Difference and presence: Derrida and Husserl’s phenomenology of language,time, history,and scientific rationality

Continental Philosophy Review - This article seeks to reconstruct and critically extend Jacques Derrida’s critique of Edmund Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Derrida’s...     

Philosophy and reflection: A critique of Frank Welz’s sociological and “processual” criticism of Husserl and Schutz

Frank Welz’s Kritik der Lebenswelt undertakes a sociology of knowledge criticism of the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz that construes them as developing absolutist, egological systems opposed to the “processual” worldview prominent since the modern rise of natural science. Welz, though, misunderstands the work of Schutz and Husserl and neglects how their focus on consciousness and eidetic features pertains to the kind of reflection that one must undertake if one would avoid succumbing to absolutism, that uncovers the presuppositions of the processual worldview itself, and that secures a domain distinctive of philosophy over against sociology. Finally, Welz’s charge that Schutz favors a Neo-Kantian social scientific methodology contradictory to his phenomenology neglects the levels of Schutz’s discourse and ignores how the Weberian ideal-typical approach can be subsumed within phenomenology.     

Philosophy,psychology and the moral crisis: Reflections on compassion “between tradition and another beginning”

Abstract

The author presents, and his thinking passes through, the work of Werner Marx who seeks a non‐metaphysical ethical mooring via compassion, grounded in emotional dimensions of existential‐phenomenology. Through Marx's re‐centered compassion the author inquires if reason and faith cannot be resurrected in intrinsic and holistic form. Marx's ethics is introduced as one of the directions humanistic thinking is taking, suggesting this latter's considerable prospective role as a human vision in the ethical debate in transition between failed modern and ethically vulnerable postmodern paradigms.     

A review of: “Feminism and psychotherapy: Reflections on contemporary theories and practices”

I. Bruna Seu and M. Colleen Heenan (eds) (1988) Feminism and Psychotherapy: Reflections on Contemporary Theories and Practices, London: Sage, $14.99 (pb)     

One table or two? scientific anti-realism and Husserl’s phenomenology

Continental Philosophy Review - In this study I argue that Husserl’s phenomenology is compatible with a realistic interpretation of scientific theories. That said, I distinguish between the...     

Cross-Cultural Reflections on the Feminine “Other”: Hebraism and Hellenism Redux

This paper addresses two of the most famous “others” in human history: Hellenism in relation to Hebraism and man in relation to woman. The development of modern psychiatry and psychology has been fundamentally informed by classical Greek thought, leaving the Bible epistemologically maligned as a valid alternative source-text for development of metatheory. This historical dominance of classical Greek thought has likewise directly contributed to the “otherness” status of women, establishing an implicit misogynistic undercurrent in Western history. The biblical worldview offers a destigmatized conception of the woman that affirms her independent status as a psychologically complete individual. This difference dramatically plays out in contrasting biblical and Greek views of women through comparing the story of Prometheus and Pandora with that of Adam and Eve. Pandora is described as a curse to man in retaliation for Prometheus stealing fire for man. In stark contrast, Eve is described as a blessing to man and as a helpmeet-opposite (ezer kenegdo). The biblical narrative of Adam and Eve represents a truly egalitarian approach to women. Despite Freud’s materialistic treatment of religion, the privileged position that classical Greek thought has enjoyed in the West has in fact acted as an illusion, serving as an existential tranquilizer and distracting the scientific conversation away from the life-affirming, hopeful message promoted through the biblical tradition. We can no longer afford to keep the Bible in the “other” category—we must mobilize the biblical tradition in the service of inductively developing a robust new conception of mental health.     

“Let's Do It Again”: Further Reflections on Eros and Attachment

Stephen Mitchell (1997) wrote that “Psychoanalysis and the Degradation of Romance,” the paper on which the book Can Love Last was based, provoked the most feedback, both intellectual and personal, of anything he had ever written. These reverberations have continued, unabated by his passing. One of the many responses to his work in this area took the form of a 3-week International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) online symposium (March 2003), which also addressed a paper of mine, “Attachment and Eros: Opposed or Synergistic?” (Goldner, 2004 Goldner, V. 2004. Attachment and eros: Opposed or synergistic?. Psychoanal. Dial, 14: 381–396. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that proposed an alternative thesis about the fate of romantic love over the long term. Many on the IARPP colloquium took the position that although Mitchell and I used different intellectual strategies, our relational solution to the (apparent) opposition between attachment and eros was reductive because it occluded a full reckoning with the one-person aspects of sexuality. By contrast, my position argued that Mitchell's work was reductive because he gave short shrift to the two-person aspects of romantic intimacy (especially to the importance of the third). Those primarily concerned with sexuality argued that Mitchell under estimated the foundational irreconcilability between eros and attachment, but my concern with relationality lead me to argue that he over estimated this antagonism, and I ultimately proposed a means to deconstruct this opposition altogether     

Recollection and phantasy: The problem of the truth of memory in Husserl’s phenomenology

The epistemological problem of the truth of memory cannot be resolved without establishing a clear distinction between recollection and phantasy. Husserl’s position in this regard is both paradoxical and compelling. It is paradoxical because Husserl repeats his antiskeptical intention many times; but nevertheless in his phenomenology, recollection and phantasy are almost completely identical. Perhaps no philosopher has so radically approached the experience of remembering and the experience of fantasizing as Husserl. But at the same time, the recognition of this fundamental similarity is precisely what allows the phenomenologist to avoid empiricist misunderstandings and thus approach the problem of the distinction between recollection and phantasy in a much more persuasive way than the traditional one. In this paper, I will first try to show how and why Husserl approaches recollection and phantasy. Then I will try to show how it is possible to establish a clear distinction between these two phenomena without misunderstanding the possibility of false memory.     

Reflections on “difficult” embeddings

The main purpose of this note is to present difficult embeddings of minimal and full intuitionistic logic into classical linear logic, and to prove their soundness and faithfulness. Moreover, it is also pointed out that Girard's translation of intuitionistic logic into classical linear logic is provably equivalent to one of the translations considered in this paper.     

“Inside out”: Appraisals for achievement emotions from constructive,positive, and negative feedback on writing

Even with the recent surge of research on achievement emotions, few studies have investigated emotions in feedback situations and the appraisals associated with such emotions. The purpose of this study was to examine emotion appraisals of constructive criticism, negative, and positive feedback, to aid us in determining whether these appraisals differed by feedback type. In a task asking them to provide open-ended responses as they imagined receiving feedback on a writing task, undergraduates (N?=?270) gave reasons for why they might experience unpleasant emotions from positive feedback and pleasant emotions from negative feedback along with reasons for both pleasant and unpleasant emotions emanating from constructive feedback. Open coding of responses yielded categories for each emotion-feedback pairing that, across all emotions, were collapsed into five appraisal categories: feedback suggests ways to improve, a mismatch between feedback and task exists, feedback targets the self or one’s ability, feedback says something about the relationship between feedback giver and receiver, and the task is judged for its value. Distributions of appraisal categories distinguished constructive feedback from positive and negative feedback. Implications are drawn for control-value theory and for classroom feedback practices.     

Objects with a past: Husserl on “ad-memorizing apperceptions”

In a late notation from 1932, Husserl emphasizes the fact that a broad concept of ??apperception?? should also include, alongside his usual examples, the apprehension of objects as bearers of an individual or inter-subjective past, specifically ??indicated?? with them; thus, he distinguishes between apperceptions ??appresenting?? a simultaneous content (co-presentations), anticipatory apperceptions pointing to future incidents, and retrospective apperceptions referring to ??ad-memorized?? (hinzuerinnert, ad-memoriert) features and events. The latter sort of apperceptions are involved not only in our apprehension of historical traces and relics, but also in that of causal relations, familiar objects, and cultural objects in general. Following several later notations of Husserl concerning the topic of ??apperceptions,?? this paper outlines the specific intentional structure of retrospective or evocative apperceptions, analyzing their various possible forms.     

Comment on Paul Boghossian, “What is inference”

This is a response to Paul Boghossian’s paper: What is inference? (doi:10.1007/s11098-012-9903-x). The paper and the abstract originate from a symposium at the Pacific Division Meeting of the APA in San Diego in April 2011. John Broome was a co-commentator.