James And Husserl The Foundations Of Meaning

" ... a universe unfinished, with doors and windows open to possibilities uncontrollable in advance." 1 A possibility which William James would certainly not have envisaged is a phenomenological reading of his philosophy. Given James's personality, one can easily imagine the explosive commen tary he would make on any attempt to situate his deliberately unsystematic writings within anyone philosophical mainstream. Yet, in recent years, the most fruitful scholarship on William James has resulted from a confrontation between his philosophy and the phe nomenology of Husserl. The very unlikelihood of such a comparison renders all the more fascinating the remarkable convergence of perspectives that comes to light when the fundamental projects of James and HusserI are juxtaposed. At first view, nothing could be more alien to the pragmatic mentality with its constant mistrust of any global system than a philosophy whose basic drive is to discover absolute knowledge and whose goal is to establish itself as a certain and universal science.

THEODORE KISIEL Date of birth: October 30,1930. Place of birth: Brackenridge, Pennsylvania. Date of institution of highest degree: PhD. , Duquesne University, 1962. Academic appointments: University of Dayton; Canisius College; Northwestern University; Duquesne University; Northern Illinois University. I first left the university to pursue a career in metallurgical research and nuclear technology. But I soon found myself drawn back to the uni versity to 'round out' an overly specialized education. It was along this path that I was 'waylaid' into philosophy by teachers like H. L. Van Breda and Bernard Boelen. The philosophy department at Duquesne University was then (1958-1962) a veritable "little Louvain," and the Belgian-Dutch connection exposed me to (among other visiting scholars) Jean Ladriere and Joe Kockelmans, who planted the seeds which eventually led me to the hybrid discipline of a hermeneutics of natural science, and prompted me soon after graduation to make the first of numerous extended visits to Belgium and Germany. The endeavor to learn French and German led me to the task of translating the phenomenological literature bearing especially on natural science and on Heidegger. The talk in the sixties was of a "continental divide" in philosophy between Europe and the Anglo-American world. But in designing my courses in the philosophy of science, I naturally gravitated to the works of Hanson, Kuhn, Polanyi and Toulmin without at first fully realizing why I felt such a strong kinship with them, beyond their common anti positivism.

The present attempt to introduce the general philosophical reader to the Phenomenological Movement by way of its history has itself a history which is pertinent to its objective. It may suitably be opened by the following excerpts from a review which Herbert W. Schneider of Columbia University, the Head of the Division for International Cultural Cooperation, Department of Cultural Activities of Unesco from 1953 to 56, wrote in 1950 from France: The influence of Husserl has revolutionized continental philosophies, not because his philosophy has become dominant, but because any philosophy now seeks to accommodate itself to, and express itself in, phenomenological method. It is the sine qua non of critical respectability. In America, on the contrary, phenomenology is in its infancy. The average American student of philosophy, when he picks up a recent volume of philosophy published on the continent of Europe, must first learn the "tricks" of the phenomenological trade and then translate as best he can the real impon of what is said into the kind of imalysis with which he is familiar . . . . No doubt, American education will graduaUy take account of the spread of phenomenological method and terminology, but until it does, American readers of European philosophy have a severe handicap; and this applies not only to existentialism but to almost all current philosophical literature. ' These sentences clearly implied a challenge, if not a mandate, to all those who by background and interpretive ability were in a position to meet it.

All of the major themes of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, from the Logical Investigations to The Crisis of the European Sciences, are investigated from a critical point of view by James M. Edie. The philosophy of logic is considered insofar as it relates to the phenomenological and transcendental foundation of logic itself. Transcendental logic is studied with reference to both the formal logic of Aristotle and Leibniz and the dialectical logic of Hegel. Edie considers Husserl's theories of meaning and reference, intentionality, the distinction between perceptual and eidetic intuition, the notion of the ideality of meaning, the laws of objectivity in general, and formal and material ontology, as well as Husserl's reinterpretation of the apriori.

This book brings together the author’s overall research trajectory of the last five years of his life and the questions he has been asking himself: What is the person? And, what are values? In answering the latter question, Hackett arrived at an answer within the boundaries of Max Scheler, the German phenomenologist, but consequently started to explore the depths of which Scheler’s value ontology was predicated on certain assumptions about the person. From these questions, Hackett started to draw upon philosophical approaches that thematize experience—pragmatism and phenomenology. Rooted in the philosophical contributions of Scheler and the American philosopher, William James, this book guides the reader through a fascinating exploration of these philosophical approaches in relation to the person and values. Through thematizing experience, this book reveals that the ontology of value for Scheler resides not only in a person’s intentionality but also in the being-of-an-act. As such, this book argues that the deficit of an ontology of value in Scheler rests on interpreting his affective intentionality in much the same way that Heidegger employed phenomenology to discern the ontological care structure of Dasein. In other words, for Scheler, the ontology of value rests on the manner in which values were realized by a person’s intentionality. Moreover, this book goes further to reveal that the intentional act life is the source of participation and can be understood as a process-based account of value, otherwise known as account participatory realism. Importantly, within participatory realism Hackett addresses how values have their origin in the process of intentionality since intentionality is generative of meaning. As an important contribution to the field of moral metaphysics, Hackett’s critical reflection on the person and values provides a stimulating insight into some of the key debates surrounding pragmatism and phenomenology that will be of great interest to both experienced scholars and researchers, alike.

This bibliography contains the publications of Husserl and the main secondary literature on Husserl, from Husserl's earliest publication (1887) till today (1997). As the collection of material was conduded in lune 1997, the list of publications for the year 1997 is of course incomplete. In this bibliography publications in the following languages have been induded: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch - for both primary and secondary literature. Since this bibliography has been based primarily on the consultation of the induded documents (and not restricted to copying already existing bibliographies), it was not possible to indude publications in languages other than those mentioned. The bibliography has been constructed in the following way: 1. The list of Husserl's works and secondary literature by individual authors is preceded by a list of all edited volumes in which a text by or on Husserl is published. This list is ordered chronologica11y and runs from 1921 ti11 1997 (inclusive). Edited volumes of the same year are classified according to language, and this in the order mentioned above: German, English, French, etc. Edited volumes with a title in more than one language are classified according to the above order of languages (this of course concerns only the title of the edited volume, not the title(s) of the individual contributions). This order is maintained throughout the other parts of the bibliography.

The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.

Edmund Husserl is generally regarded as the founding figure of the philosophical movement of “phenomenology,” by which he understands a descriptive science of the essential structures of experiences and of their objects precisely as these are experienced. Phenomenology has had a decisive influence on philosophy in the 20th century, especially in Europe. The movement known as “continental philosophy,” whether practiced in Europe or elsewhere, has its roots in phenomenology and in the post-Hegelian philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Marx. Historical Dictionary of Husserl's Philosophy, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 600 cross-referenced entries on his key concepts and major writings as well as entries on his most important predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Edmund Husserl.