In her introduction to this collection, Tymieniecka presents her phenomenology of life - the leitmotif of the three-volume anniversary publication of Analecta Husserliana - as something that stands out from preceding historical attempts to investigate life in an 'integral' or 'scientific' way. After an incubation lasting throughout the 2000 years of Occidental philosophy, this scientific phenomenology/philosophy of life at last uncovers the entire area of the 'inner workings of Nature', exposing the way in which the 'sufficient reason' and (...) the 'ground' of beingness as such crystallise out of the 'onto poietic' process. This onto-poietic process, continuing as it does in the human creative condition, also reveals the authentic genius of the works of the human spirit. This new and original philosophy, free of fallacious simplifications, speculations and reductionism, opens up a basic starting point for all philosophy. Life, 'the theme of our times', at last receives a profound philosophical treatment. (shrink)

This handsomely produced volume contains 22 contributions from international scholars, which were originally presented at the 2000 Conference of the International Society for Phenomenology, Fine Arts, & Aesthetics. The papers center around the theme of gardens and include a wide range of topics of interest to phenomenologists but also, perhaps, to gardeners with a philosophical bent. A sampling of topics: Leonardo's Annunciation Hortus Conclusus and its reflexive intent; hatha yoga--a phenomenological experience of nature; the Chinese attempt to miniaturize (...) the world in gardens; conflating and compressing time in commodified space and architecture; constructing the deconstructive landscape (the ruin aesthetic); and a phenomenological-anthropological aproach to Zen gardens. The volume is lightly indexed by name (mostly philosophers). Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com). (shrink)

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has (...) either its core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

One of the leading cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) proposes such experiences result from a disturbance in the process by which inner speech is attributed to the self. Research in this area has, however, proceeded in the absence of thorough cognitive and phenomenological investigations of the nature of inner speech, against which AVHs are implicitly or explicitly defined. In this paper we begin by introducing philosophical phenomenology and highlighting its relevance to AVHs, before briefly examining the (...) evolving literature on the relation between inner experiences and AVHs. We then argue for the need for philosophical phenomenology (Phenomenology) and the traditional empirical methods of psychology for studying inner experience (phenomenology) to mutually inform each other to provide a richer and more nuanced picture of both inner experience and AVHs than either could on its own. A critical examination is undertaken of the leading model of AVHs derived from phenomenological philosophy, the ipseity disturbance model. From this we suggest issues that future work in this vein will need to consider, and examine how interdisciplinary methodologies may contribute to advances in our understanding of AVHs. Detailed suggestions are made for the direction and methodology of future work into AVHs, which we suggest should be undertaken in a context where phenomenology and physiology are both necessary, but neither sufficient. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), well known as the founder of phenomenology and as the teacher of Heidegger, was unable to free himself from the framework of a classical metaphysics of subjectivity. Supposedly, he never abandoned the view that the world and the Other are constituted by a pure transcendental subject, and his thinking in consequence remains Cartesian, idealistic, and solipsistic. The continuing publication of Husserl’s manuscripts has made it necessary to revise such an interpretation. Drawing (...) upon both Husserl’s published works and posthumous material, Husserl’s Phenomenology incorporates the results of the most recent Husserl research. It is divided into three parts, roughly following the chronological development of Husserl’s thought, from his early analyses of logic and intentionality, through his mature transcendental-philosophical analyses of reduction and constitution, to his late analyses of intersubjectivity and lifeworld. It can consequently serve as a concise and updated introduction to his thinking. (shrink)

Steven Crowell has been for many years a leading voice in debates on twentieth-century European philosophy. This volume presents thirteen recent essays that together provide a systematic account of the relation between meaningful experience and responsiveness to norms. They argue for a new understanding of the philosophical importance of phenomenology, taking the work of Husserl and Heidegger as exemplary, and introducing a conception of phenomenology broad enough to encompass the practices of both philosophers. Crowell discusses Husserl's analyses (...) of first-person authority, the semantics of conscious experience, the structure of perceptual content, and the embodied subject, and shows how Heidegger's interpretation of the self addresses problems in Husserl's approach to the normative structure of meaning. His volume will be valuable for upper-level students and scholars interested in phenomenological approaches to philosophical questions in both the European and the analytic traditions. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of two articles that serve as an introduction to recent debates about cognitive phenomenology. Cognitive phenomenology can be defined as the experience that is associated with cognitive activities, such as thinking, reasoning, and understanding. What is at issue in contemporary debates is not the existence of cognitive phenomenology, so defined, but rather its nature and theoretical role. The first article examines questions about the nature of cognitive phenomenology, while the (...) second article explores the philosophical implications of these questions for the role of consciousness in theories of intentionality, introspective self-knowledge, and knowledge of the external world. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Spirit is both one of Hegel's most widely read books and one of his most obscure. The book is the most detailed commentary on Hegel's work available. It develops an independent philosophical account of the general theory of knowledge, culture, and history presented in the Phenomenology. In a clear and straightforward style, Terry Pinkard reconstructs Hegel's theoretical philosophy and shows its connection to ethical and political theory. He sets the work in a historical context (...) and shows the contemporary relevance of Hegel's thought for European and Anglo-American philosophers. The principal audience for the book is teachers and students of philosophy, but the great interest in Hegel's work and the clarity of Pinkard's exposition ensure that historians of ideas, political scientists, and literary theorists will also read it. (shrink)

This is the second in a series of two articles that serve as an introduction to recent debates about cognitive phenomenology. Cognitive phenomenology can be defined as the experience that is associated with cognitive activities, such as thinking, reasoning, and understanding. What is at issue in contemporary debates is not the existence of cognitive phenomenology, so defined, but rather its nature and theoretical role. The first article examines questions about the nature of cognitive phenomenology, while the (...) second article explores the philosophical implications of these questions for the role of consciousness in theories of intentionality, introspective self-knowledge, and knowledge of the external world. (shrink)

Resistance to the idea that phenomenology can be relevant to cognitive scientific explanation has faced two objections advanced, respectively, from both sides of the issue: from the scientific perspective it has been suggested that phenomenology, understood as an account of first-person experience, is ultimately reducible to cognitive neuroscientific explanation; and from a phenomenological perspective it has been argued that phenomenology cannot be naturalized. In this context it makes sense to consider that the notion of scientific reduction is (...) linked to a classic scientific conception of nature. I argue that if properly understood, the proposal to rethink the concept of nature itself, in enactivist phenomenological approaches, undermines the reductionist program and redefines what it means for phenomenology to be naturalized. (shrink)

The paper first addresses Husserl's conception of philosophical phenomenology, metaphysics, and the relation between them, in order to explain why, on Husserl's view, there is no metaphysics of consciousness without a phenomenology of consciousness. In doing so, it recalls some of the methodological tenets of Husserl's phenomenology, pointing out that phenomenology is an eidetic or a priori science which has first of all to do with mere ideal possibilities of consciousness and its correlates; metaphysics of (...) consciousness, on the other hand, has to do with its reality or actuality, requiring an eidetic foundation in order to become scientifically valuable. Presuming that, if consciousness is to be the subject-matter of a metaphysics which is not simply speculative or based on prejudice, it is crucial to get the phenomenology of consciousness right, the paper then engages in a detailed descriptive-eidetic analysis of mental acts of re-presenting something and tries to argue that their structures, involving components of non-actual experiencing, pose a serious problem for a materialistic or physicalistic metaphysics of consciousness. The paper ends with a brief comment on Husserl's broader view of metaphysics, having to do with the irrationality of the transcendental fact, i.e. the constitution of the factual world and the factual life of the mind. (shrink)

In this book Michael Heim provides the first consistent philosophical basis for critically evaluating the impact of word processing on our use of and ideas about language. This edition includes a new foreword by David Gelernter, a new preface by the author, and an updated bibliography. "Not only important but seminal, on the cutting-edge, furrowing new conceptual territory."-Walter J. Ong, S.J. "A philosopher ponders how the word processor has affected language use and our ideas about it. Heim shrewdly updates (...) a school of thought, associated with such thinkers as Walter Ong, that maintains all changes in writing technology tend to change the way we perceive the world. His argument that word processing leads to fragmented thinking should be addressed and debated."-Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer "The arguments range over all of Western philosophy, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary phenomenology.... Everyone who has used a word processor will find much to think about in Heim's ideas."-David Weinberger, Byte "Fascinating, clear, and well-done... stimulating and challenging."-Don Ihde, Philosophy and Rhetoric. (shrink)

In this article, I propose that illness is philosophically revealing and can be used to explore human experience. I suggest that illness is a limit case of embodied experience. By pushing embodied experience to its limit, illness sheds light on normal experience, revealing its ordinary and thus overlooked structure. Illness produces a distancing effect, which allows us to observe normal human behavior and cognition via their pathological counterpart. I suggest that these characteristics warrant illness a philosophical role that has (...) not been articulated. Illness can be used as a philosophical tool for the study of normally tacit aspects of human existence. I argue that illness itself can be integral to philosophical method, insofar as it facilitates a distancing from everyday practices. This method relies on pathological or limit cases to illuminate normally overlooked aspects of human perception and action. I offer Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the case of Schneider as an example of this method. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes two tasks. First, I unpack Husserl’s analysis of interest from his 1893 manuscript, “Notes Towards a Theory of Attention and Interest” to demonstrate that it comprises his first rigorous genetic analysis of attention. Specifically, I explore Husserl’s observations about how attentive interest is passively guided by affections, moods, habits, and cognitive tensions. In doing so, I reveal that the early Husserl described attention as always pulled forward to new discoveries via the rhythmic recurrence of tension and pleasure. (...) Second, I demonstrate that “Notes” is the germ of Husserl’s mature genetic phenomenology of attention. The 1893 analysis provides Husserl with all of the philosophical reasons and tools for the construction of his genetic account of attention in his late works. I then discuss how the disclosure of this novel subterranean link can prompt a rethinking of the development of phenomenology. (shrink)

Despite a recent surge in publications on Tourette Syndrome, we still lack substantial insight into first-personal aspects of “what it is like” to live with this condition. This is despite the fact that developments in phenomenological psychiatry have demonstrated the scientific and clinical importance of understanding subjective experience in a range of other neuropsychiatric conditions. We argue that it is time for Tourette Syndrome research to tap into the sophisticated frameworks developed in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology for (...) describing experience in a way that integrates discrete symptoms into an overarching experiential framework concerning the self, the body, and its modes of experience. Following a historical introduction that contextualises the pertinence of phenomenology to psychopathology, we distinguish this approach from the existing, psychologically oriented studies on TS that are also qualitative. We then outline gaps and opportunities for future research, including the sorts of questions that might be utilised in phenomenological interviews and why they are of potential benefit to research programs in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. In conclusion we address some of the broader implications for phenomenology of the body and philosophy of action. (shrink)

This book offers a radical new interpretation of Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, showing for the first time how the philosophical framework for his analysis of society was laid in the drafts of a philosophy of art that he planned but never completed before he converted to Marxism. Reading Lukács’s work through the so-called “Heidelberg Aesthetics” reveals for the first time a range of unsuspected influences on his thought, such as Edmund Husserl, Emil Lask, and Alois Riegl; it (...) also offers a theory of subjectivity within social relations that avoids many of the problems of earlier readings of his text. At a time when Lukács’s reputation is once more on the rise, this bold new reading helps revitalize his thought in ways that help it speak to contemporary concerns. (shrink)

Bachelard regarded the scientific changes that took place in the early twentieth century as the beginning of a new era, not only for science, but also for philosophy. For him, the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics had shown that a new philosophical ontology and a new epistemology were required. I show that the type of philosophy with which he was more closely associated, in particular that of Léon Brunschvicg, offered to him a crucial starting point. Brunschvicg never considered (...) scientific objects as independent of the mind, and as a consequence questions such as the existence of particles independently of the mind, theory or apparatus, were absent from his philosophy, which was rather aimed at analyzing the mind critically, and above all historically. Bachelard accepted the fundamental ideas of Brunschvicg’s philosophy; however, his own reading of contemporary science enabled him to go beyond it, as shown by his emphasis on the social production of knowledge, and by his removal of the distinction between ideas and technologically produced objects of knowledge. For him, modern science teaches philosophy that knowledge is not a phenomenology but rather a ‘phenomenotechnique’. I argue that Bachelard’s view that philosophy ‘should follow science’ stems from moral considerations.Keywords: Gaston Bachelard; Léon Brunschvicg; Phenomenotechnique; Chosisme; Theory of relativity; Quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The paper is a critical analysis of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of work as it is formulated in a number of essays from the 1950s and 60s. It begins with a reconstruction of the central theses advanced in ‘Travail et parole’ (1953) and related texts, where Ricoeur sought to outline a philosophical anthropology in which work is given its due. To give work its due, from an anthropological standpoint, is to see it as limited by counter-concept of language, according to (...) Ricoeur. The paper then argues that this way of understanding the anthropological significance of work is not only internally problematic, but at odds with phenomenological insights to be found elsewhere in Ricoeur’s oeuvre, particularly Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (1950). The final section of the paper makes some suggestions for how the phenomenological and anthropological poles of a philosophy of work might be better integrated, and the ‘nexus between speech and work’ better described. (shrink)

Bringing together established researchers and emerging scholars alike to discuss new readings of Husserl and to reignite the much needed discussion of what phenomenology actually is and can possibly be about, this volume sets out to critically re-evaluate the predominant interpretations of Husserl’s philosophy, and to adapt phenomenology to the specific philosophical challenges and context of the 21st century. “What is phenomenology?”, Maurice Merleau-Ponty asks at the beginning of his Phenomenology of Perception – and he (...) continues: “It may seem strange that this question still has to be asked half a century after the first works of Husserl. It is, however, far from being resolved.” Even today, more than half a century after Merleau-Ponty’s magnum opus, the answer is in many ways still up for grasp. While it may seem obvious that the main subject of phenomenological inquiry is, in fact, the subject, it is anything but self evident what this precisely implies: Considering the immense variety of different themes and methodological self-revisions found in Husserl’s philosophy – from its Brentanian beginnings to its transcendental re-interpretation and, last but not least, to its ‘crypto-deconstruction’ in the revisions of his early manuscripts and in his later work –, one cannot but acknowledge the fact that ‘the’ subject of phenomenology marks an irreducible plurality of possible subjects. Paying tribute to this irreducible plurality the volume sets out to develop interpretative takes on the phenomenological tradition which transcend both its naive celebration and its brute rejection, to re-articulate the positions of other philosophers within the framework of Husserl’s thought, and to engage in an investigative dialogue between traditionally opposed camps within phenomenology and beyond. (shrink)

Although there has been a great deal said about Husserl’s account of time-consciousness, little attention has been specifically paid to future-consciousness. This article gives an Husserlian account of future-consciousness. It begins by arguing that protention should be understood as a future-directed version of retention and so that future-consciousness should be understood as perception. This account is developed in two ways: the future need not be determinately given in protention and so future-consciousness can be vague; cases when the future turns out (...) to be other than we perceived it to be can be understood as temporal illusions. This account of future-consciousness both illuminates some of Husserl’s more obscure remarks on time-consciousness and provides a means of understanding an often neglected phenomenon of independent philosophical interest: our awareness of the future. (shrink)

The critique of pure sense data is a characteristic feature of contemporary philosophy, from Wittgenstein and Heidegger to Martha Nussbaum and Ernst Tugendhat. These authors variously call into question that the data of sensation should be taken as primordial. Other contemporary authors have responded to this general critique starting from considerations about the role of sensory states, often referred to as “qualia,” in our experiential awareness. In this paper, I suggest that the philosophy of science of Ernst Mach is especially (...) paradigmatic in that it displays in one same intellectual effort the presence of these two polarizing views in the philosophical discussion of the twentieth century. In Mach a radical biological and epistemic pragmatism coexists with the most extreme sensual elementism. I show that Mach is at the same time the proponent of a phenomenological lineage that Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, is aware to take up and continue. What I propose is that Husserl’s phenomenology emerges as true juncture between the extremes of sensualism and pragmatism by way of a recasting of the modern intentionalist conceptions of experience beyond any mentalist and realist paradigm. (shrink)

Winner of 2002 Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize In a penetrating and lucid discussion of the enigmatic relationship between the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Steven Galt Crowell proposes that the distinguishing feature of twentieth-century philosophy is not so much its emphasis on language as its concern with meaning. Arguing that transcendental phenomenology is indispensable to the philosophical explanation of the space of meaning, Crowell shows how a proper understanding of both Husserl and Heidegger reveals the distinctive (...) contributions of each to that ongoing phenomenological project. (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed a notable turn in philosophical orientation in the Nordic countries. For the first time, the North has a generation of philosophers who are oriented to phenomenology. This means a vital rediscovery of the phenomenological tradition as a partly hidden conceptual and methodological resource for taking on contemporary philosophical problems. The essays collected in the present volume introduce the reader to the phenomenological work done in the Nordic countries today. The material is organized (...) under three general headings: metaphysics, facticity, and interpretation. The first part, "Metaphysics", asks if phenomenology is, or could be taken as, a metaphysical inquiry. It studies this possibility in a systematic as well as in a historical perspective. The second part, "Facticity", focuses on the double character of the philosophizing subject, on the one hand, as a worldly being bound by a cultural and historical situation, and on the other hand, as the one who thinks this condition and gives it an interpretation. It studies four aspects of facticity in particular: language, dwelling, alterity, and generation. The third part, "Interpretation", clarifies the different notions of interpretation central to phenomenology, understood as hermeneutics. (shrink)

Classical phenomenology -- The transcendental tradition -- The logical investigations of the I -- From the I to the ego -- The grammar of the transcendental ego -- Strawson on the primacy of personhood -- Wittgenstein on the lure of words -- The grammar of the transcendental ego -- Zahavi on transcendental subjectivity as intersubjectivity -- Contemporary arguments for the transcendental ego : Marbach, Soffer -- Schutz, Theunissen on social phenomenology -- Husserl's later thought -- The multidiscipline of (...) dialogical phenomenology -- Sociolinguistics -- Personal pronouns : reconsidering the traditional view -- Egocentrism and polycentrism -- Person deixis and polycentrism -- Anscombe -- Wittgenstein -- Personal pronouns : reconsidering the traditional view -- I and we : a relational community -- Benveniste and I : you connectedness -- Objectification in the third person -- Castaneda's phenomeno-logic of the I -- Developmental perspectives -- Piaget's legacy -- Recent research on the sociality of children -- Proto-conversations in infancy -- The dialogic model of Jaffe and Feldstein -- From proto-conversation to conversation -- Perspectives from blindness and autism -- Polycentrism and personal pronoun acquisition: loveland and others -- An egocentric model of personal pronoun acquisition : Charney and others -- Philosophical implications and directions for future research -- Philosophy of dialogue -- Rosenstock-Huessy's grammatical method of social research -- Rosenzweig's speech-thinking -- Buber's I and you -- The primordial duality in Buber, Humboldt, Plato -- Buber and his critics -- Rosenstock-Huessy -- Levinas -- Dialogical phenomenology -- The dialogic dimension of meaning and experience -- The practice of phenomenology -- Implications for politics and feminism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to clarify under what conditions a philosophical problem arises. I will describe two ways in which we might perceive a question as a problem. First, when we fnd ourselves inclined to believe in propositions that appear incompatible with each other. Second, when we fnd ourselves inclined to believe in propositions that seem incompatible with our desires. I will discuss both of these cases and articulate a didactic strategy – the Clash Strategy – which (...) can be used in order to plan and facilitate dialogic inquiry in the classroom. This strategy suggests introducing stimuli that will help students appreciate the clash that drives the philosophical question to be explored during the dialogue. In summary, this paper aims to ofer insights to all teachers interested in promoting dialogic inquiry, whether philosophical or otherwise, in education. (shrink)

While there is no shortage of philosophical and theological occupations with the problem of evil and theodicy, the phenomenological basis from which the problem arises often gets lost in abstract accounts. In delimiting the case to physical pain, this article attempts to provide a perspective on the problem of evil following the lead from one of the problem’s sources. Through a phenomenological analysis of pain, the article highlights the inner tension that belongs to the experience of pain. This contradiction (...) can be traced on various levels: pain as sensational impression, as bodily occurrence, and as posing a question of meaning. This phenomenology of pain can provide a perspective on the origin and nature of the problem of evil: both why intellectual responses must arise and why it cannot reach an adequate solution. (shrink)

The literature on the work of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) abounds in specialized studies of various aspects of his philosophy - transcendental phenomenology. Yet there have been few attempts to present Husserl's philosophy as a whole. No wonder, for Husserl's mammoth literary output over some forty years and the highly diverse nature of his investigations have made it extremely difficult to make a broad survey of his work. Now one of the world's leading Husserl scholars presents a unified and critical (...) interpretation of Husserl's philosophical work from the only point of view from which its continuity can be grasped: method. The culmination of several decades of intense scholarly engagement with Husserl's phenomenology, her work reveals as no other the dynamic interplay between the development of Husserl's method and the thematic progression of his research. (shrink)

phenomenology and logical analysis. John Searle and Bert Dreyfus are for me two of the paradigm figures of contemporary philosophy, so I am extremely proud to have been offered the opportunity to engage with their work. The editors of The Harvard Review of Philosophy, it seems to me, have shown a keen sense of what is deep and important in our discipline by publishing extended interviews with these two influential thinkers. At the same time, writing this article meant entering (...) into a debate between Searle and Dreyfus about the priority of their respective philosophical methodologies, and this, I am afraid, is at best a no-win situation. My strategy, therefore, has been to try to engage as sympathetically as possible with the programs of each philosopher, and to draw from their work lessons that seem to me important for any philosophical account of intentionality and social reality. I have not shied away from criticism; indeed the whole paper is an extended series of criticisms of the work of both philosophers. But I hope they will recognize this for what it is: an engagement with the work of each that is based on the deepest respect and admiration. Before I jump into the fray, I should mention that I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Searle and Dreyfus as well. They were not only my two advisors in graduate school, but were the two main reasons I entered philosophy. Having become dissatisfied with the formal worlds of mathematics and computer science, their respective critiques of artificial intelligence and cognitivism showed me the rich possibilities of philosophy and struck me as a reason to become a philosopher. It is a difficult discipline, sometimes unforgiving; but I am glad I followed them into it. (shrink)

At the bedside, nurses are expected to be precise when they read indications on screens and on the bodies of patients and decide on the meaning of words framed by the context of acute care. In academia, although there is no incident report to fill when we misread or misrepresent complex philosophical ideas, the consequences of inaccurate reading include misplaced epistemological claims and poor scholarship. A long and broad convention of nursing phenomenological research, in its various forms, claims a (...) philosophical grounding in the ideas of Husserl, Heidegger, and other thinkers. But for nearly two decades, nurse phenomenologists' knowledge claims have been challenged by well‐informed criticisms, most notably by John Paley. At the heart of criticism lies an observation that Continental phenomenological thought is misrepresented in many nursing sources and that nursing phenomenology, both descriptive and interpretive, cannot appeal to the authority of either Husserl or Heidegger. Taking these criticisms seriously, I am asking, Is phenomenology after Paley possible? If misreading seems to be an issue, how can – or should – we read rigorously? My thinking through these questions is influenced by the ideas of Jacques Derrida. Under a condition of a play of language, of Derridian différance, when meaning is never self‐identical and never fully arrives, I suggest that one has to negotiate meanings through reading for differences. I develop this idea in relation to the methodological conventions of phenomenological nursing research and argue for a careful rereading of the whole field of phenomenological nursing research. Such rereading presupposes and necessitates interdisciplinary engagement between nursing and the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Greater familiarity with research practices of those disciplines that stress theoretical and writing rigour might make visible the limits of nursing research approaches and their quality criteria. An understanding of philosophical and theoretical works – a condition of quality scholarship – depends on our reading of both originary texts and contemporary literature from the humanities and the social sciences. This understanding, far from obliging researchers to always trace (often erroneously) their work to its philosophical roots, opens other, often more sound, methodological possibilities. (shrink)

The paper defends the thesis that phenomenological methods can play key role in explications of the transformation reasons of philosophical images of science. It can be made by the comparative analysis among phenomenology and other approaches revealing strong and weaknesses of separate approaches. Such principles of an explication of the transformation reasons of philosophical images of science were allocated: 1) the science is a set of the idealizing consciousness attitudes which allow to build images of the world (...) in borders of regional ontologies (or «particular ways of understanding of reality»);2) idealizing attitudes correspond to the comprehension of intentionality experiences structures; 3) the general transformation reason of images of science is the change of consciousness attitudes. (shrink)

This introduction presents a state of the art of philosophical research on cognitive phenomenology and its relation to the nature of conscious thinking more generally. We firstly introduce the question of cognitive phenomenology, the motivation for the debate, and situate the discussion within the fields of philosophy, cognitive psychology and consciousness studies. Secondly, we review the main research on the question, which we argue has so far situated the cognitive phenomenology debate around the following topics and (...) arguments: phenomenal contrast, epistemic arguments and challenges, introspection, ontology and temporal character, intentionality, inner speech, agency, holistic perspective, categorical perception, value, and phenomenological description. Thirdly, we suggest future developments by pointing to four questions that can be explored in relation to the cognitive phenomenology discussion: the self and self-awareness, attention, emotions and general the... (shrink)

Terence Horgan, George Graham and John Tienson argue that some intentional content is constitutively determined by phenomenology alone. We argue that this would require a certain kind of covariation of phenomenal states and intentional states that is not established by Horgan, Tienson and Graham’s arguments. We make the case that there is inadequate reason to think phenomenology determines perceptual belief, and that there is reason to doubt that phenomenology determines any species of non-perceptual intentionality. We also raise (...) worries about the capacity of phenomenology to map onto intentionality in a way that would be appropriate for any determiner of content/fixer of truth conditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Idea of a “Phenomenology of Spirit” by Michael N. ForsterGünter ZöllerMichael N. Forster. Hegel’s Idea of a “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. xi + 661. Paper, $30.00.Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) has remained an enigmatic and controversial work. Typically it has been studied and appropriated selectively, by focusing on a few topics or sections of this immense opus. There (...) are also several commentaries on all or part of the work that immerse the reader in plenty of detail, but often with insufficient attention paid to the work’s overall design. Forster’s book is thematically focused but has sufficient scope to provide the reader with an overall orientation about the Phenomenology. Moreover, it is written in a clear, accessible language, with plenty of genuinely philosophical material to balance the more narrowly exegetical aspects of the study. Forster’s work stands in the tradition of a number of German and French studies that seek to unravel the “genesis and structure” (Hyppolite) of the Phenomenology as a key to understanding and assessing the import of Hegel’s singular work. Forster discusses those earlier readings, subjects them to a thorough critique, and develops original positions on a number of key issues in scholarship on the Phenomenology.The entire first half of the book (Parts One and Two) is concerned with the “official project of the Phenomenology,” which Forster reconstructs as three sets of philosophical tasks. First are the pedagogical tasks designed to introduce the reader to the superior viewpoint of Hegel’s system and its ability to overcome the ills specific to modern culture. In particular, Hegel is shown to further advance Herder’s and Schiller’s philosophical project of replacing the multiple, unreconciled dualisms of the modern intellectual and moral outlook with a unified, monistic account of natural and social reality. In a strong interpretive move, Forster attributes a naturalism of sorts to Hegel’s integrationist account of mind and body or self and world.Second are the epistemological tasks designed to justify the cognitive claims of Hegel’s [End Page 541] system (“science”) against those of all other philosophical and popular viewpoints. In particular, Forster shows Hegel’s indebtedness to the ancient (Pyrronic) skeptical strategy of equipollence, i.e., the method of setting into opposition equally strong arguments on both sides of any issue and thereby producing an equal balance of justification on all sides of the issue. Of all possible viewpoints only Hegel’s own, which is not subject to any external opposition, eludes the scope of the method of equipollence.The third, specifically metaphysical set of tasks of the Phenomenology centers around the work’s social and (on Forster’s reading) naturalist conceptions of God, meaning and truth, in which transcendent warrants are replaced by communal consensus. Forster concludes the first half of his study with a detailed consideration of the relation between the Phenomenology and Hegel’s system proper. He stresses that the work is only the “appearance” (Erscheinung) of the philosophical science itself and that it remains systematically independent of the latter.Part Three examines the role of history and historicism in the Phenomenology. Forster distinguishes between teleological or normative historicism and intellectual or descriptive historicism, and limits his investigation to the latter as the philosophically defensible of the two enterprises. He argues extensively for a one-to-one correlation between the various “shapes of consciousness” to be found in the core of the Phenomenology (from the chapter on Consciousness through the chapter on Reason) and specific periods in human history. This chronological history of consciousness is shown to be supplemented by two further accounts of the history of consciousness (in the chapter on Spirit and in the chapters on Religion and Absolute Knowledge, respectively), in which the first history’s focus on individual consciousness is enlarged to include supra-individual mind (“spirit”).In Part Four Forster explains the tripling of the history of consciousness with a shift in the plan of the Phenomenology, away from the more limited project of the original or “Ur-Phenomenology”—to lead individual consciousness to the viewpoint of (Hegelian) science—to the more ambitious goal... (shrink)

This is the first book-length philosophical study of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The book investigates the possibility for Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology to clarify Freud’s concept of the unconscious with a focus on the theory of repression as its centre. Repression is the unconscious activity of pushing something away from consciousness, while making sure that it remains active as something foreign within us. How this is possible is the main problem addressed in the (...) work. Unlike previous literature (including Ricœur, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida) this book makes full use of the resources of genetic phenomenology and passivity in the attempt to clarify the Freudian unconscious. The central argument developed is that the structure of the lebendige Gegenwart as the core of Husserl’s theory of passivity consists of preliminary forms of bodily kinaesthesia, feelings and drives in a constantly ongoing process where repression occurs as a necessary part of all constitution. The clarification of Freudian repression thus takes place by showing how it presupposes a broad conception of consciousness such as that presented by Husserl’s genetic phenomenology. By arguing that “repression” is central to any philosophical account of subjectivity, this book takes on the most distinct challenge to philosophy posed by Freud. (shrink)

This book investigates the concept of body shame and explores its significance when considering philosophical accounts of embodied subjectivity, providing phenomenological reflections on how the body is shaped by social forces.

The concept of space has always been a fundamental theme and issue since the beginning of philosophy and abstract thinking in ancient Greece, and has been fundamentally change due to cultural-historical changes of spatiality throughout the history of knowledge. At the beginning of philosophy, there was a metaphysical question about the beginning or the first cause of all things, to which the concept of space, as a fundamental concept, is the answer. The main lines of philosophical discourse in ancient (...) Greece, which flowed in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, were conceived in the context of Euclid's geometry and Ptolemy's worldview. In the modern era, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant tried to conceptually influence space with Copernican rotation and Newtonian physics. Finally, spatial imagery is challenged by the application of physiological problems through non-Euclidean geometry, and especially through phenomenology. Hence, the opening of phenomenological concepts in philosophy and other disciplines that focus on the concept of space could be of interest to researchers in the foundations of phenomenology. Therefore, the aspect of effort in this article is the descriptive analytical development of the opinions of three expert phenomenologists on space. These three philosophers base their theories on a critique of the way of speaking on space. This approach taken by Descartes and Newton has been completed in recent times. In this article, we discuss the philosophical foundations of these philosophers. We discuss the space with each of these three philosophers in terms of a key concept in their philosophical system. Therefore, for Cassirer, we discuss the concept of symbolic spaces, for Heidegger, the concept of being-in-the-world, and for Schmitz, the concept of surfaceless space and felt-bodily space. (shrink)

G. W. F. Hegel's first masterpiece, the Phenomenology of Spirit, is one of the great works of philosophy. It remains, however, one of the most challenging and mysterious books ever written. Michael Inwood presents this central work to the modern reader in an intelligible and accurate new translation. This translation attempts to convey, as accurately as possible, the subtle nuances of the original German text. Inwood also provides a detailed commentary that explains what Hegel is saying at each stage (...) of his argument and also discusses the philosophical issues it raises. This volume will therefore prove invaluable to those who want to get to grips with Hegel's thought processes and to follow his complex argument. (shrink)

In the first in-depth philosophical study of the subject, Nicholas Gier examines the published and unpublished writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, to show the striking parallels between Wittgenstein and phenomenology. Between 1929 and 1933, the philosopher proposed programs that bore a detailed resemblance to dominant themes in the phenomenology of Husserl and some “life-world” phenomenologists. This sound, thoroughly readable study examines how and why he eventually moved away from it. Gier demonstrates, however, that Wittgenstein’s phenomenology continues as (...) his “grammar” of the post-1933 works, which continue to present instructive parallels with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

Phenomenological studies of human experience are a vital component of caring professions such as counseling and nursing, and qualitative research has had increasing acceptance in American psychology. At the same time, the debate continues over whether phenomenology is legitimate science, and whether qualitative approaches carry any empirical validity. Ashworth and Chung’s Phenomenology and Psychological Science places phenomenology firmly in the context of psychological tradition. And to dispel the basic misconceptions surrounding this field, the editors and their seven (...) collaborators trace the evolution of phenomenological philosophy (including the work of Sartre and Heidegger) and its parallel impact on psychological science, revealing key points of compatibility: -The phenomenological roots of mainstream psychology -Controversies within phenomenology on the nature of consciousness -Existentialist currents in contemporary psychology -The value of qualitative methods in science-based practice -Applications of phenomenology in case conceptualization and therapy -Possibilities for qualitative-based research. The unique presentation of its subject makes this volume a source of considerable interest for readers involved in theoretical and historical psychology. It will also prove to be important reading for the professional or advanced student concerned with the search for meaning that unites philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

This excellent collection contains 13 essays from Gadamer'sKleine Schriften,dealing with hermeneutical reflection, phenomenology, existential philosophy, and ...

The first phase of Sartre’s philosophical publications is marked by an apparent ambivalence towards Husserl’s transcendental turn. Sartre accepts both major aspects of that turn, the phenomenological reduction and the use of transcendental argumentation. Yet his rejection of the transcendental ego that Husserl derives from this transcendental turn overlooks an obvious transcendental argument in favour of it. His books on emotion and imagination, moreover, make only very brief comments about the transcendental constitution of the world of experience. In each (...) case, these appear at the end of the book and can seem to contradict the book’s central analysis. The problem underlying these features of his works of phenomenological psychology is clarified and resolved, however, when Sartre articulates his own transcendental phenomenology and ontology in Being and Nothingness a decade after he first encountered the work of Husserl. This resolution raises a new problem that animates the next phase of his philosophy. (shrink)

This article tries to unravel some of the main clues provided by Ortega on his understanding of philosophy. The thesis we defend is that the Spanish philosopher maintains two slightly different answers concerning the question what is philosophy, though Ortega does not acknowledge them in the explicit narrative of his thinking. This, we believe, creates tensions in his late second philosophical model, as he does not fully break away from certain “adherence” or “mannerisms” associated to his early model. In (...) this respect, Ortega would be a thinker who lives between two philosophical worlds, someone who sees, narrates and interprets the philosophical shock wave occurring at his time, but does not quite let go of the old intellectual constructions. To support our thesis, we will compare two texts, his 1929 lectures What is Philosophy?, and his Notes on Thinking, from 1941. In the period between these two works, Ortega seems to move from a more “traditional,” “universalistic,” “transcendental,” in short, Husserlian phenomenological understanding of philosophy, to a more historicist, hermeneutical, and pragmatic one, which lays the emphasis on the plurality of discourses on the sense, the contingency of the philosophical narrative itself, and even the very possibility of its ending, at least in its more “metaphysical” and classical form. (shrink)

This article reflects on the current philosophical tendency to construct non-dualistic subjectivity models in response to the criticism of the traditional authoritarian human subject. Following thinkers such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida, the literature has largely identified traditional metaphysics based on dualistic hierarchies as the major source of violence. Perceiving phenomenology as a method that focuses on the concepts of the lived experience and situatedness, I combine this approach with the feminist calls for dismantling the (...) hierarchical relationship of subjectivity to the world. I draw on the concepts of Sonia Kruks, Linda Martin Alcoff, Sara Heinämaa, Judith Butler, Bonnie Mann and Johanna Oksala to inquire how dualism-overcoming phenomenology can be applied to feminist thought. I focus in particular on the approach that Oksala outlines in her book, Feminist Experiences: Foucauldian and Phenomenological Investigations, where she proposes a transcendental view on feminist experience. Intriguingly, she understands transcendental as situated – historically, culturally and politically. Consequently, my final question concerns the possibility of combining the two usually conflicted approaches: transcendental and historical regarding the fundamental phenomenological distinction between the empirical and the transcendental. (shrink)

Critically evaluating and synthesizing all the previous research on the phenomenology of Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, the book brings a new voice into contemporary philosophical discussions. It elucidates the development of Patočka’s phenomenology and offers a critical appropriation of his work by connecting it with non-phenomenological approaches. The first half of the book offers a succinct, and systematizing, overview of Patočka’s phenomenology throughout its development to help readers appreciate the motives behind and grounds for its transformations. (...) The second half systematically explicates, critically examines and creatively develops Patočka’s concept of the movement of existence as the most promising part of his asubjective phenomenology. The book appeals to new readers of Patočka as well as his scholars, and to students and researchers of contemporary philosophy concerned with topics such as embodiment, personal identity, intersubjectivity, sociality, or historicity. By re-assessing Patočka’s philosophy of history and his civilizational analysis, it also helps to better articulate the question of the place of Europe in the post-European world. (shrink)

This paper seeks to reconstruct the possible steps followed by Hegel toward his Phenomenology of Mind. Taking into account the historical variants of the process, this paper will try to determine the meaning and the relationship between these variants and the philosophical consolidation of the book. The development of the text does not follow a linear evolution, but rather shows unexpected but comprehensible continuities and ruptures. These contingencies will be decisive for some of the main formulations of the (...) book itself, showing it as a “result” in the more Hegelian sense of the word: as that which is intrinsically linked to its becoming. (shrink)

Being Human is the fruit of many years teaching Philosophical Anthropology, conducting Phenomenological Workshops, and reading classic texts in the light of a reflective awareness of the field of experience. Being Human is intended to look to what is typically assumed but not examined in much of current philosophical literature.

The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the birth of two distinct philosophical schools in Europe: analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The history of 20th-century philosophy is often written as an account of the development of one or both of these schools, as well as their overt or covert mutual hostility. What is often left out of this history, however, is the relationship between the two European schools and a third significant philosophical event: the birth and development of (...) pragmatism, the indigenous philosophical movement of the United States. Through a careful analysis of seminal figures and central texts, this book explores the mutual intellectual influences, convergences, and differences between these three revolutionary philosophical traditions. The essays in this volume aim to show the central role that pragmatism played in the development of philosophical thought at the turn of the twentieth century, widen our understanding of a seminal point in the history of philosophy, and shed light on the ways in which these three schools of thought continue to shape the theoretical agenda of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

A crucial philosophical problem of social robots is how much they perform a kind of sociality in interacting with humans. Scholarship diverges between those who sustain that humans and social robots cannot by default have social interactions and those who argue for the possibility of an asymmetric sociality. Against this dichotomy, we argue in this paper for a holistic approach called “Δ phenomenology” of HSRI. In the first part of the paper, we will analyse the semantics of an (...) HSRI. This is what leads a human being to assign or receive a meaning of sociality by interacting with a social robot. Hence, we will question the ontological structure underlying HSRIs, suggesting that HSRIs may lead to a peculiar kind of user alienation. By combining all these variables, we will formulate some final recommendations for an ethics of social robots. (shrink)