Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy – serie

A classic of phenomenology and existentialism, The Phenomenon of Life sets forth a systematic and comprehensive philosophy--an existential interpretation of biological facts laid out in support of his claim that the mind is prefigured throughout organic existence. Hans Jonas shows how life-forms present themselves on an ascending scale of perception and freedom of action, a scale reaching its apex in a human being's capacity for thought and morally responsible behaviour.

" . . . elegant and provocative . . . Exhibit[s] a subtle mastery of Heidegger's works." —Review of Metaphysics" . . . splendidly precise study of Heidegger . . . to be recommended not only to Heidegger scholars but also to those interested in the question of what philosophical thinking has as its task in the modern technological world." —Religious Studies Review" . . . indispensable to understanding the later Heidegger." —Choice

Eugene T. Gendlin (1926–2017) is increasingly recognized as one of the seminal thinkers of our era. Carrying forward the projects of American pragmatism and continental philosophy, Gendlin created an original form of philosophical psychology that brings new understandings of human experience and the life-world, including the “hard problem of consciousness.”A Process Model, Gendlin’s magnum opus, offers no less than a new alternative to the dualism of mind and body. Beginning with living process, the body’s simultaneous interaction and identity with its environment, Gendlin systematically derives nonreductive concepts that offer novel and rigorous ways to think from within lived precision. In this way terms such as body, environment, time, space, behavior, language, culture, situation, and more can be understood with both great force and great subtlety.Gendlin’s project is relevant to discussions not only in philosophy but in other fields in which life process is central—including biology, environmental management, environmental humanities, and ecopsychology. It provides a genuinely new philosophical approach to complex societal challenges and environmental issues.

At a time in which many philosophers have concluded that Husserl's philosophy is exhausted, but when the alternatives to Husserl appear to be exhausted as well, this work aims to presents an innovative approach to Husserlian phenomenology. The author implicitly attacks the most fundamental criticism aimed at Husserl: that his philosophy is intrinsically formalistic, unable in principle to deal with concrete matters of life and how to live it. This study of the problems and themes of a generative phenomenology, normality and abnormality, and the sociohistorical concepts of homeworld and generative phenomenology, opens doors for a philosophy of the social world while casting new light on work done by Husserl himself.

The Visible and the Invisible contains the unfinished manuscript and working notes of the book Merleau-Ponty was writing when he died. The text is devoted to a critical examination of Kantian, Husserlian, Bergsonian, and Sartrean method, followed by the extraordinary "The Intertwining - The Chiasm", that reveals the central pattern of Merleau-Ponty's own thought. The working notes for the book provide the reader with a truly exciting insight into the mind of the philosopher at work as he refines and develops new pivotal concepts.

All of the major themes of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology, from the Logical Investigations to The Crisis of the European Sciences, are investigated from a critical point of view by James M. Edie. The philosophy of logic is considered insofar as it relates to the phenomenological and transcendental foundation of logic itself. Transcendental logic is studied with reference to both the formal logic of Aristotle and Leibniz and the dialectical logic of Hegel. Edie considers Husserl's theories of meaning and reference, intentionality, the distinction between perceptual and eidetic intuition, the notion of the ideality of meaning, the laws of objectivity in general, and formal and material ontology, as well as Husserl's reinterpretation of the apriori.

" . . . a profoundly stimulating and satisfying piece of philosophy. . . . It is a book from which one really can learn something worthwhile." —Idealistic Studies" . . . exceptionally well-written philosophy of religion . . . " —Mentalities" . . . a most impressive phenomenology of religion . . . a splendid achievement . . . " —The Reformed Theological Review" . . . challenging to scholars . . . interesting to general audiences." —International Journal for Philosophy of Religion" . . . equal in clarity of thought and comprehensiveness of scope. . . . profoundly original." —The Reformed Journal"Challenging and thought-provoking, this makes a fine . . . textbook in the philosophy of religion." —Religious Studies Review" . . . its virtues as a textbook in phenomenology or philosophy of religion are extraordinary." —Faith and PhilosophyExamples from the writings of Kierkegaard, Freud, Heidegger, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and Tolstoi illuminate Westphal's thesis that guilt and death are the central problems of human existence.

"This is a remarkable book: wide-ranging, resonant, and well-written; it is also reflective and personable, warm and engaging." —Philosophy and Literature"With this book Caputo takes his place firmly as the foremost American, continental post-modernist . . . " —International Philosophical Quarterly"One cannot but be impressed by the scope of Radical Hermeneutics." —Man and World"Caputo's study is stunning in its scope and scholarship." —Robert E. Lauder, St. John's University, The ThomistFor John D. Caputo, hermeneutics means radical thinking without transcendental justification: attending to the ruptures and irregularities in existence before the metaphysics of presence has a chance to smooth them over. Radical Hermeneutics forges a closer collaboration between hermeneutics and deconstruction than has previously been attempted.

A lecture course that Martin Heidegger gave in 1927, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology continues and extends explorations begun in Being and Time. In this text, Heidegger provides the general outline of his thinking about the fundamental problems of philosophy, which he treats by means of phenomenology, and which he defines and explains as the basic problem of ontology.

" . . . Shapiro's book is bursting with thoughts, and if one is willing to mine them, one is sure to find items of interest or provocation." —The Journal of Aesthetics and Art CriticismTaking issue with a widely held view that Nietzsche's writings are essentially fragmentary or aphoristic, Gary Shapiro focuses on the narrative mode that Nietzsche adopted in many of his works. Such themes as eternal recurrence, the question of origins, and the problematics of self-knowledge are reinterpreted in the context of the narratives in which Nietzsche develops or employs them.

"[Wilshire] establishes a phenomenology of theatre, a theory of enactment, and a theory of appearance, none of which American theatre . . . has ever had." —Performing Arts Journal" . . . Wilshire makes unique contributions to understanding major aspects of the human condition in its necessary search for selfhood." —Process Studies"It is one of the American classics." —Human Studies

"For description and defense of the narrative configurations of everyday life, and of the practical and social character of those narratives, there is no better treatment than Time, Narrative, and History. . . . a clear, judicious, and truthful account, provocative from beginning to end." —Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology" . . . a superior work of philosophy that tells a unique and insightful story about narrative." —Quarterly Journal of Speech

Offering a full-scale study of the theory of reality hidden beneath modern logic, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, a lecture course given in 1928, illuminates the transitional phase in Heidegger's thought from the existential analysis of Being and Time to the overcoming of metaphysics in his later philosophy. In a searching exposition of the metaphysical problems underpinning Leibniz's theory of logical judgment, Heidegger establishes that a given theory of logic is rooted in a certain conception of Being. He explores the significance of Western logic as a system-building technical tool and as a cultural phenomenon that is centuries old.

If we are to understand Marx's thought, argues French philosopher Michel Henry, we must cast aside Marxism. In his original and richly detailed study of Marx's philosophy, Henry emphasizes the importance of approaching Marx's writings directly, rather than through the intermediary of subsequent interpretations, which often have been politically motivated. In contrast to the usual depiction of Marxian thought as an economically oriented analysis of social reality, Henry contends that in Marx's theory philosophy is primary. Therefore, Marx's writings must properly be viewed—and judged—within the context of the modern philosophical tradition. Marx's basic concern, Henry demonstrates, is with the nature of the human being, the real conditions of human individuality. Central to Henry's reading of Marx, and elaborated here with unprecedented thoroughness, is the theory of praxis, a conception of the individual not as a thinking being, in the Cartesian tradition, but as a laboring being, a producer and consumer situated in a concrete social world. This novel and provocative contribution to the current debate about the nature and meaning of Marx's thought is essential for students of philosophy, Marxism, and political theory. Kathleen McLaughlin's excellent translation of Henry's abridgement of his two-volume work preserves the power and freshness of the French original.

The Primacy of Perception brings together a number of important studies by Maurice Merleau-Ponty that appeared in various publications from 1947 to 1961. The title essay, which is in essence a presentation of the underlying thesis of his Phenomenology of Perception, is followed by two courses given by Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne on phenomenological psychology. "Eye and Mind" and the concluding chapters present applications of Merleau-Ponty's ideas to the realms of art, philosophy of history, and politics. Taken together, the studies in this volume provide a systematic introduction to the major themes of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy.

Written between 1945 and 1947, the essays in Sense and Non-Sense provide an excellent introduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought. They summarize his previous insights and exhibit their widest range of application-in aesthetics, ethics, politics, and the sciences of man. Each essay opens new perspectives to man's search for reason.The first part of Sense and Non-Sense, "Arts," is concerned with Merleau-Ponty's concepts of perception, which were advanced in his major philosophical treatise, Phenomenology of Perception. Here the analysis is focused and enriched in descriptions of the perceptual world of Cezanne, the encounter with the Other as expressed in the novels of Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre, and the gestalt quality of experience brought out in the film art form. In the second part, "Ideas," Merleau-Ponty shows how the categories of the phenomenology of perception can be understood as an outgrowth of the behavioral sciences and how a model of existence based on perception sensitizes us to the insights and limitations of previous philosophies and suggests constructive criticisms of contemporary philosophy. The third part, "Politics," clarifies the political dilemmas facing intellectuals in postwar France.

Speech is a way of tearing out a meaning from an undivided whole."Thus does Maurice Merleau-Ponty describe speech in this collection of his important writings on the philosophy of expression, composed during the last decade of his life. For him, expression is a category of human behavior and existence much broader than language alone. He maintains that man is essentially expressive, even prior to speaking: in his silence, gestures, and lived behavior.

In this book, his major work, Alfred Schutz attempts to provide a sound philosophical basis for the sociological theories of Max Weber. Using a Husserlian phenomenology, Schutz provides a complete and original analysis of human action and its "intended meaning.

The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl's last great work, is important both for its content and for the influence it has had on other philosophers. In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism.Husserl provides not only a history of philosophy but a philosophy of history. As he says in Part I, "The genuine spiritual struggles of European humanity as such take the form of struggles between the philosophies, that is, between the skeptical philosophies--or nonphilosophies, which retain the word but not the task—and the actual and still vital philosophies. But the vitality of the latter consists in the fact that they are struggling for their true and genuine meaning and thus for the meaning of a genuine humanity."

This classic, first published in 1969, introduces to English-speaking readers a field which is of increasing importance in contemporary philosophy and theology--hermeneutics, the theory of understanding, or interpretation.Richard E. Palmer, utilizing largely untranslated sources, treats principally of the conception of hermeneutics enunciated by Heidegger and developed into a "philosophical hermeneutics" by Hans-Georg Gadamer. He provides a brief overview of the field by surveying some half-dozen alternate definitions of the term and by examining in detail the contributions of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey. In the Manifesto which concludes the book, Palmer suggests the potential significance of hermeneutics for literary interpretation.

Essays on the relationship between perceptual experience and scientific thought-an introduction to the phenomenology of science.

The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience (Fr. Phénoménologie de l'expérience esthétique) was first published in 1953. In the first of four parts, Dufrenne distinguishes the "aesthetic object" from the "work of art." In the second, he elucidates types of works of art, especially music and painting. He devotes his third section to aesthetic perception. In the fourth, he describes a Kantian critique of aesthetic experience.A perennial classic in the SPEP series, the work is rounded out by a detailed "Translator's Foreword" especially helpful to readers in aesthetics interested in the context and circumstances around which the original was published as well as the phenomenological background of the book.

In Experience and Judgment, Husserl explores the problems of contemporary philosophy of language and the constitution of logical forms. He argues that, even at its most abstract, logic demands an underlying theory of experience. Husserl sketches out a genealogy of logic in three parts: Part I examines prepredicative experience, Part II the structure of predicative thought as such, and Part III the origin of general conceptual thought. This volume provides an articulate restatement of many of the themes of Husserlian phenomenology.

We need a philosophy of both history and spirit to deal with the problems we touch upon here. Yet we would be unduly rigorous if we were to wait for perfectly elaborated principles before speaking philosophically of politics." Thus Merleau-Ponty introduces Adventures of the Dialectic, his study of Marxist philosophy and thought. In this study, containing chapters on Weber, Lukacs, Lenin, Sartre, and Marx himself, Merleau-Ponty investigates and attempts to go beyond the dialectic.

The tools, concepts, and vocabulary of phenomenology are used in this book to explore language in a multitude of contexts.