Dialogues in Phenomenology PDF
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Dialogues in Phenomenology SELECTED STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY 5 GENERAL EDITOR RICHARD M. ZANER (Southern Methodist University) BOARD OF EDITORS: DAVID CARR (Yale University) EDWARD S. CASEY (Yale University) HUBERT DREYFUS (University of California at Berkeley) JAMES EDIE (Northwestern University) DON IHDE (State University of New York at Stony Brook) MAURICE NATANSON (University of California at Santa Cruz) ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI (The Catholic University of America) Dialogues in Phenomenology EDITED BY DON IHDE RICHARD M. ZANER AND • MARTINUS NI]HOFF I THE HAGUE I 1975 © 1975 by Martinus NijhoJf, The Hague, Netherlands All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form ISBN-J3: 978-90-247-1665-4 e-ISBN-J3: 978-94-010-16/5-5 DO;: /0.1007/978-94-0/0-/6/5-5 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION SECTION ONE DIALOGUE WITH ANALYSIS JACQUES DERRIDA, The Copula Supplement 7 PETER CAWS, Thought, Language and Philosophy 49 NEWTON GARVER, Grammar and Metaphysics 64 SAMUEL TODES and CHARLES DANIELS, Beyond the Doubt of a Shadow, with an addendum by SAMUEL TODES, Shadows in Knowledge: Plato's Misunderstanding of Shadows, and of Knowledge as Shadow-free 86 SECTION TWO TRANSCENDENTAL THEMES J. N. FINDLAY, Meinong the Phenomenologist 117 HENRY E. ALLISON, The "Critique of Pure Reason" as 136 Transcendental Phenomenology DAVID CARR, History, Phenomenology and Reflection 156 LESTER EMBREE, Reflection on Planned Operations 176 SECTION THREE EXISTENTIAL THEMES PETER Fuss, Some Perplexities in Nietzsche 195 JOHN SCANLON, Desire, Need, and Alienation in Sartre 21 I WILFRIED VER EECKE, The Look, the Body, and the Other 224 JAMES M. EDIE, The Significance of Merleau-Ponty's Philosophy of Language 247 Notes on Contributors 269 INTRODUCTION Phenomenology in the United States is in a state of ferment and change. Not all the changes are happy ones, however, for some of the most prominent philosophers of the first generation of phenomenologists have died: in 1959 Alfred Schutz, and within the past two years John \Vild, Dorion Cairns, and Aron Gur witsch. These thinkers, though often confronting a hostile intel lectual climate, were nevertheless persistent and profoundly influential-through their own works, and through their students. The two sources associated with their names, The Graduate Faculty of The New School for Social Research, and the circle around John Wild first at Harvard and later at Northwestern and Yale, produced a sizable portion of the now second gener ation American phenomenological philosophers. In a way, it was the very hostility of the American philo sophical milieu which became an important factor in the ferment now taking place. Although the older, first generation phenome nologists were deeply conversant with other philosophical move ments here and abroad, their efforts at meaningful dialogue were largely ignored. Determined not to remain isolated from the dominant currents of Anglo-American philosophy in par ticular, the second generation opened the way to a dialogue with analytic philosophers, especially through the efforts of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, led by 2 INTRODUCTION such men as James M. Edie and Hubert Dreyfus and, in other respects, Herbert Spiegelberg and Maurice Natanson. If, today, that dialogue has expanded beyond the sponsorship of a long series of symposia by the Society, this is certainly in part due to its stimulation of this dialogue. It is from within the respective philosophical styles themselves, however, that one finds the more profound reason for the dialogue. Earlier phenomenologists, and especially Husserl, were deeply concerned with epistemological and logical issues, but also with those pertaining to language, signitive and symbolic activity, and the relations of these to thought. In recent years, however, philosophers in the phenomenological style have turned their attention more focally to the latter sets of questions, and thus have found themselves in a fruitful convergence with a cen tral concern in analytic philosophy. At the same time, the gra dual broadening of concern within the latter style has begun to open the doors to themes introduced by the phenomenological and existential traditions. The first section of Dialogues in Phenomenology begins in just such a cross-fertilization of philosophical styles. Jacques Derri da's opening essay on the copula supplement clearly represents one of the more radical approaches to language in Continental thought. Following Nietzsche and Heidegger, he calls into question the whole role of logic and grammar as it has related to the question of truth in Western philosophy. But where this approach might have been dismissed or have gone unheeded only a few years ago, today it receives serious consideration in a dialogue with two philosophers in the analytic tradition. Newton Garver in his reflections on grammar and metaphysics takes up the same questions and relates them to Wittgenstein and another mode of radical questioning. Peter Caws, who has become one of the more broadly read philosophers of the present, strikes a wide-ranging note by bringing together Heidegger and Wittgen stein, Furth and Levi-Strauss. The dialogue becomes even more integrated and pointed in the joint venture by Samuel Todes INTRODUCTION 3 and Charles Daniels (and in Todes' supplementary comments). Here, linguistic and phenomenological techniques are com bined in a fruitful way to attack an intriguing puzzle which arises in relation to our language about and experience of shadows-and how these questions relate to certain basic questions of knowledge. The contemporary dialogue with analysis is balanced in this fifth volume of selected papers given at the Society's annual meetings by a more retrospective and reflective concern with origins, themes and problems which arise out of the past of the existential-phenomenological tradition itself. The second section is devoted to themes and problems which focus on the more transcendental dimension of concern. In the first essay, J. N. Findlay presents a careful and important analysis of Alexis Meinong's thought, often neglected but clearly significant for understanding some of the important origins of phenome nology. The question concerning the sense of transcendental philosophy, much-debated within the tradition itself, is directly addressed in the next two essays. The first, by Henry Allison, explores the character of transcendental philosophy through a critical comparison of the sense it has in Kant and HusserI. The second, by David Carr, probes the difficult terrain, en countered by Husserl especially in his later works, where the conflicts and possibilities for reconcilation of transcendentally oriented and historically oriented thinking must be confronted. The final essay in this section, by Lester Embree, engages the more recent work of Alfred Schutz, in an effort to mark out some of the crucial dimensions of Schutz's theory of the social world and to show both where it is fundamentally correct and where it stands in need of further clarification and revision-in light of "the things themselves." Section three is organized around the more existentially oriented dimension of the tradition. Peter Fuss returns to Nietzsche in an effort to lay certain persistent misinterpretations of this enigmatic philosopher to rest. John Scanlon and Wilfried 4 INTRODUCTION Ver Eecke focus on different facets of Sartre's philosophical problematic-the former concerned to feret out Sartre's con certed attempt to delineate the ontology of alienation in the concrete case of Jean Genet, and Ver Eecke focusing anew on Sartre's study of embodiment and intersubjectivity. James Edie returns the volume to the initial question of language in a retro spective on Merleau-Ponty and the philosophy of language. The diversity of concerns, the dialogue with the past and with other philosophers, and the search for foundational and enduring themes in the distinctively existential-phenomenological vein may signal a certain coming to maturity of this style of philo sophy in the United States. The present volume hopefully ex hibits this growth and diversity, and, along with the other volumes in the series, provides ample evidence of the energetic and increasingly influential efforts such philosophers are de voting to critical and creative issues in our day. The movement has, we think, passed well beyond the phase of mere youthful attraction; judging from the quality of scholarly labors, the seriousness given by thinkers from other philosophical styles and from other disciplines, and the rise in serious student interest, phenomenology and existential philosophy have clearly grown into vigorous and mature disciplines of philosophical thought. Thus, although we sadly note the passing of some of the main figures of the first generation, the second generation has already made its mark, and a third generation is rapidly coming into its own. What now lies on the horizon is the careful and critical de velopment of problems and themes, both probing them more deeply philosophically and relating them to the broader context of the other disciplines. This set of tasks is what is intended for subsequent volumes of the series. DON IHDE M. RICHARD ZANER
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