In the philosophic world today, pragmatism and phenomenology can be found standing at a crossroad. Though each has arrived there via divergent paths and for very different reasons, the direction that each takes in the future may be significantly influenced by the suggestions the other has to offer. The intention of this book is to parallel the two positions in such a way that basic points of convergence and divergence are noted and accounted for in terms of their systematic significance. Each position is presented in such a manner that philosophers engrossed in one movement can enter into the other in a way which allows a real encounter to develop.
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.
Bringing to light new facets in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and William James, Megan Craig explores intersections between French phenomenology and American pragmatism. Craig demonstrates the radical empiricism of Levinas's philosophy and the ethical implications of James's pluralism while illuminating their relevance for two philosophical disciplines that have often held each other at arm's length. Revealing the pragmatic minimalism in Levinas's work and the centrality of imagery in James's prose, she suggests that aesthetic links are crucial to understanding what they share. Craig's suggestive readings change current perceptions and clear a path for a more open, pluralistic, and creative pragmatic phenomenology that takes cues from both philosophers.
Intentionality is one of the central problems of modern philosophy. How can a thought, action or belief be about something? Sachs draws on the work of Wilfrid Sellars, C I Lewis and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to build a new theory of intentionality that solves many of the problems faced by traditional conceptions.
This set reprints the essential scholarship published in the field. It includes a general introduction by the editors, as well as individual volume introductions, exploring and contextualising the main themes of the comprehensively covered tradition. This is a key point of reference for anyone researching the phenomenological tradition.
Phenomenology, together with Marxism, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy, dominated philosophy in the twentieth century—and Edmund Husserl is usually thought to have been the first to develop the concept. His views influenced a variety of important later thinkers, such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, who eventually turned phenomenology away from questions of knowledge. But here Tom Rockmore argues for a return to phenomenology’s origins in epistemology, and he does so by locating its roots in the work of Immanuel Kant. Kant and Phenomenology traces the formulation of Kant’s phenomenological approach back to the second edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In response to various criticisms of the first edition, Kant more forcefully put forth a constructivist theory of knowledge. This shift in Kant’s thinking challenged the representational approach to epistemology, and it is this turn, Rockmore contends, that makes Kant the first great phenomenologist. He then follows this phenomenological line through the work of Kant’s idealist successors, Fichte and Hegel. Steeped in the sources and literature it examines, Kant and Phenomenology persuasively reshapes our conception of both of its main subjects.
In Cognition and Work, Max Scheler offers an early critique of American pragmatism and demonstrates the dynamic relation that not only the human being but all living beings have to the environment they inhabit.
Forty years in the making, this long-awaited reinterpretation of Hegel’s The Phenomenology of Spirit is a landmark contribution to philosophy by one of the world’s best-known and most influential philosophers. In this much-anticipated work, Robert Brandom presents a completely new retelling of the romantic rationalist adventure of ideas that is Hegel’s classic The Phenomenology of Spirit. Connecting analytic, continental, and historical traditions, Brandom shows how dominant modes of thought in contemporary philosophy are challenged by Hegel. A Spirit of Trust is about the massive historical shift in the life of humankind that constitutes the advent of modernity. In his Critiques, Kant talks about the distinction between what things are in themselves and how they appear to us; Hegel sees Kant’s distinction as making explicit what separates the ancient and modern worlds. In the ancient world, normative statuses—judgments of what ought to be—were taken to state objective facts. In the modern world, these judgments are taken to be determined by attitudes—subjective stances. Hegel supports a view combining both of those approaches, which Brandom calls “objective idealism”: there is an objective reality, but we cannot make sense of it without first making sense of how we think about it. According to Hegel’s approach, we become agents only when taken as such by other agents. This means that normative statuses such as commitment, responsibility, and authority are instituted by social practices of reciprocal recognition. Brandom argues that when our self-conscious recognitive attitudes take the radical form of magnanimity and trust that Hegel describes, we can overcome a troubled modernity and enter a new age of spirit.
Heidegger's Pragmatism deals with the relation between Martin Heidegger's early analysis of intentionality and his eventual rejection of metaphysics. Arguing for the essentially pragmatic nature of the early Heidegger's discussion of understanding, Mark Okrent shows that Heidegger's subsequent critique of metaphysics follows directly from his long-held pragmatic understanding of intentionality. Heidegger's Pragmatism is written with a clarity that makes it accessible to analytic and continental philosophers alike. Its boldly original conclusions will engage Heidegger scholars, literary theorists, intellectual historians, and a wide range of philosophers.
