Table Of ContentDialogues in Phenomenology
SELECTED STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY
AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY
5
GENERAL EDITOR
RICHARD M. ZANER (Southern Methodist University)
BOARD OF EDITORS:
DAVID CARR (Yale University)
EDWARD S. CASEY (Yale University)
HUBERT DREYFUS (University of California at Berkeley)
JAMES EDIE (Northwestern University)
DON IHDE (State University of New York at Stony Brook)
MAURICE NATANSON (University of California at Santa Cruz)
ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI (The Catholic University of America)
Dialogues in Phenomenology
EDITED BY
DON IHDE RICHARD M. ZANER
AND
•
MARTINUS NI]HOFF I THE HAGUE I 1975
© 1975 by Martinus NijhoJf, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN-J3: 978-90-247-1665-4 e-ISBN-J3: 978-94-010-16/5-5
DO;: /0.1007/978-94-0/0-/6/5-5
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
SECTION ONE
DIALOGUE WITH ANALYSIS
JACQUES DERRIDA, The Copula Supplement 7
PETER CAWS, Thought, Language and Philosophy 49
NEWTON GARVER, Grammar and Metaphysics 64
SAMUEL TODES and CHARLES DANIELS, Beyond the Doubt
of a Shadow, with an addendum by SAMUEL TODES,
Shadows in Knowledge: Plato's Misunderstanding of
Shadows, and of Knowledge as Shadow-free 86
SECTION TWO
TRANSCENDENTAL THEMES
J. N. FINDLAY, Meinong the Phenomenologist 117
HENRY E. ALLISON, The "Critique of Pure Reason" as 136
Transcendental Phenomenology
DAVID CARR, History, Phenomenology and Reflection 156
LESTER EMBREE, Reflection on Planned Operations 176
SECTION THREE
EXISTENTIAL THEMES
PETER Fuss, Some Perplexities in Nietzsche 195
JOHN SCANLON, Desire, Need, and Alienation in Sartre 21 I
WILFRIED VER EECKE, The Look, the Body, and the Other 224
JAMES M. EDIE, The Significance of Merleau-Ponty's
Philosophy of Language 247
Notes on Contributors 269
INTRODUCTION
Phenomenology in the United States is in a state of ferment and
change. Not all the changes are happy ones, however, for some
of the most prominent philosophers of the first generation of
phenomenologists have died: in 1959 Alfred Schutz, and within
the past two years John \Vild, Dorion Cairns, and Aron Gur
witsch. These thinkers, though often confronting a hostile intel
lectual climate, were nevertheless persistent and profoundly
influential-through their own works, and through their students.
The two sources associated with their names, The Graduate
Faculty of The New School for Social Research, and the circle
around John Wild first at Harvard and later at Northwestern
and Yale, produced a sizable portion of the now second gener
ation American phenomenological philosophers.
In a way, it was the very hostility of the American philo
sophical milieu which became an important factor in the ferment
now taking place. Although the older, first generation phenome
nologists were deeply conversant with other philosophical move
ments here and abroad, their efforts at meaningful dialogue
were largely ignored. Determined not to remain isolated from
the dominant currents of Anglo-American philosophy in par
ticular, the second generation opened the way to a dialogue
with analytic philosophers, especially through the efforts of the
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, led by
2 INTRODUCTION
such men as James M. Edie and Hubert Dreyfus and, in other
respects, Herbert Spiegelberg and Maurice Natanson. If, today,
that dialogue has expanded beyond the sponsorship of a long
series of symposia by the Society, this is certainly in part due to
its stimulation of this dialogue.
It is from within the respective philosophical styles themselves,
however, that one finds the more profound reason for the
dialogue. Earlier phenomenologists, and especially Husserl, were
deeply concerned with epistemological and logical issues, but
also with those pertaining to language, signitive and symbolic
activity, and the relations of these to thought. In recent years,
however, philosophers in the phenomenological style have turned
their attention more focally to the latter sets of questions, and
thus have found themselves in a fruitful convergence with a cen
tral concern in analytic philosophy. At the same time, the gra
dual broadening of concern within the latter style has begun to
open the doors to themes introduced by the phenomenological
and existential traditions.
The first section of Dialogues in Phenomenology begins in just
such a cross-fertilization of philosophical styles. Jacques Derri
da's opening essay on the copula supplement clearly represents
one of the more radical approaches to language in Continental
thought. Following Nietzsche and Heidegger, he calls into
question the whole role of logic and grammar as it has related
to the question of truth in Western philosophy. But where this
approach might have been dismissed or have gone unheeded
only a few years ago, today it receives serious consideration in a
dialogue with two philosophers in the analytic tradition. Newton
Garver in his reflections on grammar and metaphysics takes up
the same questions and relates them to Wittgenstein and another
mode of radical questioning. Peter Caws, who has become one
of the more broadly read philosophers of the present, strikes a
wide-ranging note by bringing together Heidegger and Wittgen
stein, Furth and Levi-Strauss. The dialogue becomes even more
integrated and pointed in the joint venture by Samuel Todes
INTRODUCTION 3
and Charles Daniels (and in Todes' supplementary comments).
Here, linguistic and phenomenological techniques are com
bined in a fruitful way to attack an intriguing puzzle which
arises in relation to our language about and experience of
shadows-and how these questions relate to certain basic
questions of knowledge.
The contemporary dialogue with analysis is balanced in this
fifth volume of selected papers given at the Society's annual
meetings by a more retrospective and reflective concern with
origins, themes and problems which arise out of the past of
the existential-phenomenological tradition itself. The second
section is devoted to themes and problems which focus on the
more transcendental dimension of concern. In the first essay,
J. N. Findlay presents a careful and important analysis of Alexis
Meinong's thought, often neglected but clearly significant for
understanding some of the important origins of phenome
nology. The question concerning the sense of transcendental
philosophy, much-debated within the tradition itself, is directly
addressed in the next two essays. The first, by Henry Allison,
explores the character of transcendental philosophy through
a critical comparison of the sense it has in Kant and HusserI.
The second, by David Carr, probes the difficult terrain, en
countered by Husserl especially in his later works, where the
conflicts and possibilities for reconcilation of transcendentally
oriented and historically oriented thinking must be confronted.
The final essay in this section, by Lester Embree, engages the
more recent work of Alfred Schutz, in an effort to mark out some
of the crucial dimensions of Schutz's theory of the social world
and to show both where it is fundamentally correct and where
it stands in need of further clarification and revision-in light
of "the things themselves."
Section three is organized around the more existentially
oriented dimension of the tradition. Peter Fuss returns to
Nietzsche in an effort to lay certain persistent misinterpretations
of this enigmatic philosopher to rest. John Scanlon and Wilfried
4 INTRODUCTION
Ver Eecke focus on different facets of Sartre's philosophical
problematic-the former concerned to feret out Sartre's con
certed attempt to delineate the ontology of alienation in the
concrete case of Jean Genet, and Ver Eecke focusing anew on
Sartre's study of embodiment and intersubjectivity. James Edie
returns the volume to the initial question of language in a retro
spective on Merleau-Ponty and the philosophy of language.
The diversity of concerns, the dialogue with the past and with
other philosophers, and the search for foundational and enduring
themes in the distinctively existential-phenomenological vein
may signal a certain coming to maturity of this style of philo
sophy in the United States. The present volume hopefully ex
hibits this growth and diversity, and, along with the other
volumes in the series, provides ample evidence of the energetic
and increasingly influential efforts such philosophers are de
voting to critical and creative issues in our day. The movement
has, we think, passed well beyond the phase of mere youthful
attraction; judging from the quality of scholarly labors, the
seriousness given by thinkers from other philosophical styles and
from other disciplines, and the rise in serious student interest,
phenomenology and existential philosophy have clearly grown
into vigorous and mature disciplines of philosophical thought.
Thus, although we sadly note the passing of some of the main
figures of the first generation, the second generation has already
made its mark, and a third generation is rapidly coming into
its own.
What now lies on the horizon is the careful and critical de
velopment of problems and themes, both probing them more
deeply philosophically and relating them to the broader context
of the other disciplines. This set of tasks is what is intended for
subsequent volumes of the series.
DON IHDE
M.
RICHARD ZANER
