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Phenomenology and Naturalism: Editors' Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2013

Abstract

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Type
Introduction
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2013

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References

1 For an overview of naturalism see Ritchie, J., Understanding Naturalism (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2008)Google Scholar; for a critical view of stronger, scientific naturalism see De Caro, M. and Macarthur, D. (eds.), Naturalism in Question (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. For a detailed survey of phenomenology see Moran, D., Introduction to Phenomenology (London & New York: Routledge, 2000)Google Scholar; Overgaard, S. and Luft, S. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Phenomenology (London & New York: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar.

2 ‘For we are brought to the conclusion that we can never transcend the limits of possible experience, though this is precisely what this science [metaphysics] is concerned above all else to achieve. This situation yields, however, just the very experiment by which, indirectly, we are enabled to prove the truth of this first estimate of our a priori knowledge of reason, namely that such knowledge has only to do with appearances, and must leave the thing in itself as indeed real per se, but as not known by us.’ Kant, I.. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Smith, N. Kemp (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1965)Google Scholar, Bxix-xx

3 Husserl, E., Cartesian Meditations (Dordrecht: Kluwer 1999 [1931]), 20Google Scholar. See also, ‘I ask now: Can we not attain an attitude of such a kind that the empirical, being the characteristic of givenness of the natural attitude, remains completely disengaged, and indeed in such a way that also its essence as essence of nature remains disengaged, while, on the one hand, components that enter into the essence of nature or, to be more precise, that enter into nature itself in individuo, are maintained […] We put in brackets, as it were, every empirical act, which may rush forward, so to speak, or which we enacted a short while ago. In no way do we accept what any empirical act presents to us as being.’ Husserl, E., The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Farin, I. and Hart, J.G. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006)Google Scholar, 32; 39.

4 Husserl, E., The Crisis of the European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. Carr, D. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970)Google Scholar, 31

5 ‘In geometrical and natural-scientific mathematization, in the open infinity of possible experiences, we measure the life-world – the world constantly given to us in our actual concrete world-life – for a well-fitting garb of ideas […] It is through the garb of ideas that we take for true being what is actually a method […]’ (Husserl, Crisis, 51), see also, Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Landes, D.. (New York and London: Routledge 2012)Google Scholar, lxxii.

6 Melle, Ullrich, ‘Husserl's Personalistic Ethics’, Husserl Studies 23 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 3.

7 Merleau-Ponty is often thought to be the phenomenologist who sought to reconcile phenomenological method with that of the natural sciences. However, as Thomas Baldwin demonstrates in his contribution to this volume Merleau-Ponty maintained (in his two main works The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception) a critical and perhaps unjustifiably prejudiced attitude toward the natural sciences, despite his frequent use of examples drawn from scientific literature. In his later lectures on the concept of Nature, Merleau-Ponty again seems to draw heavily on the work of the natural sciences, but a close inspection reveals that he is most pleased with the sciences, or finds their ontological discoveries valid when scientists are, in his view, finally behaving like phenomenologists (Lorenz and von Uexküll being the two primary examples). This holds to Husserl's contention that biology is the closest of all the natural sciences to transcendental phenomenology, a claim that Merleau-Ponty introduces in his later lectures. See, E. Husserl, Krisis, Beilage XXIII, trans. Keane, Niall, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 44 (2013)Google Scholar 6–9; and Meacham, Darian, ‘Biology, the Empathic Science’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 44 (2013)Google Scholar 10–24.

8 Husserl, E., Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, second book, trans. Rojcewicz, R. and Schuwer, A. (Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1989), 176CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Merleau-Ponty, M., Husserl at the Limits of Phenomenology, trans. Bergo, B. and Lawlor, L. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 76.

10 Heidegger, M., Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962[1927])Google Scholar.

11 Husserl, E., Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989 [1952])CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See Husserl, E., Experience and Judgment trans. Churchill, J. S. and Ameriks, K., (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 4151Google Scholar.

13 Thanks to Iain Hamilton Grant for suggesting this phrase.

14 ‘This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.’ Baruch Spinoza in a letter to G.H. Schaller (1674)

15 Although this line of approach to the problem probably can be traced back, at least in its contemporary form, to Nagel, Thomas's seminal paper ‘What is it like to be a bat?The Philosophical Review 83 (1974), 435450CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Chalmers, David, ‘Facing up to the Problem of ConsciousnessJournal of Consciousness Studies 2 (1995), 200Google Scholar.

17 Schelling, F.W.J., The Grounding of Positive Philosophy trans. Matthews, B. (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2008)Google Scholar, 203n.

18 Thanks also to Iain Hamilton Grant and to Michael Wheeler for helpful comments on the introduction.