Meaning And Language Phenomenological Perspectives

The work aims at presenting new in-depth research on core topics of Husserl’s thinking related to language (e.g., meaning, sign, ideality) supplemented with a variety of original phenomenological reflections on pre-linguistic experience, concept-formation and the limitations of (verbal) expression. In doing so, it supplies us the first anthology that focuses on Husserl’s thinking in relation to language. Most of the contributions to this volume are based on research originally presented at the “Husserl Arbeitstage”, which took place at the Husserl-Archives Leuven in November 2006. In addition, two other articles have been added in order to supplement the themes of the presentations.

The work aims at presenting new in-depth research on core topics of Husserl’s thinking related to language (e.g., meaning, sign, ideality) supplemented with a variety of original phenomenological reflections on pre-linguistic experience, concept-formation and the limitations of (verbal) expression. In doing so, it supplies us the first anthology that focuses on Husserl’s thinking in relation to language. Most of the contributions to this volume are based on research originally presented at the “Husserl Arbeitstage”, which took place at the Husserl-Archives Leuven in November 2006. In addition, two other articles have been added in order to supplement the themes of the presentations.

Horst Ruthrof revisits Husserl's phenomenology of language and highlights his late writings as essential to understanding the full range of his ideas. Focusing on the idea of language as imaginable as well as the role of a speech community in constituting it, Ruthrof provides a powerful re-assessment of his methodological phenomenology. From the Logical Investigations to untranslated portions of his Nachlass, Ruthrof charts all the developments and amendments in his theorizations. Ruthrof argues that it is the intersubjective character to linguistic meaning that is so emblematic of Husserl's position. Bringing his study up to the present day, Ruthrof discusses mental time travel, the evolution of language, and protosyntax in the context of Husserl's late writings, progressing a comprehensive new phenomenological ontology of language with wide-ranging implications for philosophy, linguistics, and cultural studies.

A phenomenological conception of language, drawing on Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein, with implications for both the philosophy of language and current cognitive science. In this book, Andrew Inkpin considers the disclosive function of language—what language does in revealing or disclosing the world. His approach to this question is a phenomenological one, centering on the need to accord with the various experiences speakers can have of language. With this aim in mind, he develops a phenomenological conception of language with important implications for both the philosophy of language and recent work in the embodied-embedded-enactive-extended (4e) tradition of cognitive science. Inkpin draws extensively on the work of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, showing how their respective conceptions of language can be combined to complement each other within a unified view. From the early Heidegger, Inkpin extracts a basic framework for a phenomenological conception of language, comprising both a general picture of the role of language and a specific model of the function of words. Merleau-Ponty's views are used to explicate the generic “pointing out”—or presentational—function of linguistic signs in more detail, while the late Wittgenstein is interpreted as providing versatile means to describe their many pragmatic uses. Having developed this unified phenomenological view, Inkpin explores its broader significance. He argues that it goes beyond the conventional realism/idealism opposition, that it challenges standard assumptions in mainstream post-Fregean philosophy of language, and that it makes a significant contribution not only to the philosophical understanding of language but also to 4e cognitive science.

This book is a contribution to the understanding of psychosomatic health problems. Inspired by the work of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a phenomenological theory of psychosomatics is worked out as an alternative to traditional, biomedical thinking. The patient who presents somatic symptoms with no clearly discernible lesion or dysfunction presents a problem to the traditional health care system. These symptoms are medically unexplainable, constituting an anomaly for the materialistic understanding of ill health that underlies the practice of modern medicine. The traditional biomedical model is not appropriate for understanding a number of health issues that we call “psychosomatic” and for this reason, biomedical theory and practice must be complemented by another theoretical understanding in order to adequately grasp the psychosomatic problematic. This book establishes a complementary understanding of psychosomatic ill health in terms of a non-reductionistic model allowing for the (psychosomatic) expression of the lived body. A thorough presentation of the work Merleau-Ponty is followed by the author’s application of his thinking to the phenomenon of psychosomatic pathology.

Professor H. L. Van Breda had hoped to write this preface, but his recent, unexpected and untimely death has left that task in my hands. Although my remarks will not be as eloquent and insightful as his surely would have been, some few words are clearly in order here; for the phenomenological community has not only lost the leadership of Fr. Van Breda these last years, but also the scholarship and leadership of Aron Gurwitsch and Alden Fisher - both contributors to this volume - as well as that of Dorion Cairns and John Wild. Our leaders are fewer now but Herbert Spiegelberg is still very obviously one of them. This volume thus presents the work of some of the past and presently recognized leaders in phenomenology - e. g. Gurwitsch, Straus, and Fisher - but, more important perhaps, it also presents the work of some of those who are sure to be future leaders of our community of phenomenological philosophers, if in fact they have not already achieved this status. Most, if not all, of the contribu tors to this volume are in some way or another indebted to Herbert Spiegelberg and his work in phenomenology.

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.