Discovering Existence With Husserl

This volume collects most of Levinas' articles on Husserlian phenomenology, gathering together a wealth of exposition and interpretation by one of the most important 20th century European philosophers.

"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."--

In Origins of the Other, Moyn offers new readings of the work of a host of crucial thinkers, such as Hannah Arendt, Karl Barth, Karl Lowith, Gabriel Marcel, Franz Rosenzweig, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jean Wahl, who help explain why Levinas's thought evolved as it did."--Jacket.

In this landmark study, Emmanuel Levinas discusses the aspects and function of intuition in Husserl's thought and its meaning for philosophical self-reflection. An essential and illuminating explication of central issues in Husserl's phenomenology, it is also important as a formative work of one of this century's most distinguished philosophers. Levinas focuses on the role of intuition, which he explains as "the theoretical act of consciousness that makes objects present to us". He demonstrates how Husserl's theory of intuition follows directly from his new conception of being. He then identifies intuition as the original phenomenon that leads to the concept of truth itself. In this analysis, he shows that Husserl's theory of being opens up an entirely new philosophical dimension.

In Discovering Levinas, Michael L. Morgan shows how this thinker faces in novel and provocative ways central philosophical problems of twentieth-century philosophy and religious thought. He tackles this task by placing Levinas in conversation with philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Onora O'Neill, Charles Taylor, and Cora Diamond. He also seeks to understand Levinas within philosophical, religious, and political developments in the history of twentieth-century intellectual culture. Morgan demystifies Levinas by examining his unfamiliar and surprising vocabulary, interpreting texts with an eye to clarity, and arguing that Levinas can be understood as a philosopher of the everyday. Morgan also shows that Levinas's ethics is not morally and politically irrelevant nor is it excessively narrow and demanding in unacceptable ways. Neither glib dismissal nor fawning acceptance, this book provides a sympathetic reading that can form a foundation for a responsible critique.

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) emerged as an influential philosophical voice in the final decades of the twentieth century, and his reputation has continued to flourish and increase in our own day. His central themes--the primacy of the ethical and the core of ethics as our responsibility to and for others--speak to readers from a host of disciplines and perspectives. However, his writings and thought are challenging and difficult. The Oxford Handbook of Levinas contains essays that aim to clarify and engage Levinas and his writings in a number of ways. Some focus on central themes of his work, others on the ways in which he read and was influenced by figures from Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Kant to Blanchot, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida. And there are essays on how his thinking has been appropriated in moral and political thought, psychology, film criticism, and more, and on the relation between his thinking and religious themes and traditions. Finally, several essays deal primarily with how readers have criticized him and found him wanting. The volume exposes and explores both the depth of Levinas's philosophical work and the range of applications to which it has been put, with special attention to clarifying why his interests in the human condition, the crisis of civilization, the centrality and character of ethics and morality, and the very meaning of human experience should be of interest to the widest range of readers.

In this book Adina Bozga attempts to make room for what she calls a phenomenology of singularity. Bozga believes that Edmund Husserl's phenomenology undermines the possibility of an adequate phenomenological account of the singular, however she maintains that the singular can be retrieved by radicalising the phenomenological project. She illustrates this by focusing on the manner in which phenomenology understands the phenomena of time, the self and the world. In the first part of her book Bozga argues that Husserl's phenomenology makes room for what she calls ‘a phenomenology on singuarlity'. This comes to light when studying Husserl's account of sensuous hyle, the individual, the transcendental Ego and the world. However, she argues that Husserl fails to provide for a phenomenology ofsingularity since according to Husserl, phenomenology can and should only describe what is given to the synthetic structure of intentional consciousness. Since the singular refers to a unity that is absolutely original and cannot be appropriated by the reflective gaze of consciousness - it refers to a non-phenomenon that refuses to be given - it thus appears that the singular has to remain outside the realm of phenomenological description. To avoid this conclusion, Bozga argues that if phenomenology wishes to remain true to its principle, namely, to ‘return to the things themselves', it should facilitate the return to such a primal ‘non-synthetic singular'. In the second part of the book she there foresets herself the task of exploring whether such a return is possible within the phenomenological project. Initially Bozga focuses on Emmanuel Levinas' work to show that we can account for the singular either by pointing to a radical transcendence or to a radical immanence. She believes the latter to be truer to the spirit of phenomenology and illustrates this point by turning to the work of Michel Henry. According to Bozga, Henry provides a way toward a phenomenology of singularity. Henry believes that thereis a pre-phenomenal auto-affected and incarnate life that can never be integrated into the intentional structure of consciousness without doing violence. Since this life lies outside the reflective grasp of the ego, Henry argues that we can only account for it by radicalising the reduction, that is, by suspending synthetic thought. This suspension manifests itself in the form of suffering, as it questions the spontaneity of the Ego. Bozga thus shows that the non-synthetic singular can ‘manifests' itself, not as something that is given or present to consciousness, but as a gift to which the subject is always already ‘sub-jected'. Bozga explores how we can account for such a life. The problem seems to be that if it lies outside the synthetic structure of intentional consciousness, then it lies outside philosophy as well. It is thus not surprising that Henry draws on religious themes in order to account for such a life. Yet the question arises whether there is not another mode of experience that is neither theoretical nor religious. The book is extremely timely since it touches on themes that are of paramount importance within the phenomenological tradition in France today. Particularly impressive is Bozga's use of Michel Henry, who is hardly known in the English speaking world and whose work is still in need of translation. Hopefully this book will bring about an interest in his work which is long overdue. Lilian Alweiss

The late Jean-Louis Chrétien’s responsorial and polyphonic style of thinking is nothing less than a performance of gratitude, which manifests the many ways and manners that our wounded finitude is graced and blessed along the peregrine path of human existence. Finitude’s Wounded Praise: Responses to Jean-Louis Chrétien is a receptive celebratory response to the immense fecundity and potential of Chrétien’s “thank you” of gratitude. This volume gathers leading Chrétien scholars and thinkers to explicate, explore, think with, and commemorate his thought. The essays in the volume engage Chrétien’s work from three primary fields: phenomenological, literary/poetic, and theological. Finitude’s Wounded Praise is a diverse, exploratory, and impressive testament to the expansive and enduring richness of Chrétien’s oeuvre.