The Ethics of Husserl's Phenomenology aims to relocate the question of ethics at the very heart of Husserl's phenomenology. This is based on the idea that Husserl's phenomenology is an epistemological inquiry ultimately motivated by an ethical demand that pervades his writing from the publication of Logical Investigations (1900-1901) up to The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1935). Joaquim Siles-Borràs traces the ethical concepts apparent throughout Husserl's main body of work and argues that Husserl's phenomenology of consciousness, experience and meaning is ultimately motivated by an ethical demand, by means of which Husserl aims to re-define philosophy and re-found science, with the aim of making philosophy and science capable of dealing with the most pressing questions concerning the meaningfulness of human existence.
This collection examines the instrumental role of intersubjectivity in Husserl’s philosophy and explores the potential for developing novel ways of addressing and resolving contemporary philosophical issues on that basis. This is the first time Iso Kern offers an extensive overview of this rich field of inquiry for an English-speaking audience. Guided by his overview, the remaining articles present new approaches to a range of topics and problems that go to the heart of its core theme of intersubjectivity and methodology. Specific topics covered include intersubjectivity and empathy, intersubjectivity in meaning and communication, intersubjectivity pertaining to collective forms of intentionality and extended forms of embodiment, intersubjectivity as constitutive of normality, and, finally, the central role of intersubjectivity in the sciences. The authors’ perspectives are strongly influenced by Husserl’s own methodological concerns and problem awareness and are formed with a view to applicability in current debates – be it within general epistemology, analytic philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, meta-ethics or philosophy of science. With contributions written by leading Husserl scholars from across the Analytic and Continental traditions, Husserl’s Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity is a clear and accessible resource for scholars and advanced students interested in Husserl’s phenomenology and the relevance of intersubjectivity to philosophy, sociology, and psychology.
"This book provides a compelling look at the importance of Husserl's methodological shift from his original purely "static" approach to his later "genetic" approach to the analysis of consciousness. The author shows that between 1913 and 1921 Husserl progressed in his thinking from a constitutive analysis of how something is experienced, which focused primarily on the general structure of consciousness as an abstract unity, to an investigation into the origins of the subject as a unique individual interacting with and growing within the surrounding environment. This much needed synthesis of Husserl's methodology will be of interest to scholars, phenomenologists, and philosophers from both continental and analytic schools."--
Husserl's 20th-century phenomenological project remains the cornerstone of modern European philosophy. The place of ethics is of importance to the ongoing legacy and study of phenomenology itself. Husserl's Ethics and Practical Intentionality constitutes one of the major new interventions in this burgeoning field of Husserl scholarship, and offers an unrivaled perspective on the question of ethics in Husserl's philosophy through a focus on volumes not yet translated into English. This book offers a refreshing perspective on stagnating ethical debates that pivot around conceptions of relativism and universalism, shedding light on a phenomenological ethics beyond the common dichotomy.
Social Phenomenology: Husserl, Intersubjectivity, and Collective Intentionality brings together insights from the tradition of Husserlian phenomenology and from recent discussions of collective intentionality. Eric Chelstrom offers a unique account of how consciousness is formative of the social world-that is, in some cases our collectively thinking something to be the case is what makes it so. For instance, that the money one uses on a daily basis is worth something is not because of its physical characteristics, but because we believe that those physical traits, printed by the right institutions, make it so. Our institutions only have authority because we believe they do. This book promotes a position between atomism and collectivism. Chelstrom argues that there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as collective consciousness. Further, this book disputes the atomistic conception of the human subject, the view that individuals are like islands unto themselves, able to develop their capacities independent from others, and free of necessary relations to others. The resulting analysis in the work offers a strong challenge to common interpretations of the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Social Phenomenology is primarily written for phenomenologists concerned with the social world. Its broader aim, however, is to draw into dialogue both analytic and continental philosophers working in social philosophy, specifically on collective intentionality. Book jacket.
Can we have objective knowledge of the world? Can we understand what is morally right or wrong? Yes, to some extent. This is the answer given by Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl. Both rejected David Hume’s skeptical account of what we can hope to understand. But they held his empirical method in high regard, inquiring into the way we perceive and emotionally experience the world, into the nature and function of human empathy and sympathy and the role of the imagination in processes of intersubjective understanding. The challenge is to overcome the natural constraints of perceptual and emotional experience and reach an agreement that is informed by the facts in the world and the nature of morality. This collection of philosophical essays addresses an audience of Smith- and Husserl scholars as well as everybody interested in theories of objective knowledge and proper morality which are informed by the way we perceive and think and communicate.
This book draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, psychology, neuroscience and Buddhist philosophy to explicate Merleau-Ponty’s unwritten ethics. Daly contends that though Merleau-Ponty never developed an ethics per se, there is significant textual evidence that clearly indicates he had the intention to do so. This book highlights the explicit references to ethics that he offers and proposes that these, allied to his ontological commitments, provide the basis for the development of an ethics. In this work Daly shows how Merleau-Ponty’s relational ontology, in which the interdependence of self, other and world is affirmed, offers an entirely new approach to ethics. In contrast to the ‘top-down’ ethics of norms, obligations and prescriptions, Daly maintains that Merleau-Ponty’s ethics is a ‘bottom-up’ ethics which depends on direct insight into our own intersubjective natures, the ‘I’ within the ‘we’ and the ‘we’ within the ‘I’; insight into the real nature of our relation to others and the particularities of the given situation. Merleau-Ponty and the Ethics of Intersubjectivity is an important contribution to the scholarship on the later Merleau-Ponty which will be of interest to graduate students and scholars. Daly offers informed readings of Merleau-Ponty’s texts and the overall approach is both scholarly and innovative.
Phenomenology is one of the most important and influential philosophical movements of the last one hundred years. It began in 1900, with the publication of a massive two-volume work, Logical Investigations, by a Czech-German mathematician, Edmund Husserl. It proceeded immediately to exert a strong influence on both philosophy and the social sciences. For example, phenomenology provided the central inspiration for the existentialist movement, as represented by such figures as Martin Heidegger in Germany and Jean-Paul Sartre in France. Subsequent intellectual currents in Europe, when they have not claimed phenomenology as part of their ancestry, have defined themselves in opposition to phenomenology. Thus, to give just one example, the first two works of Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, were devoted to criticisms of Husserl’s phenomenological works. In the English-speaking world, where “analytic philosophy” dominates, phenomenology has recently emerged as a hot topic after decades of neglect. This has resulted from a dramatic upswing in interest in consciousness, the condition that makes all experience possible. Since the special significance of phenomenology is that it investigates consciousness, analytic philosophers have begun to turn to it as an underutilized resource. For the same reason, Husserl’s work is now widely studied by cognitive scientists. The current revival of interest in phenomenology also stems from the recognition that not every kind of question can be approached by means of experimental techniques. Not all questions are scientific in that sense. Thus, if there is to be knowledge in logic, mathematics, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, epistemology (theory of knowledge), psychology (from the inside), and the study of consciousness, among others, another method is clearly needed. Phenomenology is an attempt to rectify this. Its aim is to focus on the world as given in experience, and to describe it with unprecedented care, rigor, subtlety, and completeness. This applies not only to the objects of sense experience, but to all phenomena: moral, aesthetic, political, mathematical, and so forth. One can avoid the obscure problem of the real, independent existence of the objects of experience in these domains by focusing instead on the objects, as experienced, themselves, along with the acts of consciousness which disclose them. Phenomenology thus opens up an entirely new field of investigation, never previously explored. Rather than assuming, or trying to discern, what exists outside the realm of the mental, and what causal relations pertain to these extra-mental entities, we can study objects strictly as they are given, that is, as they appear to us in experience. This book explains what phenomenology is and why it is important. It focuses primarily on the works and ideas of Husserl, but also discusses important later thinkers, giving special emphasis to those whose contributions are most relevant to contemporary concerns. Finally, while Husserl’s greatest contributions were to the philosophical foundations of logic, mathematics, knowledge, and science, this book also addresses extensively the relatively neglected contribution of phenomenology to value theory, especially ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics.
Dan Zahavi offers an in-depth and up-to-date analysis of central and contested aspects of the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology. What is ultimately at stake in Husserl's phenomenological analyses? Are they primarily to be understood as investigations of consciousness or are they equally about the world? What is distinctive about phenomenological transcendental philosophy, and what kind of metaphysical import, if any, might it have? Husserl's Legacy offers an interpretation of the more overarching aims and ambitions of Husserlian phenomenology and engages with some of the most contested and debated questions in phenomenology. Central to its interpretative efforts is the attempt to understand Husserl's transcendental idealism. Zahavi argues that Husserl was not a sophisticated introspectionist, not a phenomenalist, nor an internalist, not a quietist when it comes to metaphysical issues, and not opposed to all forms of naturalism. Husserl's Legacy argues that Husserl's phenomenology is as much about the world as it is about consciousness, and that a proper grasp of Husserl's transcendental idealism reveals the fundamental importance of facticity and intersubjectivity.
In Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity, Janet Donohoe offers a compelling look into Husserl’s shift from a "static" to a "genetic" approach in his analysis of consciousness. Rather than view consciousness as an abstract unity, Husserl began investigating consciousness by taking into account the individual’s lived experiences. Engaging critics from contemporary analytic schools to third-generation phenomenologists, Donohoe shows that they often do not do justice to the breadth of Husserl’s thoughts. In separate chapters Donohoe elucidates the relevance of Husserl’s later genetic phenomenology to his work on time consciousness, intersubjectivity, and ethical issues. This much-needed synthesis of Husserl’s methodologies will be of interest to Husserl scholars, phenomenologists, and philosophers from both Continental and analytic schools.
