Husserl’s philosophy, by the usual account, evolved through three stages: 1. development of an anti-psychologistic, objective foundation of logic and mathematics, rooted in Brentanian descriptive psychology; 2. development of a new discipline of "phenomenology" founded on a metaphysical position dubbed "transcendental idealism"; transformation of phenomenology from a form of methodological solipsism into a phenomenology of intersubjectivity and ultimately (in his Crisis of 1936) into an ontology of the life-world, embracing the social worlds of culture and history. We show that this (...) story of three revolutions can provide at best a preliminary orientation, and that Husserl was constantly expanding and revising his philosophical system, integrating views in phenomenology, ontology, epistemology and logic with views on the nature and tasks of philosophy and science as well as on the nature of culture and the world in ways that reveal more common elements than violent shifts of direction. We argue further that Husserl is a seminal figure in the evolution from traditional philosophy to the characteristic philosophical concerns of the late twentieth century: concerns with representation and intentionality and with problems at the borderlines of the philosophy of mind, ontology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Epistemic approaches towards understanding ultimate reality proceed chiefly via the rational, the empirical, and the fideistic way, each yielding a theological view consistent to the approach chosen. Rational theologies tend to be ultimately monist in nature, while empirical theologies are pluralistic, e.g. polytheism. Fideism has its dangers as well where blind faith only hampers scientific research. However, Indian philosophy has suggested few criteria for verifying a source of authoritative testimony. This dissertation investigates why an authentic revelation would solve the ultimate (...) clash between reason and experience. (shrink)

This thesis examines the connections between Arne Naess's Deep Ecology and Martin Heidegger's Phenomenology. The latter provides a philosophical basis for the former. Martin Heidegger's critique of traditional metaphysics and his call for an "event" ontology that is deeper than the traditional substance ontology opens a philosophical space in which a different conception of what it is to be emerges. Heidegger's view of humans also provides a basis for the wider and deeper conception of self Arne Naess seeks: one that (...) gets rid of the presupposition that human beings are isolated subjects embedded in a framework of objects distinct from them. Both Heidegger and Naess illustrate how the substance-ontological dogma affects human culture, encouraging humans to live as if they were divorced from their environmental surroundings. When humans live according to an atomistic conception of themselves as independent from their context, alienation results, not only from each other, and not only of humans from the surrounding environment, but from themselves as well. This thesis focuses on Heidegger's employment of the conception of poiesis or self-bringing-forth as clarifying the "root" of such ecosystemic processes as growth, maturation, reproduction, and death. Thus, Heidegger's call to phenomenology -- "to the things themselves" -- is a call away from the objectifying dichotomies through which substance ontology articulates the world into isolated components. It is the purpose of this thesis to demonstrate not only the connections between the later Heidegger and Naess, but also to argue in favor of their claims that traditional philosophical perspectives regarding humans, the environment, and ethics need to be re-appropriated in a new way in order to avoid further ecological degradation and provide for the health and well being of the future generations that will inevitably inherit the effects of our present actions. (shrink)

This article tries to show the irreducible connection between vulnerability and violence. This connection leads us back to the ethical level of experience. If vulnerability makes violence irreducible, then at least two reactions to violence are possible. On the one hand, a reaction is possible in which one attempts to negate vulnerability in order to close down the very thing within us that allows violence to enter. This negative reaction is actually the worst violence. On the other hand, a reaction (...) is possible in which one attempts to affirm vulnerability, even though its affirmation opens us to the violence that will happen. Affirming vulnerability is the least-violent reaction. If the formula for the worst violence is apocalypse without remainder, then the least violence is the maintenance of the remainder. The maintenance would happen only by not possessing the remainders, which places us in a new situation of poverty. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMost scholars agree that meaning and intelligibility are central to Heidegger’s account of Dasein and Being-in-the-world, but there is some confusion about the nature of this intelligibility. In his debate with McDowell, Dreyfus draws on phenomenologists like Heidegger to argue that there are two kinds of intelligibility: a basic, nonconceptual, practical intelligibility found in practical comportment and a conceptual, discursive intelligibility. I explore two possible ways that Dreyfus might ground this twofold account of intelligibility in Heidegger: first in the distinction (...) between the hermeneutic and apophantic “as”, and second in the presence and absence of the as-structure. I argue that neither approach succeeds because practical intelligibility is always already discursive and discursive articulation is a condition of practical comportment. (shrink)