Abstract
An overview of the development of phenomenology in America, 1964-1984, within the philosophical context of the time, including the academic practices and politics of the time. Examination is made of the different practices of Anglophone analytic philosophy and European continental, including phenomenological practices. A tracing of the beginnings of the institutionalization of phenomenology related philosophy in relation to the then dominant analytic philosophical dominance with specific references to academic locations, graduate education and growth patterns is described.
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Notes
- 1.
Originally published as: “Introduction. Phenomenology in America (1964–1984)”, in “Consequences of Phenomenology”, State University of New York Press, Albany 1986.
What Rorty terms the Analytic-Continental split is in fact deeper, particularly in its political ramifications. In recent years what has become known as the Pluralist Movement has grown to a significant challenge to the largely analytic dominance of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. This movement had its origin in the controversies surrounding the State Education Department reviews of doctoral programs in New York State. While I cannot quote from the documents I am referring to it is well known that the rating committees made the claim that phenomenologists in particular were not qualified to teach in such areas as philosophy as metaphysics, epistemology or ethics because their only “area” was phenomenology. This gross misunderstanding may have been the result of cultivated ignorance or deliberate political intention, but often remains institutionalized in APA classifications. (Phenomenology, like analytic philosophy, is a way of doing philosophy—but the subject matter in either case may be ethics, epistemology or metaphysics, etc.).
- 2.
Richard Rorty. 1982. Consequences of Pragmatism Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 223–224.
- 3.
Adolf Grünbaum. 1983. Freud’s Theory: ThePerspective of a Philosopher of Science, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. September, 57: 5–31.
- 4.
During my graduate years in the Boston area, with the exception of John Wild in his last years at Harvard, there was virtually no phenomenology taught. Sam Todes and Hubert Dreyfus were, however, instructors at M.I.T. where I initially met them.
- 5.
Both phenomenology and positivism were originally dominated by refugee scholars. In an excellent study, Lewis Coser has traced this development in philosophy. Herbert Feigle, Hans Reichenbach, Rudolph Carnap, Carl Hempel, Kurt Goedel, Are but some of the names in this list. Similarly, refugees were among the first to bring phenomenology to this country. See Lewis Coser, Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). Interestingly, the same phenomenon applies to France —early phenomenology there was taught primarily by refugees from Germany and Eastern Europe. See Bernard Waldenfels, Phaenomenologie in Frankreich (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1983).
- 6.
Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, Volume II (Den Haag, Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), pp. 626, 627.
- 7.
A much more thorough account of Farber’s influence may be found in “Marvin Farber’s Contribution to the Phenomenological Movement: an International Perspective” by Helmut R. Wagne, in Philosophy and Science in Phenomenological Perspective, edited by Kah Kyung Cho (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), 205–236. It may be noted that Cho, educated and primarily published in Germany, today is Farber’s virtually sole phenomenological successor at SUNY Buffalo.
- 8.
Gurwitsch did not actually move to the New School until 1959—thus even this center barely gelled before the Sixties.
- 9.
Lewis Coser, Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 297.
- 10.
Hugh Silverman has, as much as anyone, called notice to the Americans in the recent generations of phenomenology. In a 1980 article, “Phenomenology”, Social Research, Winter 1980, Vol. 47, no. 4, he traces a history much broader than the one I am undertaking here. But of particular interest is his own characterization of those phenomenologists who began developments here. I quote in anticipation of my own list to follow:
«Still others conducted their research entirely within an American context. In following the program set by Husserl and his existential successors, these philosophers examined specific issues or questions. Instead of opening up whole domains of research, they apportioned their concerns by addressing precise topics, such as language (James M. Edie), embodiment and its implications for medicine (Richard Zaner), the human senses and their equipment (Don Ihde), the libidinal expressions of the body (Alphonso Lingis), imagination and memory (Edward S. Casey), the passions (Robert C. Solomon), the history of philosophy (John Sallis), autobiographical consciousness and objectivity (William Earle), freedom, being and the human sciences (Calvin O. Schrag), the foundations of the social sciences (Maurice Natanson), and so on, pp. 713–714».
Hugh Silveman is also the author of a second brief study, “The Continental Face of Philosophy in America”, Philosophy Today, Winter 1983, 275–280.
- 11.
Janice Moulton, quoted by Rorty, in “Consequences of Pragmatism”, 230.
- 12.
Although humanists tend to be unaware of it, much interesting information may be found in both the Humanities and Social Science citation indices. One can find who and what is being discussed (beware self-citers for inflationary tendencies). Careful inspection will show not only what writers are currently being cited, but from what quarters. For example, certain AEE philosophers are cited almost entirely within a small set of philosophy journals, in contrast to most well known ACE philosophers who are sometimes even dominantly cited interdisciplinarily.
- 13.
Giants are easily recognized in the Indices since their citations occupy several columns. Silverman makes one of the criteria of philosophical style what he calls “reference texts”. Of ACE writers he notes, “The reference texts tend to be quite determinate and distinctively different from those of analytic philosophies”. “The Continental Face of Philosophy in America”, p. 278. One might add that too often these reference texts are in effect, reverence texts!
- 14.
Since the movement to pluralize the Eastern Division of the APA opened both the nomination committee and the presidency to elections, there have been three non-analytic results in the last few years. John Smith and Quentin Lauer and Joseph Kockelmans have achieved this elective status.
- 15.
James Edie in an address to the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Saint Louis, 1983, scheduled to appear in Research in Phenomenology, Volume XIV.
- 16.
Because I am concentrating upon American “Continentals”, I have not mentioned some of the frequent and even regular visitors from the Continent, some of whom serve as the primary or only such representative in certain universities. Dieter Hendrich at Harvard, Dagfinn Foellesdal at Stanford are examples.
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Ihde, D. (2019). Phenomenology in America (1964–1984). In: Ferri, M.B. (eds) The Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99185-6_21
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