Four Phenomenological Philosophers: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty

232 Pages·1993·1.28 MB·English

by  Christopher Macann

Four Phenomenological Philosophers
In this book, Christopher Macann guides the student through the
major texts of the four great figures of the phenomenological
tradition—Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre
and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Each chapter is devoted to one of the
four thinkers.
Since studying phenomenological philosophy under Ricoeur,
Christopher Macann has published Kant and the Foundations of
Metaphysics, Presence and Coincidence and a translation of
Theunissen’s Der Andere. His most recent work is Martin
Heidegger in the Routledge series Critical Assessments of the Leading
Philosophers. He has taught at the universities of Paris, California
and Pennsylvania; he is a research fellow of the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation and is currently Professor of Philosophy at
Regent’s College in London.
Four Phenomenological
Philosophers
Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre,
Merleau-Ponty
Christopher Macann
London and New York
First published 1993
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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© 1993 Christopher Macann
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Also available
ISBN 0-203-98149-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-07353-7 (hbk)
0-415-07354-5 (pbk)
To the students I have taught over many
generations and in several countries —
without whom I should not have had a life
Contents
Preface vi
1 Edmund Husserl 1
2 Martin Heidegger 57
3 Jean-Paul Sartre 111
4 Maurice Merleau-Ponty 159
Conclusion 201
Select bibliography 215
Index 219
Preface
This book has been written for the student, more specifically for
students in an English speaking world which, for many years,
has been dominated by analytical philosophy. My basic aim is to
put into the hands of the reader, and within the compass of a
single volume, a work enabling beginning students of
phenomenology to find their way through the major texts of
what will, I believe, in retrospect, be seen as one of the (if not the)
most important philosophical traditions of the century.
My concern with the needs of students has dictated the format
of the book. In my estimate, the four figures I deal with count as
the most important phenomenological philosophers of this
century—with no other figure falling into quite the same
category of original, constructive thinking. Three of these four
figures (Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty) each wrote one
major work in which the substance of their phenomenological
thinking is represented. In order to keep the cost of this book
down to a minimum, I have therefore deliberately chosen to
ignore the other, often extensive, philosophical writings of these
three figures. With Husserl, however, such a policy cannot be
pursued. And so I have tried to cover all the texts which tackle
the issues with which the student is required to be familiar.
From personal experience, I know how difficult it is to move
from an analytical foundation to a comprehension and
assimilation of continental philosophy. If I was ever able to make
this shift when I went from an undergraduate training at Oxford
to a graduate training in Paris, it was by dint of a deliberate
decision, in my second year at Paris, to pretend I knew
no philosophy at all, and so to begin all over again. This policy of
deliberate ignorance made it possible for me to approach
phenomenology with a fresh eye, free of the biases of my
vii
analytical background. Hence, I believe that the broadening of
the scope of English-speaking philosophy will result not from
analytical philosophers acquiring a late ‘taste’ for
phenomenological philosophy but from students of philosophy
being exposed to the phenomenological tradition at about the
same time that they are introduced to contemporary analytical
philosophy and so before the point at which their minds set,
irreversibly, in the mould of language, truth and logic.
For generations, phenomenology has been presented to
students in the English-speaking world in the language and
idiom of analytical philosophy, and therefore not merely in a
language and idiom alien, but actually antithetical, to the spirit of
phenomenology—partly, no doubt, with a view to diminishing
the significance of phenomenological philosophy. In view of the
fact that the greatest phenomenological philosophers are now
routinely classified amongst the greatest philosophers of the
century, such an approach can no longer be sustained.
This book is therefore not meant to replace a reading of the
texts, either in the original German or French versions or in one or
other of the many excellent translations which are at present
available, but has been written to help students find their way
through these always difficult, and often also long, texts. It is a
textbook in the strict and literal sense of that word, that is, a book
designed to help students come to terms with the texts.
viii
Chapter 1
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl was born in 1859 in Prossnitz, a village in
Czechoslovakian Moravia which, at that time, formed a part of
the Austrian Empire. He initially studied mathematics and
physics at Leipzig and Berlin but his transfer to the University of
Vienna inaugurated a shift in interest towards philosophy. In
1886, he went to the University of Halle, where he became an
assistant under Stumpf. But in 1900 he received an invitation to
join the philosophy faculty at Göttingen, where he subsequently
became professor in philosophy. In 1916 he obtained a full
professorship at Freiburg im Breisgau, where he remained until
his retirement. The last years of his life were overshadowed by
Nazi politics, though his death, in 1938, saved him from
witnessing the war unleashed with Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
The philosophical development of Edmund Husserl, the
founder of twentieth-century phenomenological philosophy, can
be divided into three main periods, the first period of his pre-
transcendental or epistemological phenomenology, the middle
period of his fully transcendental phenomenology and the last
period of his so-called ‘genetic’ phenomenology. Although our
attention will be concentrated on the middle period of his
properly transcendental phenomenology, we shall nevertheless
present Husserl’s thinking in terms of these three phases.
There is no one work which stands in the same relation to the
Husserlian philosophy that Being and Time, Being and Nothingness
and Phenomenology of Perception stand in relation to the thinking of
their respective authors. Inevitably, therefore, we shall be obliged
to take account of a number of texts stemming from different
periods in Husserl’s development.