Phenomenology Explained: From Experience to Insight

202 Pages·2013·1.28 MB·English

by  David Detmer

Phenomenology Explained
IDEAS EXPLAINED™
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Nicholas Smaligo
Phenomenology
Explained
From Experience to Insight
DAVID DETMER
OPEN COURT
Chicago
Volume 9 in the Ideas Explained™ Series
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ISBN: 978-0-8126-9805-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013944051
Contents Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Husserl’s Radicalism
The Subject Matter of Phenomenology
Philosophy as Rigorous Science
Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Correlativity
An Example of Phenomenological Description
The Aims of Phenomenology
The Critical Reception of Phenomenology
Edmund Husserl and the Origins of Phenomenology: A Biographical
Overview
Prospectus
1 Early Husserl
The Attack on Psychologism
Psychologism and Postmodernism
Bracketing
Intentionality
Eidetic Reduction
Critique of Scientism
Objective Truth
Intuition
Meaning
Universals
Parts and Wholes
Pure Logical Grammar
Intentionality Again
Knowledge
Evidence
Profiles
Intuition Again
Categorial Intuition
Truth
Freedom from Presuppositions
2 Middle Husserl
The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness
Ideas I
The Eidetic Reduction
Critique of Empiricism
The “Principle of All Principles”
The Natural Attitude
The Phenomenological Reduction
The Transcendental Ego
Constitution
Noēsis and Noema
Horizon
Idealism
3 Late Husserl
The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology
Scientism
Life-world
Static, Genetic, and Generative Phenomenology
4 Ethics
A Richer Conception of “Experience”
A Richer Conception of “Object”
Phenomenological Description Reveals the Ubiquity of Value Experience
Intersubjectivity
The Eidetic and Phenomenological Reductions
Intuition
The Material A Priori
The Critique of Psychologism
Axiological Ethics
5 Polemics
6 Successors
Max Scheler
Martin Heidegger
Jean-Paul Sartre
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index
Acknowledgments
I
have had the good fortune to study Husserl and phenomenology with several
excellent teachers, most notably Erazim Kohák (the world’s foremost authority
on Jan Patočka, and author of the best commentary on Ideas I known to me, Idea
& Experience), John Findlay (translator of the Logical Investigations), James
Edie (author of Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Critical Commentary),
and David Michael Levin (now Kleinberg-Levin, author of Reason and Evidence
in Husserl’s Phenomenology). While I have learned an enormous amount from
each of these four fine scholars, they cannot be blamed for my mistakes.
Also deserving of thanks are my friends in the North American Sartre
Society and at Sartre Studies International, especially Bruce Baugh and Connie
Mui. One does not even have to perform the eidetic reduction to realize that they
are the best of colleagues.
My colleagues in philosophy at Purdue University Calumet have helped me
to develop my ideas over many years of stimulating philosophical discussions,
both informally and through our regular colloquia. In this connection, I would
like to thank John Wachala, Connie Sowa-Wachala, Neil Florek, Phyllis Bergiel,
John Rowan, Eugene Schlossberger, Renee Conroy, Sam Zinaich, David Turpin,
Robin Turpin, Howard Cohen, Charmaine Boswell, Kevin Kliver, Michael
Stevens, Jason Melton, and Stephen Meinster. I apologize to anyone I have
forgotten.
Finally, as always, my biggest thanks go to Kerri and Arlo, for their love,
support, encouragement, ideas, and life-sustaining sense of fun.