The Ontological Roots Of Phenomenology

In The Ontological Roots of Phenomenology: Rethinking the History of Phenomenology and Its Religious Turn, Anna Jani examines the common methodological background of phenomenology. Through attention to the phenomenon of being, the existential experience of religiosity can be phenomenologically described by the ontological difference between being and beings. Jani demonstrates that the methodological inquiries connect closely with the ontological source of phenomenology. First, she elaborates on the contributions of Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Roman Ingarden, and Edith Stein from the point of view of Heidegger’s influence on the early phenomenologists from Husserl’s students. Second, she analyzes Heidegger’s reinterpretation of his own earlier thinking after the “turn,” which is formulated in the idea of the “new beginning of philosophical thinking” in the Contributions to Philosophy. In the context of clarifying the difference between being and beings, her third hypothesis about Ricœur’s critique of Heidegger reveals an ethical level. The primordiality of the ethical dimension of the action reveals the ontological foundation of the hermeneutical-phenomenological situation.

This collection makes available, in one place, the very best essays on the founding father of phenomenology, reprinting key writings on Husserl's thought from the past seventy years. It draws together a range of writings, many otherwise inaccessible, that have been recognized as seminal contributions not only to an understanding of this great philosopher but also to the development of his phenomenology. The four volumes are arranged as follows: Volume I Classic essays from Husserl's assistants, students and earlier interlocutors. Including a selection of papers from such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Ricoeur and Levinas. Volume II Classic commentaries on Husserl's published works. "Covering the Logical Investigations," " Ideas I," " Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness," "" ""and" Formal and Transcendental Logic." Volumes III and IV Papers concentrating on particular aspects of Husserl's theory including: Husserl's account of mathematics and logic, his theory of science, the nature of phenomenological reduction, his account of perception and language, the theory of space and time, his phenomenology of imagination and empathy, the concept of the life-world and his epistemology.

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.

This encyclopedia presents phenomenological thought and the phenomenological movement within philosophy and within more than a score of other disciplines on a level accessible to professional colleagues of other orientations as well as to advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Entries average 3,000 words. In practically all cases, they include lists of works "For Further Study." The Introduction briefly chronicles the changing phenomenological agenda and compares phenomenology with other 20th Century movements. The 166 entries are a baut matters of seven sorts: ( 1) the faur broad tendencies and periods within the phenomenological movement; (2) twenty-three national traditions ofphenomenology; (3) twenty-two philosophical sub-disciplines, including those referred to with the formula "the philosophy of x"; (4) phenomenological tendencies within twenty-one non-philosophical dis ciplines; (5) forty major phenomenological topics; (6) twenty-eight leading phenomenological figures; and (7) twenty-seven non-phenomenological figures and movements ofinteresting sim ilarities and differences with phenomenology. Conventions Concern ing persons, years ofbirth and death are given upon first mention in an entry ofthe names of deceased non-phenomenologists. The names of persons believed tobe phenomenologists and also, for cross-referencing purposes, the titles of other entries are printed entirely in SMALL CAPITAL letters, also upon first mention. In addition, all words thus occurring in all small capital letters are listed in the index with the numbers of all pages on which they occur. To facilitate indexing, Chinese, Hungarian, and Japanese names have been re-arranged so that the personal name precedes the family name.

The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl has decisively influenced much of contemporary philosophy. Yet Husserl's philosophy has come under such criticism that today it is viewed as little more than a historical relic. One of the most important and influential critiques of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology was launched by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time, which radically reinterpreted phenomenology. Timothy Stapleton returns to the origin of phenomenology to provide a clear, concise perspective on where it has been and on where it ought to be heading. This book is a careful reexamination of the internal development of Husserl's thought as well as of the ways in which Heidegger used and transformed the phenomenological method. It begins with an interpretation of the "transcendental" dimension of Husserl's philosophy, stressing the importance of the ontological rather than the epistemological problematic in determining the unfolding of Husserlian thought. The work progresses to an account of Heidegger's early works, viewed as a radicalization of Husserl's phenomenology both in name and substance. Stapleton concludes by contrasting a transcendental origin with a hermeneutic beginning point in terms of their respective ideals of intelligibility, meaning, and being; and then looks at some of the consequences of the idea of a hermeneutic philosophy.

In this collection of early lectures, the author of Being and Time defines and begins to develop his unique approach to phenomenology. This volume contains the first lectures Martin Heidegger delivered at Marburg in the winter semester of 1923–1924. In them, he introduces the notion of phenomenology by tracing it back to Aristotle’s treatments of phainomenon and logos. This extensive commentary on Aristotle is an important addition to Heidegger’s ongoing interpretations which accompany his thinking during the period leading up to Being and Time. Additionally, these lectures develop critical differences between Heidegger’s phenomenology and that of Descartes and Husserl and elaborate questions of facticity, everydayness, and flight from existence that are central in his later work. Here, Heidegger dismantles the history of ontology and charts a new course for phenomenology by defining and distinguishing his own methods.

Ontology - The Hermeneutics of Facticity, first published in 1988 as volume 63 of Martin Heidegger's Collected Works, is the first English translation of a lecture course given during his legendary early Freiburg period (1915-1923). Anticipating both the phenomenological hermeneutical analysis of factical Dasein in Being and Time (1927) and the poetic thinking in Heidegger's writings after 1930, the experimental theme of these renowned lecture course notes from the summer semester of 1923 is the "be-ing there" of facticity in "the awhileness of its temporal particularity." The 33-year-old Heidegger illustrates this theme with an ingenious interpretation of the table in his home and the activities of his young family around it.