A Hundred Years Of Phenomenology

This volume commemorates the centenary of Logical Investigations by subjecting the work to a comprehensive critical analysis. It contains new contributions by leading scholars addressing some of the most central analyses to be found in the book.

This title was first published in 2001. This collection of new essays on phenomenological themes reviews aspects of the philosophical movement which began with the publication in 1900-01 of Edmund Husserl's path-breaking Logical Investigations. A broad survey of phenomenology is particularly timely given that this philosophical movement is reaching a hundred years of its existence. The thirteen contributions represent a wide range of approaches and interests within the phenomenological framework. Some present approaches to Husserl, while others explore aspects of the fundamental texts of phenomenology and provide critical discussions of later thinkers such as Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida whose relation to Husserl receives particular attention. The final section relates phenomenology to other disciplines and to broader issues in social thought and cultural studies. This book will enable students and professional philosophers alike to explore the various strands of this widely influential school of thought.

This collection originated in the centenary celebration of the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America. Written by experts in their fields, the essays are intended to provide a unique overview of philosophical developments in the 20th century. The first set of essays deals with philosophy in the English-speaking world. Thomas R. Russman argues that British philosophy is best understood as reflecting a long-standing preoccupation with the refutation of idealism. William Wallace narrates the development of the philosophy of science. Peter Simpson provides an account of Anglo-American moral theory, and Robert George discusses Anglo-American legal philosophy. The second set of essays deals with developments within the Catholic world. Frederick Crosson offers an overview of a century of Catholic social teaching, focusing on the central question of the relationship between the policial and the moral in such figures as Maritain, Murray and MacIntyre. Timothy Noone reflects on the course of medieval scholarship and philosophy in the 20th century. Kenneth Schmitz contributes an authoritative overview of German Catholic thought in the last century. Richard Schenk introduces readers to one of the most significant German Catholic philosophers of the latter part of the 20th century, Robert Spaemann, and his ethics. Also included is Spaemann's own analysis of the relationship between Christianity and modern philosophy. A third set of essays concerns continental philsophy. Nicholas Lobkowicz debunks the idea that there was a powerful spell cast on German thought by Karl Marx, and shows instead that what passed for Marx's influence was really Left-Hegelianism. Robert Sokolowski provides a detailed treatment of a different strain of German thought in his overview of phenomenology. A final set of essays considers new areas of philosophical concern. Daniel Dahlstrom explores prominent developments in philosophy and art that have brought aesthetics to the center of philosophical inquiry. Eugene Long chronicles the burgeoning discipline of the philosophy of religion. In the concluding essay, A.S. Cua explores the ways in which western philosophy has influenced 20th-century Chinese philosophy.

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.

This 11-volume set reissues a host of classic titles on Continental Philosophy. Written by leading scholars in the field, they form an essential reference resource that tackles philosophers and subjects such as Deleuze, Derrida, hermeneutics and phenomenology.

This volume brings together contributions that explore the philosophy of Franz Brentano. It looks at his work both critically and in the context of contemporary philosophy. For instance, Brentano influenced the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl, the theory of objects of Alexius Meinong, the early development of the Gestalt theory, the philosophy of language of Anton Marty, the works of Carl Stumpf in the psychology of tone, and many others. Readers will also learn the contributions of Brentano's work to much debated contemporary issues in philosophy of mind, ontology, and the theory of emotions. The first section deals with Brentano’s conception of the history of philosophy. The next approaches his conception of empirical psychology from an empirical standpoint and in relation with competing views on psychology from the period. The third section discusses Brentano’s later programme of a descriptive psychology or “descriptive phenomenology” and some of his most innovative developments, for instance in the theory of emotions. The final section examines metaphysical issues and applications of his mereology. His reism takes here an important place. The intended readership of this book comprises phenomenologists, analytic philosophers, philosophers of mind and value, as well as metaphysicians. It will appeal to both graduate and undergraduate students, professors, and researchers in philosophy and psychology.

Husserl and Other Phenomenologists addresses a fundamental question: what is it in the thinking of the founding father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), that on the one hand enables the huge variety in the phenomenological discourse and, at the same time, necessitates relying on his phenomenology as a point of departure and an object before which philosophizing is conducted. The contributors to this volume, each with his or her own focus on a specific figure in the phenomenological school vis-à-vis Husserl's thinking, demonstrate that every reference to Husserl is necessarily bound up with modifying his ideas and crossing the boundaries of his phenomenology. In this sense, and given the insight that Husserlian phenomenology is already imbued with the potential modifications and revisions, the post-Husserlian phenomenologies may be included together with Husserl in one so-called ‘Phenomenological Movement’. The discussions in the book open for philosophers and intellectuals a window upon phenomenology, which has been one of the richest and most influential cultural phenomena since its very appearance at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book also conveys the complex interpretive dynamic within which a given framework of ideas becomes a sort of magnetic field, with attracting and repelling forces acting on its participants, and thanks to which the great ideas of modernity maintain their vitality and relevance a hundred years after their first appearance. This book was originally published as a special issue of The European Legacy.