Abstract
The characteristic feature of phenomenology is the phenomenological constraint it exerts on its concepts: they should be embodied in concrete cases. Now, one might take that that possible match between concepts and the given would require some ontological foundation: as if the general determination provided by the concept should correspond to a particular piece of given to be found in the object itself as an abstract ‘moment’. Phenomenology would then call for an ontology of abstract particulars. Against such view, the author advocates that such ontological foundation is flawed in principle, and that phenomenology as such does not call for any particular ontology: phenomenology rather introduces some kind of phenomenological constraint on the very way of ontological analysis. In order to determine what one can say to be in particular circumstances, one has to consider what one usually says to be in that kind of circumstances: on this alternative view, ontology rests on examples, as paradigmatic applications of concepts. The phenomenological move consists in disclosing how the very content of concepts depends on the ways they are applied, rather than what would be supposed to ‘correspond’ to them would depend on their alleged content—as if the latter was independent of any previous connection with the given.
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Notes
Merleau-Ponty ( 1958 , p. 73).
See, for instance, the entry ‘Tropes,’ by John Bacon, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tropes/).
One might think, for instance, on the other side of the Channel, of Cook Wilson.
Edmund Husserl, “Intuition and Repräsentation, Intention and Fulfilment” (=Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana XXII, Aufsätze und Rezensionen (1890–1910), edited by B. Rang. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff 1979), Engl. Transl.: Husserl (1994, p. 328). We are substituting ‘presentations’ for ‘representations’ in Dallas Willard’s translation. With Husserl’s emphasis on presence, it makes better sense.
Husserl (1994, p. 328–329).
Husserl (1994, p. 329).
This is the story of the step from the Studies of 1894 to the IIIrd Logical Investigation, and (see that IIIrd Logical Investigation, §§5–7) from Stumpf’s psychological perspective on dependence and independence to Husserl’s final ontological perspective on the same issue.
It is not only an ontological, but also a phenomenological truth of which Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology made the most.
Husserl ( 1994 , p. 329).
Husserl (1994, p. 342).
We take that example from Charles Travis (see among others, 2000), who inspires our critical analysis of the metaphysics of properties. As a matter of fact, we take Travis’s perspective, in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, to be the real phenomenological view.
Austin ( 1961 , p. 122).
References
Austin, John L. 1961. Philosophical papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bacon, John. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tropes. Accessed 28 Feb 2008.
Husserl, Edmund. 1994. Early Writings in the Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics. (trans Willard, D.). Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1958. Phenomenology of Perception (English trans Smith, C.). London: Routledge.
Travis, Charles. 2000. Unshadowed thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Benoist, J. Making ontology sensitive. Cont Philos Rev 45, 411–424 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-012-9228-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-012-9228-7