to know the world beyond appearances, I draw on Nietzsche to argue phenomenology ought nonetheless to address real matters of concern.     

Merleau‐Ponty and the Phenomenological Reduction

It is commonly believed that Merleau‐Ponty rejected Husserl's phenomenological reduction in favour of his existentialist account of être au monde. I show that whilst Merleau‐Ponty rejected what he saw as the transcendental idealist context in which Husserl presents the reduction, he nevertheless accepts the heart of it, the epoché, as a methodological principle. Contrary to a number of Merleau‐Ponty scholars, être au monde is perfectly compatible with the epoché, and Merleau‐Ponty endorses both. I also argue that it is a mistake to think that Merleau‐Ponty's liberal use of the results of empirical psychology signifies a rejection of the epoché. A proper understanding of his views on the relation between phenomenology and psychology is that, at least in Merleau‐Ponty's eyes, the methods of phenomenology and the empirical sciences are largely similar. I conclude that we have every reason to think that Merleau‐Ponty accepted Husserl's demand that the phenomenologist place the world in brackets.     

THE SELF AND THE OTHERS: COMMON TOPICS FOR HUSSERL AND WITTGENSTEIN

Several commentators have argued that Husserl's phenomenological project is compromised or even destroyed by Wittgenstein's critical inquiries into our use of psychological concepts. In contrast to oppositional interpretations, this paper explicates certain crucial connections between Husserl's phenomenology and Wittgenstein's late thinking—shared views that concern the embodied nature of selfhood and our relations to other selves. In line with certain recent contributions, I argue that there are important similarities between Husserl's analysis of these phenomena and Wittgenstein's remarks on our use of language and that these connections, when noticed and explicated, can help us avoid simplified, barren contrasts and get clear about our actual philosophical alternatives.     

The Development of the Concept of Concrete Subjectivity from Kant to Neo-Kantianism

One long-running conundrum in Husserlian phenomenology revolves around the question of the identity of what Husserl calls the transcendental ego, a mysterious figure that he identifies as the subject of a genuinely transcendental phenomenology. In dialogue with both Husserl and his assistant and collaborator Eugen Fink (as well as recent commentary), I attempt in this article to give a solid account of the identity of this transcendental ego, and in particular to explain the connection between this figure and the empirical ego of the individual phenomenologist. I make particular reference to Fink's depiction of a "personal union" between these two egos in his Sixth Cartesian Meditation and to certain unclear hints in Husserl's 1923/1924 lectures on First Philosophy. Ultimately, I develop my own account of such a union, which explains the transcendental ego as a certain mode in which the phenomenologist might investigate his own experiences. On this basis, I argue, the status of phenomenology as a transcendental discipline can be understood without subjecting that discipline to certain criticisms that have been levelled against it.     

Husserl's noema and the internalism‐externalism debate

In a number of papers, Hubert Dreyfus and Ronald McIntyre have claimed that Husserl is an internalist. In this paper, it is argued that their interpretation is based on two questionable assumptions: (1) that Husserl's noema should be interpreted along Fregean lines, and (2) that Husserl's transcendental methodology commits him to some form of methodological solipsism. Both of these assumptions are criticized on the basis of the most recent Husserl‐research. It is shown that Husserl's concept of noema can be interpreted in a manner that makes his theory far more congenial to a certain type of externalism, but ultimately it is argued that his phenomenological analysis of intentionality entails such a fundamental rethinking of the very relation between subjectivity and world that it hardly makes sense to designate it as being either internalist or externalist.     

The Phenomenon of Ego-Splitting in Husserl’s Phenomenology of Pure Phantasy

Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination embraces a cluster of different theories and approaches regarding the multi-faced phenomenon of imaginative experience. In this paper I consider one aspect that seems to be crucial to the understanding of a particular form of imagination that Husserl names pure phantasy. I argue that the phenomenon of Ego-splitting discloses the best way to elucidate the peculiarity of pure phantasy with respect to other forms of representative acts (such as remembering) and to any simple form of act modification (such as neutrality modification). First, I unravel the phenomenological distinctions which, respectively, oppose phantasy to perception, on the one hand, and phantasy to other forms of the so-called “intuitive re-presentations”. Second, I introduce the difference between presentative and representative acts, arguing that this cannot help us to single out the defining feature of phantasy experiences. The third section draws again an important distinction between pure phantasy and neutrality modification, which allows me to finally determine an internal trait of phantasy experiences, which Husserl refers to as the “Ego-splitting” (Ichspaltung). In this way, I hope to contribute to a refined characterization of Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination.     

The time of trauma: Husserl's phenomenology and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The phenomenology of inner temporalizing developed by Edmund Husserl provides a helpful framework for understanding a type of experiencing that can be part of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). My paper extrapolates hints from Husserl's work in order to describe those memories — flashbacks — that come so strongly to consciousness as to overtake the experiencer. Husserl's work offers several clues: his view of inner temporalization by which conscious experiences flow in both a serial and a nonserial manner; a characterization of process memory as distinct from representational memory; and the notion of telos, which takes human subjectivity as intrinsically changeable, for example, by means of a retroactive cancellation that would allow the PTSD experiencer to re-process the original meaning of the traumatic experience into a meaning that fits the current situation and thus allows a recovery.