SUNY series, Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy – serie

Phenomenology in America has developed in unique directions with respect to descriptive analysis and in relation to interdisciplinary fields. Descriptions examines current trends in phenomenology. It begins by reflecting on phenomenological description itself, then takes phenomenology into such areas as time, science and the arts, the social, and into the universities.Ranging from the development of theory by such well-known philosophers as Maurice Natanson and Robert Sokolowski, this collection addresses the topics of pregnant subjectivity, nostalgia, the ethical function of architecture, computer science, and academic freedom.

The core source of this book is the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Beginning with a chapter on speaking and the other, three lead chapters focus on Levinas' account of the face of the other. These chapters are followed by explorations of the ethics of dissemination in Derrida, the freedom of the other in Sartre, the cultural other in Husserlian phenomenology, the other as sexual difference in Irigaray and Nietzsche, the sublime in aesthetics, and the deconstruction of the primacy of the ego in Foucault and Lacan.This book is especially relevant to feminist theory. It shows that postmodern, continental philosophy does indeed have ethical implications. The question of the other or the presence of the other undercuts the foundationalist starting points of ethical theory and epistemology.The Question of the Other presents fresh and original interpretations of Husserl, Nietzsche, Derrida, Levinas, Irigaray, Foucault, Lacan, Heidegger, and Sartre.

This book punctuates the moments of crisis in continental thought from the foundational crisis of reason in Husserl's call for a rigorous science of phenomenology to the current crisis of postmodernism and its rejection of Husserl's metanarrative of history and rationality. The mediating links between these moments is the centrality of the epochal history of Being, the power of cultural and disciplinary practices, and the dispersal of meaning in the post-Husserlian and post-subjective philosophies of Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, and others.Included here are the thoughts of leading scholars who critically discuss Husserl's analysis of the crisis of Western thought and the importance of the concepts of "world" in Husserl's early writings. The authors analyze the deprivileging of philosophy as social critique through the text of Husserl, Habermas, Foucault, and recent feminist theory. They examine the end of the epistemological and morally autonomous subject in continental thought. Together, these thoughts articulate multiple points or moments of crisis without cure or end.

This book addresses various phases of continental philosophy, both in the context of its multiple traditions and in relation to the alternatives that mark the understanding of its present and future. Divided into two parts, the authors first focus on the diversity of traditions in continental philosophy in connection with the texts of Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and De Beauvoir. Second, they explore the reality of social, political, sexual, and philosophical differences, in connection with the writings of Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Habermas, Heidegger, Foucault, Irigaray, Kristeva, Derrida, and Vattimo. They also stress the various theoretical foundations that manifest these differences.Issues surrounding the role of philosophical systems, language, ethical choice, relations with others, the gendered body, socialization, and the status of philosophy today constitute the fabric of this book. The authors place these ideas in the context of current thought and current debates in continental philosophy and evaluate their significance for the future.

Ethics and Danger examines Heidegger's association with German National Socialism and attempts to understand both the question of politics in Heidegger's thought and the thought that gives rise to that question. It explores the contribution of Heidegger's work to issues of ethics, technology, and social theory, as well as his relationship to other thinkers such as Parmenides, Aristotle, Hegel, Husserl, Benjamin, Levinas, Rorty, Foucault, and Derrida. Finally, it addresses the more general question of the future of ethical thought within continental philosophy.In order to engage the ethical issues surrounding Heidegger's life and thought, the authors speak of dangers such as facism and the facile, self-congratulatory moral stance that Heidegger exemplifies. The question of how to speak in the wake of Heidegger's thought takes many forms, and the answers represent a diversity of viewpoints from both American and continental thinkers.

This book challenges and renews the discussions that have historically characterized the tradition of continental thought in the areas of ethics, feminism, aesthetics, and political theory. The classical origins of this tradition—phenomenology, existentialism, and hermeneutics—emerged according to models that were foundational and systematic in character. The book shows that continental philosophy is now woven between counter-discourses and concrete interventions, complicated in the relationship between theory and practice; that is, in the transition between concept and determination, idea and intuition, the ontic and the ontological, experience and judgment.

This collection examines the relationship between phenomenology, interpretation, and community, considering the issues from several viewpoints including German idealism, the discourses of the Frankfurt School, and post-structuralist thought.This book re-examines the relationship between phenomenology, interpretation, and the problem of community, a topic that has been at the center of recent debates in Continental thought. From the outset, phenomenology was intimately connected with the issues of interpretation and community, both by theoretical paradigm and substance. Indeed, Husserl sought to distinguish his own foundational investigations from others that stressed the interpretive and historical character of the rational or that contested such foundational enterprises out of a concern for the critique of ideology and the "hermeneutics of suspicion." He argued equally as stringently for the primacy of such theoretical issues over other studies, such as ethics, political theory, or aesthetics, that shaped the itinerary of philosophical inquiry. In a similar manner, the essays encountered here continue the debates that accompany the complex phenomenologies of post-Kantian Continental thought concerning the rational status of the self and its ambiguous relationship with the community-and thus, in turn, the ambiguous relationship between the "rational community," civil society, and the contested dynamics of its conceptualization and adjudication. Because it considers these issues from several viewpoints, including the legacy of German idealism and the discourses emerging from the Frankfurt School and contemporary post-structuralist thought, this volume serves both as an introduction to Continental philosophy on these issues as well as a guide to the status of recent debates.

Rereads classical figures in continental thought, takes up current topics in the legacy of political theory, and analyzes and evaluates Foucault's work as a prime manifestation of the complicated modern interface between truth and power, institution and liberation.The task of reinterpretation arises from recognition, within continental philosophy, of a certain abandonment of political philosophy for historicism or a scientistic search for laws. Contemporary debate over the death of the possibility of the subject now focuses on the links among knowledge, virtue and power. As a result, the ancient problem of the institution of the form of the political becomes linked with struggles intrinsic to the task of representation and recognition. The problem now becomes one of understanding the meaning of judgment, autonomy, and consensus in the midst of the fragmentation of the hierarchies that structure the political, and have structured the thinking (from Plato to Hegel) that we identify as metaphysical. Such fragmentation doubtless is the ancient inheritance of democracy, but now without the metaphysical assurance of a transcendental authority, whether resident in nature, community, or the monarch as embodiment of the sacred. Perhaps it is in Foucault's work, more than anywhere else, that the investigation of the complicated modern interface between truth and power, and institution and liberation, occurs.In reinterpreting the political, recognition of ideological forces in the legacy of modernity in its theoretical and institutional forms cannot be escaped-particularly in recognizing the underdetermined character of the subject matter. This collection represents rich examples of such reinterpretations. It begins with rereading the classical figures in continental thought and then takes up current topics in the legacy of political theory. The final section provides analyses and evaluations of Foucault's work.

Offers various views on phenomenology and existentialism.Phenomenology in a Pluralistic Context contains papers selected from three years of meetings of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP). The essays are representative of the most current thinking among North American philosophers who have been influenced by the phenomenological movement. A majority of the selections reveals a considerable mutual influence between phenomenology and other philosophical currents. Special emphasis is given to issues in social and political theory; the philosophy of medicine, of art, of language, and of religion; phenomenology's relationship to Kantianism and to Marxism; and the figures of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Heidegger.

Phenomenology in America has developed in unique directions with respect to descriptive analysis and in relation to interdisciplinary fields. Descriptions examines current trends in phenomenology. It begins by reflecting on phenomenological description itself, then takes phenomenology into such areas as time, science and the arts, the social, and into the universities.Ranging from the development of theory by such well-known philosophers as Maurice Natanson and Robert Sokolowski, this collection addresses the topics of pregnant subjectivity, nostalgia, the ethical function of architecture, computer science, and academic freedom.

Critical and Dialectical Phenomenology shows how continental philosophy is currently practiced in the United States.This book draws together some of the most important recent work in the areas of semiotics, critical theory, epistemology, and psychology. It contains a new essay by Karl-Otto Apel on the possibility of transcendental semiotics, as well as essays on the relationship between hermeneutics and critical theory, the nature of dialectical phenomenology, analyses of epistemic foundations, the hermeneutics of people and places, and there is a critique of contemporary cognitive psychology.