Kathleen Fitzpatrick 'Images of/and the Postmodern' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 3 no. 8, February 1999.

The volume begins with what is in common to contemporary phenomenological historians and historiographers. That is the understandings that temporality is the core of human judgment conditioning in its forms how we consciously attend and judge phenomena. For every phenomenological historian or historiographer, all history is an event, a span of time. This time span is not external to the individual, rather forms the content and structure of every judgment of the person. It is the logic used by the individual (...) to structure the phenomenon attended. Rather than the phenomenon being seen as something solely external, it is understood by phenomenologists as also of our immediate awareness and thought. Thus, the phenomenological method discerns all judgment as based upon one’s span of attention of inner or outer phenomena.. There is an intentionality to attention. One intends one’s own foci. Attention is the temporal duration of that intending. The volume offers a text that enables contemporary historians, graduate students, and even undergraduates who are well taught, to understand both the history of phenomenology as a method of inquiry, and the contemporary practice of phenomenological historical and historiographical thought. (shrink)

This thorough study offers a lucid analysis of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka's thought, from the influences on his phenomenology to the impact of his politics. The book provides a nuanced grounding for current and future Patočka scholars.

This volume goes beyond presently available phenomenological analyses based on the structures and constitution of the lifeworld. It shows how the science of history is the mediator between the human and the natural sciences. It demonstrates that the distinction between interpretation and explanation does not imply a strict separation of the natural and the human sciences. Finally, it shows that the natural sciences and technology are inseparable, but that technology is one-sidedly founded in pre-scientific encounters with reality in the lifeworld. (...) In positivism the natural sciences are sciences because they offer causal explanations testable in experiments and the humanities are human sciences only if they use methods of the natural sciences. For epistemologists following Dilthey, the human sciences presuppose interpretation and the human and natural sciences must be separated. There is phenomenology interested in psychology and the social sciences that distinguish the natural and the human sciences, but little can be found about the historical human sciences. This volume fills the gap by presenting analyses of the material foundations of the "understanding" of expressions of other persons, and of primordial recollections and expectations founding explicit expectations and predictions in the lifeworld. Next, it shows, on the basis of history as applying philological methods in interpretations of sources, the role of a universal spatio-temporal framework for reconstructions and causal explanations of "what has really happened". (shrink)

"This fairly small book must take its place as the best introductorystudy of Hegel's Phenomenology available." -- Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch "Westphal's book is a comprehensive guide to theargument of the entire phenomenology.... will repay close study by seriousundergraduate and graduate students of philosophy." --Choice This detailed interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology ofSpirit seeks to show that the unity of this classic work may be found in theintegration of its transcendental and sociological-historical themes.

This collection is the final volume of a four book survey of the state of phenomenology fifty years after the death of Edmund Husserl. Its publication represents a landmark in the comprehensive treatment of contemporary phenomenology in all its vastness and richness. The diversity of the issues raised here is dazzling, but the main themes of Husserl's thought are all either explicitly treated, or else they underlie the ingenious approaches found here. Time, historicity, intentionality, eidos, meaning, possibility/reality, and (...) teleology are the main concerns of this collection devoted to studies in aesthetics, metaphysics and literary interpretation, written by such authors as, among others, R. Cobb-Stevens, C. Moreno Marquez, J. Swiecimski, Sitansu Ray and M. Kronegger. These original studies of phenomenological aesthetics and literary theory by scholars from all parts of the world were gathered by the World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learn ing during the year 1988/89 during its assessment of the phenomeno logical movement, fifty years after Husserl's death. IX A -T. Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XXXVII, ix. (shrink)

This article entitled “History's `So it seems'” explores the potential of phenomenology for the framing of histories which privilege partcipant perspectives. The theory agenda of the article adapts insights drawn from Heidegger's ontological hermeneutic of Da-sein - the human condition of being-there and being-aware (or not aware). The theory agenda also adapts Heidegger's readings of Heraclitus. The practical agenda of the article illustrates this potential of Heidegger's phenomenology for history by contrasting `so it once seemed' senses of the (...) Emperor Julian the Apostate's Roman pagan self-hood. The contrasts are autobiographical (Julian's Misopogon ), contemporary biographical (Ammianus Marcellinus's history), and long-lag biographical (Gore Vidal's novel avowedly constrained by the sources). (shrink)

David Carr outlines a distinctively phenomenological approach to history. Rather than asking what history is or how we know history, a phenomenology of history inquires into history as a phenomenon and into the experience of the historical.

In Phenomenology and the Problem of History. David Carr examines the paradox involving Husserl's transcendental philosophy and his later historicist theory.

From a phenomenological perspective of game-space and horizon, this paper tries to make a deconstructive reading of Hegel's "two galleries", namely, "the gallery of opinions" and "the gallery of knowledge", which are mentioned in the introduction of Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy. The reading shows that the Game-space or the ab-gruendiger Grund of the Hegelian concept of philosophical history lies in an originally differencing space that is keeping in absence, which is called by Edmund Husserl and Jacques Derrida (...) "the gallery of Dresden". (shrink)

This volume investigates how the phenomenology of religion was accepted and developed in different national contexts. It consists of interviews with senior scholars, who are experts on the development of the phenomenology of religion in their countries, along with commentary and analysis.

This book explores the philosophical writings of Gerda Walther. It features essays that recover large parts of Walther’s oeuvre in order to show her contribution to phenomenology and philosophy. In addition, the volume contains English translations of her key work. The essays consider the interdisciplinary implications of Gerda Walther’s ideas for sociology, political science, psychology, women’s and gender studies, and religious studies. A student of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Alexander Pfänder, she wrote foundational studies on the ego, community, (...) mysticism and religion, and consciousness. Walther’s discussion of empathy, identification, the ego and ego-consciousness, alterity, God, mysticism, sensation, intentionality, sociality, politics, and woman is relevant not only to phenomenology and philosophy but also to scholars of religion, sociology, political science, and psychology. Gerda Walther was one of the important figures of the early phenomenological movement. However, as a woman, she could not habilitate at a German University and was, therefore, denied a position. Her complete works have yet to be published. This ground-breaking volume not only helps readers discover a vital voice. It also demonstrates the significant contribution of women to the early phenomenological movement. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the history of the CARP, the “Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology”.

This is a critical review of David Carr's Experience and history: phenomenological perspectives on the historical world. Oxford University Press, 2014.

This paper distinguishes four senses of naturalism: reductive physicalism; a naturalism that departs from what Thompson calls “natural-historical judgments”; a naturalism that recognizes that physical nature is located within the space of reasons; and a phenomenological naturalism that shifts the focus to the “natural” experiences of subjects who encounter the world. The paper argues for a “phenomenological neo-Aristotelianism” that accounts both for the internal justification of our first-order moral experience and the need for a broader grounding in a universalistic account (...) of the goods of agency. (shrink)

Whereas Phenomenology of Perception concludes with a puzzling turn to “heroism,” this article examines the short essay “Man, the Hero” as a source of insight into Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the early postwar period. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty presented a conception of heroism through which he expressed the attitude toward post-Hegelian philosophy of history that underwrote his efforts to reform Marxism along existential lines. Analyzing this conception of heroism by unpacking the implicit contrasts with Kojève, Aron, Caillois, and Bataille, I (...) show that its philosophical rationale was to supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality. It is a mythic device intended to animate the faith necessary for Marxist politics by showing that universal sociality is possible, and that the historically transformative praxis needed to realize it does not imply sacrifice. This sheds considerable light on Merleau-Ponty’s early postwar political thought. But inasmuch as the latter cannot be severed from his broader philosophical concerns, the prospect is raised that his entire phenomenological project in the early postwar period rested on a myth. Not necessarily a bad myth, but a myth nonetheless. (shrink)

There are three interconnected goals of this paper. The first is to articulate and motivate a view of the methodology for doing metaphysics that is broadly phenomenological in the sense of Husserl circa the Logical Investigations. The second is to articulate an argument for the importance of studying the history of philosophy when doing metaphysics that is in accordance with this methodology. The third is to confront this methodology with a series of objections and determine how well it fares in (...) light of them. (shrink)

What kind of reality is legal reality, how is it created, and what are its a priori foundations? These are the central questions asked by the early phenomenologists who took interest in social ontology and law. While Reinach represents the well-known “realist” approach to phenomenology of law, Felix Kaufmann and Fritz Schreier belonged to the “positivist” “Vienna School of Jurisprudence,” combining Hans Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology—and thereby challenging Reinach’s views on how legal reality (...) and the legal a priori were to be conceived. This paper addresses the controversy between these positivist and realist approaches to phenomenology of law, with the goal of introducing the lesser known theories of Kaufmann and Schreier. The special focus on their critique of Reinach’s outline should give us an overview of their positions vis-à-vis the basic and a priori elements of which legal reality consists and the role that phenomenology plays in analyzing them. There is one general tendency to be noted: While the phenomenological legal positivists see the root of legal reality in an act of interpretation according to a “normative scheme of interpretation,” Reinach locates the roots of legal reality in social interaction and argues for the existence of entities independent of any interpretation. (shrink)

"This fairly small book must take its place as the best introductory study of Hegel’s Phenomenology available." —Philosophy and Phenomenological Research "Westphal’s book is a comprehensive guide to the argument of the entire phenomenology.... will repay close study by serious undergraduate and graduate students of philosophy." —Choice This detailed interpretation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit seeks to show that the unity of this classic work may be found in the integration of its transcendental and sociological-historical themes.

Sport often seems to teeter on the edge, on one side of the entertainment industry, on the other of cheating violent aggression: from a make-believe simulacrum of serious play to a nasty chemically enhanced descent into a Hobbesian state of nature. Such perversions lend credibility to reductive views of sport itself as a metonymic feature of capitalism. But that sport as entertainment means fixing it to produce exciting outcomes and amplifying capacities to superhuman proportions, while sport as aggression means treating (...) rules as mere obstacles to brute dominance, shows how far we in fact are from these abysses, even in the days of the Coca Cola/Nike Olympics, Vinny Jones and cricket sledging. In this essay, I try to delineate through history— from Homer to … Gomer?—a common culture of sport and sportsmanship that, with its excesses and perversions, continues to operate as one, albeit complex, ideal of human excellence. (shrink)

Politics presupposes an understanding of meaning in history, according to which it manages the actions that accord with or serve this meaning (as an ultimate good). The aim of this paper is to examine the process by which meaning in history is formed, as well as its character. To do this, I employ suitably modified phenomenological analyses of intentional consciousness to bring them as close as possible to the thematic of the psychoanalytic unconscious. I first try to sketch the basis (...) on which the modern problem of meaning in history arises and the fundamental responses produced by modern philosophy. Then, I delineate two basic understandings of meaning in history as developed by the founders of Phenomenology, Husserl and Heidegger, which are surprisingly close to those of modern metaphysics. Next, I draft the process by which the topic of the unconscious surfaces in the context of difficulties faced by critical epistemology in its effort to penetrate the unperceivable folds of reality, which should be acknowledged as a precondition of experience but also of action and ethics. After this, a brief phenomenological account regarding action and praxis in response to evil is presented as a specific concretization of this philosophy after its vaccination with the thematic of the unconscious. Next, I examine MerleauPonty’s final, although ultimately failed, attempt to construct a phenomenological proof of the possibility of objective knowledge regarding historical meaning. In addition, I consider how persistent maintenance of the ideologically optimistic reading of history simply concocts political action that crucially exposes humanity to the danger of perpetrating what Arendt called “banal evil.” The question, then, is whether Phenomenology can offer a non-nihilistic understanding of existence, action, and events in history. I argue that a cautious non-Marxist and de-Messianized reinterpretation of Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940), in tandem with an Aristotelian analysis of praxis and Kantian-Arendtian “common sense,” offers a sober, perspectivist, realistic understanding of the place of humans in the cosmos and of the historical course we happen to take in it. (shrink)

The phenomenology-psychology dialogue has been taking place for over 100 years now and it is still not clear how the two disciplines relate to each other. Part of the problem is that both disciplines have developed complexly with competing, not easily integratable perspectives. In this article the Husserlian phenomenological perspective is adopted and Husserl’s understanding of how phenomenology can help psychology is clarified. Then the usage of phenomenology within the historical scientific tradition of psychology is examined to (...) see the senses of phenomenology that were employed in that tradition. The German literature of psychology between the founding of the discipline and the beginning of the Nazi regime indicates quite clearly that the phenomenological perspective was part of the mainstream psychology of that era. The article ends by listing four difficult challenges that have to be met if a viable psychology based upon Husserlian phenomenology is to be possible. (shrink)

Aron’s writings are lauded for their contributions to liberal political theory, international relations, and sociology. I argue that his early thought also offers phenomenological considerations for a relativist view of historical meaning, whose important role in the text’s argument has been suppressed by received interpretations. Drawing a direct link between introspective, intersubjective, and historical understanding, Aron argues that the “objectification” of intentions necessarily transforms their meaning. This impedes an objective account of historical subjects’ lived experience. Some of the Introduction’s appraisals (...) of historical understanding rely on Aron’s phenomenological observations, and indicate that the intentionality of historical understanding circumscribes claims to historical objectivity. These results highlight the broader implications of largely overlooked phenomenological commitments in Aron’s thought, offer a fresh interpretation of the Introduction, and suggest that the standard account of Aron’s relation to the phenomenological movement should be reconsidered. (shrink)

The paper examines the perspectives of an exchange between the phenomenological ontology of Martin Heidegger and a theory of history in the context of the problem of interpretative approaches in historical writing. The hypothesis is that the analyses offered by Heidegger in Being and Time and Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity provide the foundation for mapping out new perspectives in the concept of interpretative approaches. The concept of interpretativeapproaches came to be actively used in academic texts relatively recently, since the (...) 1980’s, and has often been employed quite unreflectively. But its wide currency, its heterogeneous and unreflective usage turned the concept of interpretative approaches into a theoretical problem. This paper will present a possible answer to that problem by examining the conceptual foundations of a redefined concept of interpretative approaches, drawn from the lectures read by Heidegger in the summer semester of 1923, more precisely §§16–28, 21–26, and the relevant discussion in Being and Time, starting with §12 and focusing on Part I,Chapter 5 (mainly §§32 and 33). (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology contains thirty-seven new essays by leading scholars in the field. The essays all highlight historical influences, connections, and developments and provide an in-depth coverage of the development of phenomenology; one that allows for a better comprehension and assessment of the continuity as well as diversity of the phenomenological tradition. The handbook is divided into three distinct parts. The first part contains chapters that address the way phenomenology has been influenced (...) by earlier periods or figures in the history of philosophy. The second part contains chapters targeting prominent phenomenologists: How was their work affected by earlier figures, how did their own views change over time, and what kind of influence did they exert on subsequent thinkers? The contributions in the third part trace various core topics such as subjectivity, intersubjectivity, embodiment, spatiality, and imagination in the work of different phenomenologists, in order to explore how the notions were transformed, enriched, and expanded up through the century. The handbook will be a source of insight for philosophers, students of philosophy, and for people working in other disciplines of the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, who are interested in the phenomenological tradition. It is an authoritative guide to how phenomenology started, how it developed, and where it is heading. (shrink)

This volume features fourteen essays that examine the works of key figures within the phenomenological movement in a clear and accessible way. It presents the fertile, groundbreaking, and unique aspects of phenomenological theorizing against the background of contemporary debate about social ontology and collective intentionality. The expert contributors explore the insights of such thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Edmund Husserl, Adolf Reinach, and Max Scheler. Readers will also learn about other sources that, although almost wholly neglected by historians of philosophy, testify (...) to the vitality of the phenomenological tradition. In addition, the contributions highlight the systematic relevance of phenomenological research by pinpointing its position on social ontology and collective intentionality within the history of philosophy. By presenting phenomenological contributions in a scholarly yet accessible way, this volume introduces an interesting and important perspective into contemporary debate insofar as it bridges the gap between the analytical and the continental traditions in social philosophy. The volume provides readers with a deep understanding into such questions as: What does it mean to share experiences with others? What does it mean to share emotions with friends or to share intentions with partners in a joint endeavor? What are groups? What are institutional facts like money, universities, and cocktail parties? What are values and what role do values play in social reality? (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to examine the phenomenological method as it applies to the philosophy of history. This leads me to divide my inquiry into two parts. I shall begin by examining the phenomenological method in a general way, explaining how I view the essential features of the method and its status in the context of philosophy generally conceived. Then, in a second part, I shall turn to its application to the philosophy of history.

This is a brief historical view, based on my personal experience, of the phenomenological study of the assembly of actin in Japan. The morphogenesis and dynamics of protein filaments and cytoskeleton now represent one of the central problems in cell biology. The approach to this problem at the molecular level was first undertaken on actin from muscle.

Two of Husserl’s most important, though fragmentary texts from the final phase of his thought, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology and “The Origin of Geometry as an Intentional-Historical Problem,” focus on the themes of history and the life-world. It is well known that prior to these works Husserl sought to establish transcendental phenomenology as both a factually and an historically pure eidetic science. Thus the interpreter of the whole of Husserl’s thought is faced with the (...) question of whether his later focus on history and the life-world represents a significant departure from his previous thought. In what follows, I shall defend the thesis that it does not. Specifically, I shall argue that the completion of Husserl’s project of realizing the goal of First Philosophy in transcendental phenomenology renders necessary the turn both to history and to the life-world. In connection with this, I shall argue further that the peculiar phenomenological character of this necessity demands that the ‘concepts’ of history and life-world operative in Husserl’s last texts are taken to be inseparably rooted in a more original phenomenon. Husserl conceives this more original phenomenon as the crisis situation of the exemplars of European humanity, the philosophers, who, as the “functionaries of mankind” are faced with the “breakdown” situation of our time, with the “breakdown” of science itself. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIf we take Heidegger's ontology to be a philosophy of history, then, for Husserl, the problem of history is only one among the three major directions of his thoughts. After Husserl met Dilthey in 1905, he more and more attended to the problem of history and reflected upon the longitudinal intentionality of time-genesis-history. His basic idea is to grasp the condition of possibility of history by means of an eidetic intuition upon the longitudinal intentionality. However, because Husserl never explicates his (...) thoughts on history in his published works, he is often regarded as a “non-historical” philosopher. In fact, like Dilthey, Husserl purports to combine historical enlightenment with critique of knowledge. It is hence Dilthey-Yorck, Husserl, Heidegger and Gadamer who established together the most important tradition of history of philosophy in the twentieth century, namely, phenomenological-ontological philosophy of history. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 21st century, globalization has become a central theme in the humanities. The increasing globalization of discourses in the humanities can already be observed in the 20th century. Within philosophy, the globalization of the thematic framework has been promoted in particular by the World Congresses of Philosophy since 1900. Stimulated by these developments, histories of different philosophies have emerged worldwide in many different languages. In addition, global histories of philosophy have increasingly been written since the beginning (...) of the 21st century. This paper concludes by presenting the approach of a transformative phenomenology as a way of dealing with this thematic diversity in philosophy today. (shrink)

From idealism to phenomenology -- Existential phenomenology: Heidegger -- From hermeneutics to post-structuralism.

This book shows, for the first time in its full spectrum, the interconnectedness and topicality of two historically and philosophically significant developments of philosophical theories of the study of mind: that of phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and phaneroscopy of Charles S. Peirce. The chapters in this book put the two thinkers in a novel discourse while engaging in mutual scholarship on the large overlaps between the historically two largely independently developed but converging ideas of mind, cognition, consciousness, being, and (...) experience. It is the second volume in a projected series of three, the first of which is Peirce and Husserl: Mutual Insights on Logic, Mathematics, and Cognition (2019). This book consists of three parts. Part I contains studies on the basic elements and the methodological themes of both “phenomenologies” vis-à-vis each other. Part II of the book is dedicated to metaphysical and existential themes. Finally, this book contains a hitherto unpublished selection of connected texts from Charles Peirce concerning phaneroscopy, the theory of definitions, and other related historical, philosophical, and religious themes from 1910, transcribed and introduced by one of the editors of the volume. This book is of interest to scholars in phenomenology, phaneroscopy, and the history of ideas. (shrink)