Layers in Husserl's Phenomenology situates Husserl firmly within the trajectory of later Continental thought and contributes to the recent reconsideration of Husserl as a legitimate precursor to the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida.

Every attempt to examine our consciousness’s passive life and its dynamic in its various forms inevitably intersects with our primal awareness of the future. Even though Husserl’s theory of time-consciousness enjoys a certain fame, his conception of our primordial relation to the future has not been adequately accounted for. The book at hand aims to offer a close study of Husserl’s view of protentional consciousness and to trace its unique contribution to our overall awareness of time. It offers an extensive (...) analysis of various aspects of protention by investigating its connection to different fields and levels of experience. To achieve such a task, the book stresses the need to enrich the familiar formal account of protention with a material one. Thus, alongside issues pertaining exclusively to the form of protention, such as its relation to fulfillment as well as its double-intentional structure, various other dimensions are discussed, such as the phenomena of disappointment and correction as well as the role hyle plays in both of them. In the same vein, special attention is given to the relation between protentional consciousness and affectivity, thus shedding light on the dynamic unity of our living-present. What this study purports to show is that Husserl’s phenomenology is equipped to offer a solid account of the thinnest and subtlest ways in which we are aware of the future in our experiential life. (shrink)

The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication.

This book examines Husserl's concept of necessary, a priori, and absolutely certain indubitable evidence, which he terms apodictic, and his related concept of complete evidence, which he terms adequate. To do so it explicates some of the more general relevant features of phenomenology as a whole.

Husserl is the philosopher who transformed the geological metaphor of sedimentation into a philosophical concept. While tracing the development of Husserl's reflections on sedimentation, I argue that the distinctive feature of Husserl's approach lies in his preoccupation with the question concerning the origins of sedimentations. The paper demonstrates that in different frameworks of analysis, Husserl understood these origins in significantly different ways. In the works concerned with the phenomenology of time consciousness, Husserl searched for the origins of sedimentation in (...) the field of subjective experience, and more precisely, in impressional consciousness. By contrast, in the later works concerned with history, he maintained that the origins of sedimentations lie in the field of historical past that stretches beyond the reach of individual experience. Building on the basis of these resources, I argue that the Husserlian concept of sedimentation has three distinct components of senses: static, genetic, and generative. In the static sense, sedimentations are modifications of retentions and necessary conditions of recollection. In the genetic sense, sedimentations are necessary for the formation of types, habits and moods, and as such, they shape present experiences. In the generative sense, sedimentations refer to what consciousness inherits from the historical tradition. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate, if there is a principal disagreement between Husserl's early concept of expression and his later discussions on gestures. In the early work Logical Investigations (1900–1901), Husserl quite bluntly excludes gestures from the category of meaningful expressions; thirty years later (1928), in the second volume of Ideas, he argues to the contrary that gestures are meaningful and expressive in the very same way as linguistic units, words and sentences. The question of this paper (...) is: What happened in Husserl's thinking in the two decades between Investigations and the last versions of Ideas II? I argue that the disagreement between Husserl's early statement and his later discussion on gestural expressions is due to a refinement in his account of embodiment. I claim that Husserl did not abandon his concept of expression, but dismissed his early analysis of embodiment as simplistic and as motivated by a certain preconception about the relationship between nature and spirit. This change became possible for him as he developed conceptual and methodic tools for distinguishing between different meanings of the body: the physical thing or the mere material body, the perceived body, and the sensuous body. The difference between the body as a physical thing and the body as a sensuous-spiritual unit proves to be crucial to the understanding of gestural expressions. (shrink)

In this study, I will first introduce Husserl’s analysis in Studien zur Struktur des Bewußtseins by emphasizing the reasons that motivate these analyses on descriptive psychology and their status in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology in the late Freiburg period. I will then focus on the structure of acts, with particular emphasis on three aspects stressed by Husserl in Studien: intentionality, the taxonomy of acts, and Brentano’s principle of the Vorstellungsgrundlage. The last three parts of this study outline the characteristic features (...) of three fundamental aspects of affective life in Husserl’s phenomenology: emotions, sense feelings, and moods. I will conclude with some general remarks on the status of affects and values in Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

This volume is the first book-length analysis of the problematic concept of the ‘horizon’ in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, as well as in phenomenology generally. A recent arrival on the conceptual scene, the horizon still eludes robust definition. The author shows in this authoritative exploration of the topic that Husserl, the originator of phenomenology, placed the notion of the horizon at the centre of philosophical enquiry. He also demonstrates the rightful centrality of the concept of the horizon, all (...) too often viewed as an imprecise metaphor of tangential significance. His systematic analysis deploys both early and late work by Husserl, as well as hitherto unpublished manuscripts. Opening out the question to include that of the origins of the horizon, the book explores the horizon as philosophical theme or notion, as a figure of intentionality, and as a signification of one’s consciousness of the world—our ‘world-horizon’. It argues that the central philosophical significance of the problematic of the horizon makes itself apparent in realizing how this problematic enriches our philosophical understanding of subjectivity. Systematic, thorough, and revealing, this study of the significance of a core concept in phenomenology will be relevant not only to the phenomenological community, but also to anyone interested in the intersections of phenomenology and other philosophical traditions, such as hermeneutics and pragmatism.​. (shrink)

In Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology, Joseph J. Kockelmans provides the reader with a biographical sketch and an overview of the salient features of Husserl's thought. Kockelmans focuses on the essay for the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1928, Husserl's most Important effort to articulate the aims of phenomenology for a more general audience. Included are Husserl's text -- in the original German and in English translation on facing pages -- a synopsis, and an extensive commentary that relates Husserl's work as a (...) whole to the essay for the Encyclopedia. (shrink)

The author attempts to isolate the defining characteristic of the distinction between the transcendental and the transcendent in husserl and argues that it is found, Not in husserl's notion of reflection, But in his theory of constitution. Reflection is shown to be compatible with a transcendent interpretation of consciousness. Finally, Heidegger's phenomenology is shown to have rejected pure reflection but to have incorporated, Mutatis mutandi, A version of constitution.

This essay embarks on a thorough exploration of Edmund Husserl’s seminal contributions to the philosophical discourse on consciousness, with a particular focus on the dynamics of conscious decisions within the framework of phenomenology. By delving into Husserl’s nuanced examination of consciousness—its temporal structure, the nature of self-awareness, and the foundational concept of intentionality—the analysis reveals the intricate ways in which Husserl posits the transcendental ego as the nexus of meaning, judgment, and perception. The discussion illuminates how Husserl’s theory of (...) intentionality and the intentional act’s matter and quality serve as the cornerstone for understanding the will’s engagement with the world. Through a detailed exposition of Husserl’s ideas on the phenomenological reduction, the essay articulates the active role of consciousness in constituting reality and the ethical dimensions underpinning the exercise of free will. The paper argues that Husserl’s insights into conscious decision-making challenge conventional views by framing free will within the contexts of knowledge, ethical deliberation, and the ego’s autonomy. This essay contributes to the ongoing dialogue between phenomenology and contemporary philosophy of mind by highlighting Husserl’s profound impact on our understanding of consciousness, agency, and the existential significance of human decisions. (shrink)

This essay situates itself on the ground of a very powerful but as yet unanswered critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality and language proposed by Ernst Tugendhat. After suggesting the necessity of a dialogue between linguistic analysis and phenomenology, Tugendhat turns a critical eye toward Husserl. In the first section we reproduce his attack. Then in the second section we attempt to give a response to his critique from within the boundaries he has superimposed upon the discussion. In the (...) third and fourth sections, however, we attempt to enliven the problem by introducing several historical considerations which have been overlooked by Tugendhat and by taking the first steps toward reclaiming the productivity of language for genetic analysis. It is only when one makes this turn that Husserl’s notion of intentionality finds its solvency. (shrink)

Husserl's theory of the noema has precipitated much controversy, Especially following follesdal's 1969 paper, Yet many issues remain unsolved. This paper outlines aspects of method and experience relevant to a theory of noema, Describes various uses of the term 'noema' and thus sorts out two different levels of usage, And shows how this interpretation avoids difficulties raised by other commentators, Particularly in regard to maintaining a clear distinction between perceptual and linguistic experiences and their correlative noemata.

Although Husserl’s analyses of the unconscious are scattered throughout various writings, many of which have been published in Hua III/2, Hua VI, Hua X, Hua XI, Hua XV, Hua XVII, Hua XXXIX and _Experience and Judgment_, nowhere else has he addressed the unconscious in such fascinating detail as in the manuscripts collected in Hua XLII. The publication of this volume has made it patently clear that the unconscious has many meanings in Husserl. A clarification of the different ways in which (...) Husserl has spoken of the unconscious is still missing in the literature and it is much needed. With the aim of developing a taxonomy of the unconscious in Husserl, here I trace the different meanings Husserl has given to this concept and I argue that in his phenomenology, the unconscious can be understood at least in seven ways: as the horizonal unconscious, the time-constituting unconscious, the sedimented unconscious, the repressed unconscious, the absorbed unconscious, the dormant unconscious, and the instinctual unconscious. Besides articulating the essential features of each determination, I also clarify what they all share. With the aim of showing what is distinctive of Husserl’s approach to the unconscious, I offer some reflections on what differentiates Husserl’s phenomenology of the unconscious vis-à-vis Freud’s psychoanalysis. In general, I maintain that while it is a limit problem in phenomenology, the unconscious should also be considered a central phenomenological theme, for as Husserl’s reflections show, without offering a phenomenology of the unconscious, phenomenology can only operate with a preliminary and insufficient conception of consciousness. (shrink)

This article intends to research the passive/ active process of constitution in a way that shows the essential structures of passivity in consciousness (static phenomenology) and the active constitution through Ego’s acts (genetic phenomenology). However, as Husserl intends, according to Anthony Steinbock, this analysis will conduct to leading clues of constitution of meaning in a generative perspective, mainly in his future works. Although one is conscious of this static/genetic/generative phenomenology, I shall mainly concentrate on whether a true (...) judgment is possible. Henceforth, this work will pose some questions: Despite the fact that in passivity the essential structures of constitution face some modalization, whereby the livedexperience of otherwise springs forth, what kind of guarantee does it give for one’s judgments? And, if the Ego has its own way of givenness, in which it can actively intervene or be enticed somehow, how is it possibly a judicative certainty? These questions will be answered through the process of constitution itself. Therefore, this work will analyze the passive/ active structure of onstitution of meaning in experience, and how such experiences influence the judgment itself. The analysis will concentrate on the writings of Husserl from the 1920s and Husserliana XI, which were gathered in a single work by Anthony Steinbock. (shrink)

The evolution of Husserl’s thought did not follow a linear route. Time and again, crucial changes were taking place in its course. The content of fundamental concepts was shifting; successive discoveries of new thematics were happening; incessant expansions of the ever-under-rework teachings to new fields of application were being developed. The evaluation of Husserl’s work in its entirety becomes, thus, an extremely difficult task. The huge bulk of the writings, the multifariousness of their thematics, and the successive reforms and shifts (...) in it make the understanding of even the overall plan wherein the intermediate findings fall very difficult. One thing, though, is certain. In order to overcome all these obstacles to approaching Husserl’s work, we must first deepen our understanding of his method, the phenomenological method of philosophizing. Whatever is said in Husserl’s Phenomenology makes sense and has its value only to the extent that it is a result of ‘the’ phenomenological reduction. (shrink)

The text outlines some of the main theoretical-methodological procedures in Edmund Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. The first part offers a brief introduction to Husserl's general philosophical project. In the second part, the question of the phenomenological epoché is considered, as a first, negative procedure of the phenomenological reduction. A comparison is also made between the practice of epoché by Husserl and Descartes’ methodical doubt. The third part turns to the different types of reductions and examines the relationship between them.

This study clarifies the confusion concerning the purpose of Husserl's last major phenomenological treatise, Experience and Judgment, and presents his theory of categorical judgment.

This collection of essays by scholars from Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America offers new perspectives of the phenomenological investigation of experiential life on the basis of Husserl’s phenomenology. Not only well-known works of Husserl are interpreted from new angles, but also the latest volumes of the Husserliana are closely examined. In a variety of ways, the contributors explore the emergence of reason in experience that is disclosed in the very regions that are traditionally considered to be “irrational” (...) or “pre-rational.” The leading idea of such explorations is Husserl’s view that perception, affectivity, and volition are regarded as the three aspects of reason. Without affectivity, which is supposedly irrational, no rationality can be established in the spheres of representation and volition, whereas volitional and representational acts consistently structure the process of affective experience. In such a framework, it is also shown that theoretical and practical reason are inseparably intertwined. Thus, the papers collected here can be regarded as a collaborative phenomenological investigation into the entanglement and mutual dependency of the supposedly “rational” and the “irrational” as well as that of the “practical” and the “theoretical.”. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate an underappreciated element of Husserl’s phenomenology of images: the consciousness of the depicted subject, which Husserl calls the Sujetintention, e.g. the awareness of the sitter of a portrait. Husserl claims that when a consciousness regards a figurative image, it is absorbed in the awareness of the depicted subject and yet this subject some how withholds its presence in the midst of its appearance in the image-object. Image-consciousness is an intuitive consciousness that intends a being (...) that is both ‘in’ and ‘beyond’ the image: the depicted subject haunts the image. Borrowing Richard Wollheim’s language, the aim of this study is to determine what it means for a consciousness to see a depicted-subject in an image-depiction, which happens on the basis of seeing an image-object in a material image-thing, like paint, canvas, ink, paper etc. Restricting myself to figurative images, I will argue against the view that the relation to the depicted subject is symbolic or signitive. I argue that the consciousness of the Sujet is quasi-perceptual, which allows for a better account of the depicted subject’s sense of absence. I develop this view on the basis of Husserl’s claims that the depicted subject is the bearer of norms inherent to intuitive appearances, which concern how the profiles and movements of an object ought to unfold, though they fail to do so for image-consciousness. This failure is not a mere privation for the image as a perceptual appearance but is inherent to its status as a mediated and artificial presence. (shrink)

In this article, I will elaborate what kind of theory of subjectivity is implied in the practice of mindfulness. This article attempts to explain Husserl’s accounts of the constitution of selfhood (as the person) and of affection in our lifestream of consciousness to develop a more complete view of “who we are” in the practice of mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness provides a path to the well-being of the person’s emotional life. What underlies the practice of mindfulness is a particular (...) image of the human mind, which is not just a brain, but a whole person with a psychic life that includes various types of activity, passivity, and embodied emotion. Moreover, the person’s habituality can still be transformed through mental exercise. If we thoroughly understand the relevant relationships between attention, emotions, and affective feelings in our living experience, we can then further confirm, from the Husserlian phenomenological point of view, the benefits of practicing mindfulness for emotional regulation. Emotion is not only a matter of affective feeling, but is also cognitive and is combined with the function of reason. (shrink)

Horst Ruthrof revisits Husserl's phenomenology of language and highlights his late writings as essential to understanding the full range of his ideas. Focusing on the idea of language as imaginable as well as the role of a speech community in constituting it, Ruthrof provides a powerful re-assessment of his methodological phenomenology. From the Logical Investigations to untranslated portions of his Nachlass, Ruthrof charts all the developments and amendments in his theorizations. Instead of emphasising the definition and meaning of (...) words, Husserl's later writings point to the variation produced by a community of speakers in the act of communicating. Essential to this linguistic meaning is the intersubjective character that Ruthrof argues is so emblematic of Husserl's position. Using his concepts of intimation, introjection, reciprocity, and voice further outlines a theory that is intersubjective and communal. Bringing his study up to the present day, Ruthrof discusses metal time travel, the evolution of language, and protosyntax in the context of Husserl's late writings, progressing a comprehensive new phenomenological ontology of language with wide-ranging implications for philosophy, linguistics, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl gave his famous London Lectures (in German) in June 1922 where he says his purpose is to explain “transcendental sociological [intersubjective] phenomenology having reference to a manifest multiplicity of conscious subjects communicating with one another”. This effective definitionof semiotic phenomenology as Communicology was reported in English (1923) by Charles K. Ogden and I. A. Richards in the first book on the topic titled The Meaning of Meaning. This groundwork was in full development by 1939 with the (...) first detailed use of Husserl’s phenomenology to explicate human communication, i.e., the publication of Wilbur Marshal Urban’s Language and Reality. My paper addresses Urban’s use of Husserl’s philosophy toboth explicate the phenomenological method and to explore the constitutive elements of human communication and culture. Urban makes use of the workon language and culture by his famous colleagues at Yale University (USA): Edward Sapir (the linguist), Benjamin Lee Whorf (Sapir’s graduate student),and Ernst Cassirer. My own teacher at the University of New Mexico (USA) was Hubert Griggs Alexander, a doctoral student under Urban and a classmateof Whorf. The interdisciplinary focus on Culture and Communicology by Professors Cassirer, Sapir, Urban, and their doctoral students, Alexander and Whorf are collectively known as the “Yale School of Communicology.” Typical empirical examples of theoretical points are provided in the footnotes. (shrink)

The problem of the destruction of nature and the natural environment is one of the most serious problems that confronts humanity at the end of the twentieth century. This destruction has its basis in the dualistic way of thinking that has dominated the Modern age: Humanity has been accustomed to think of the world dualistically as a confrontation between subject and object, soul and body, and spirit and nature. Both Modern natural sciences and scientific technology in general are grounded in (...) such a dualistic way of thinking. But this way of thinking itself, in other words, the Modern dualistic paradigm, is now one of the most serious problems of present-day philosophy. It has become clear that a new relation between humanity and nature must be established. In this paper, I will re-examine the relationship between “nature” and “spirit” in the context of Husserl’s phenomenology in which, in my opinion, a new concept of nature can be found. In the course of this investigation, I shall try to elucidate the present-day situation of human spirit in a phenomenological way. (shrink)

Published in 1967, when Derrida is 37 years old, Voice and Phenomenon appears at the same moment as Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference. All three books announce the new philosophical project called “deconstruction.” Although Derrida will later regret the fate of the term “deconstruction,” he will use it throughout his career to define his own thinking. While Writing and Difference collects essays written over a 10 year period on diverse figures and topics, and Of Grammatology aims its deconstruction at (...) “the age of Rousseau,” Voice and Phenomenon shows deconstruction engaged with the most important philosophical movement of the last hundred years: phenomenology. Only in relation to phenomenology is it possible to measure the importance of deconstruction. Only in relation to Husserl’s philosophy is it possible to understand the novelty of Derrida’s thinking. Voice and Phenomenon therefore may be the best introduction to Derrida’s thought in general. To adapt Derrida’s comment on Husserl’s Logical Investigations, it contains “the germinal structure” of Derrida’s entire thought. Lawlor’s fresh translation of Voice and Phenomenon brings new life to Derrida’s most seminal work. (shrink)

To discover affects within Husserl’s texts designates a difficult investigation; it points to a theme of which these texts were forced to speak, even as they were explicitly speaking of regional ontologies and the foundations of sciences. For we may at first wonder: where can affection find a positive role in the rigor of a pure philosophy that seeks to account for its phenomena from within the immanence of consciousness? Does this not mean that the very passivity and foreignness of (...) affect will be overlooked; will it not be continually linked to a Vorstellung that issues as a ray of the pure ego? That is, will the phenomenological account of affect be reduced to the cognition of an object, as Emmanuel Levinas suggests? Yet there are affects in Husserl’s texts that maintain their autonomy and resist subsumption to an objectivating intentionality.We may see this in the Lectures On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time: in the longitudinal intentionality of retention, through which consciousness becomes aware of its elapsed phases without making them into objects—a passive synthesis that gives the flow of time-constituting consciousness the form of a continually deferred auto-affection.1We find it again as early as the fifth Logical Investigation, 2 providing us with the impetus to radicalize Husserlian phenomenology. (shrink)

후설 현상학에서 중심적 개념인 자율성은 개인적 자립이라는 의미 보다는 보편적 태도를 지닌 주체의 속성이라는 성격을 지닌다. 이 주체의 자율성의 실현을 위해 후설 현상학은 판단중지라는 현상학적 방법을 제시하는데, 이는 철저히 개인의 의지적 결단에 근거해 이루어진다. 그러나 이 의지적 결단이 개인적인 의지의 표현인 한 과연 이러한 판단중지를 통해 보편적 주체로서의 태도에까지 이를 수 있는지에 대해 논란이 생긴다. 여기서 판단중지가 일종의 태도 변경인 한, 태도 변경의 특징을 지닌 상상력이 판단중지의 바탕이 된다고 생각할 수 있다. 그리고 이러한 상상력은 순수 가상을 향한 인간의 자유의 능력으로서 (...) 인간을 세속적, 현실적 관심으로부터 순수 보편적 태도 내지 관심으로 전이시킬 수 있는 능력을 지니고 있다. 비록 후설은 판단중지와 상상력을 연관지어 논의하고 있지는 않지만, 후설의 상상력 이해에서 이러한 실마리를 찾을 수 있다. 또한 상상력과 자유를 연관시킨 사르트르와 상상력이 인간성의 질적인 변화를 일으킨다고 본 실러의 주장에서 이러한 주장을 정당화할 수 있는 보다 분명한 근거를 찾을 수 있다. 이를 통해 후설의 판단중지는 상상력을 바탕으로 인간을 보편적 태도를 취하는 자율적 존재로 이끌 수 있다고 볼 수 있다. (shrink)

Este artigo procura mostrar que,apesar de emergir de uma visão tradicional emetafísica da linguagem, a teoria husserliana dosignificado enquanto espécie ideal nas mvestigaçõesLógicas não é redutível a urna expressãolingüística de uma adequação essencialista erepresentacional, mas antes enfatiza o papel daintencionalidade, a idealidade da linguagem e ocaráter constitutivo da consciência no preenchimentoda "significação".

The title of this book is somewhat misleading. A more apt title would have been, "A Marxist Critique of Husserl’s Nullification of the Real World." Such a title would have made the central argument and underlying concern in the present discussion more explicit. The author is intent on a spirited refutation of Husserl’s phenomenology as a transcendental, phenomenological idealism. It is particularly this stage of Husserl’s phenomenological development, maintains Sang-Ki Kim, that effects a sacrifice of the real world. The (...) belated return to the life-world, characteristic of Husserl’s later thought, does not, according to the author, help matters much. Husserl’s analysis of the life-world continues to be informed by the anti-historical apriorism that defined his earlier program of phenomenological idealism. Husserl’s concept of the life-world thus remains a bloodless abstraction, bereft of any acknowledgement of the concrete, historical, naturalist-materialist basis that undergirds it. (shrink)

...In what follows I lay out Husserl's theory of epistemic justification as he sketches it in Part IV of 'Ideas 1', especially in the section he appropriately titles the "Phenomenology of Reason," understood here to present a phenomenological analysis of how reason is given, namely, how reason manifests itself in conscious life. My claim is that Husserl's "phenomenology of reason," by clarifying the ways in which the "legitimizations of reason" take place can be ultimately understood as a theory (...) of epistemic justification. The theory of epistemic justification discused here is a phenomenological account of the process whereby the thinking subject comes to regards particular beliefs as true and can give reasons to support this claim. (shrink)

The thesis of the dissertation is that Husserl's phenomenological analyses of the human body are important in assessing the claim that phenomenology provides the basis for a "transcendental idealism". The central role of these analyses is to reconcile the sense of consciousness as a world-creating transcendental synthesis and as an empirical self: if successful, Husserl's idealism could boast a sensitivity to the empirical that would significantly augment its plausibility. ;The argument begins by setting up the problem vis-a-vis the experience (...) of the other person. The issue at hand is how the body of the other person expresses the presence of a consciousness. Yet the question that guides the analysis is: if "consciousness" means a world-creating, transcendental synthesis , then in what sense can we speak of an empirical consciousness that belongs to the world, thus of a person standing before us ? Part of the answer, it is asserted, lies in the expressive nature of a person's body: that is, the human body is a concrete thing in the world that yet expresses the sense of consciousness as world-creating, thereby providing for it a "worldly", empirical manifestation. ;The main part of the dissertation is a presentation of Husserl's analyses of the human body, which is described as a threefold unity of extension, materiality, and time. An understanding of each of these dimensions provides a piece of the puzzle as to how the body of the other is expressive of consciousness. ;The study ends with the problem of phenomenology as a transcendental idealism. The conclusion is that, for Husserl, consciousness is the condition for the manifestation of the "world" only as an empirical, bodily consciousness. I believe the tenability of this position can be demonstrated through Husserl's phenomenology of the human body, where the body is understood as a special mode of the expression of consciousness. For these analyses, taken as a whole, lend to his idealism a subtlety that significantly boosts both its plausibility and the force of its presentation. (shrink)

While phenomenology and Yogacara Buddhism are both known for their investigations of consciousness, there exists a core tension between them: phenomenology affirms the existence of essence, whereas Yogacara Buddhism argues that everything is empty of essence (svabhava). How is constructive cultural exchange possible when traditions hold such contradictory views? -/- Answering this question and positioning both philosophical traditions in their respective intellectual and linguistic contexts, Jingjing Li argues that what Edmund Husserl means by essence differs from what Chinese (...) Yogacarins mean by svabhava, partly because Husserl problematises the substantialist understanding of essence in European philosophy. Furthermore, she reveals that Chinese Yogacara has developed an account of self-transformation, ethics and social ontology that renders it much more than simply a Buddhist version of Husserlian phenomenology. Detailing the process of finding a middle ground between the two traditions, this book demonstrates how both can thrive together in order to overcome Orientalism. (shrink)

Reflection is the basic attitude of transcendental phenomenology. However, as we shall see in this essay, prereflective experiencing may make a unique claim for philosophical foundations - albeit a claim which can only occur when mediated by reflection.

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 and to any simple form of act 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”. In this way, I hope to contribute to a refined characterization of Husserl’s phenomenology of imagination. (shrink)

This book fills an important gap in previous Husserl scholarship by focusing on intersubjectivity and empathy (i.e., the experience of others as other subjects) and by addressing the related issues of validity, the degrees of evidence with which something can be experienced, and the different senses of 'objective' in Husserl's texts. Despite accusations by commentators that Husserl's is a solipsistic philosophy and that the epistemologies in Husserl's late and early works are contradictory, Hermberg shows that empathy, and thus other subjects, (...) are related to one's knowledge on the view offered in each of Husserl's Introductions to Phenomenology. Empathy is significantly related to knowledge in at least two ways, and Husserl's epistemology might, consequently, be called a social epistemology: (a) empathy helps to give evidence for validity and thus to solidify one's knowledge, and (b) it helps to broaden one's knowledge by giving access to what others have known. These roles of empathy are not at odds with one another; rather, both are at play in each of the Introductions (if even only implicitly) and, given his position in the earlier work, Husserl needed to expand the role of empathy as he did. Such a reliance on empathy, however, calls into question whether Husserl's is a transcendental philosophy in the sense Husserl claimed. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a comparison between the philosophies of Husserl and James in relation to their concepts of experience. Whereas various authors have acknowledged the affinity between James’ early psychology and Husserl’s phenomenology, the late development of James’ philosophy is often considered in opposition to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. This is because James’ radical empiricism achieves a non-dual dimension of experience that precedes the functional division into subject and object, thus contrasting with the phenomenological analysis of the (...) dual structure of intentionality. However, I argue that the later “genetic” development of phenomenology converges with some central aspects of James’ radical empiricism. This is because genetic phenomenology leads us to conceive of the flow of primal impressions as a fundamental dimension of experience that precedes the subject-object duality and is at the base of the process of co-constitution of the subject and the object in reciprocal dependence. At the same time, Husserl conceives of the impressional core of experience as structured by formal conditions that depend on the concrete constitution of an embodied subject. For this reason, I argue that Husserl’s genetic phenomenology can complement James’ radical empiricism, thus leading to the development of the doctrine of pure experience as a form of empirical and not metaphysical realism. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to reconstruct Husserl’s two-pronged approach of sensory givenness. On the one hand, the phenomenological focus on intentional consciousness implies a virulent criticismof the positivistic myth of the sensory given. On the other hand, there is also a positive appeal to sensory givenness in phenomenology, without which phenomenology would not be worthy of its name and would, ultimately, be nothing other than a form of neo-Kantianism. In the context of transcendental genetic phenomenology, (...) Husserl manages to rehabilitate sensory givenness in a reduced, viz. demythologized form. This reconstruction of Husserl’s ambivalent reference to the given can help phenomenology defend itself against some actual trends, which tend to reduce it to phenomenalismor to conceptualism. (shrink)