This paper argues that the Husserl—Heidegger relationship is systematically misunderstood when framed in terms of a distinction between internalism and externalism. Both philosophers, it is argued, employ the phenomenological reduction to immanence as a fundamental methodological instrument. After first outlining the assumptions regarding inner and outer and the individual and the social from which recent epistemological interpretations of phenomenology begin, I turn to the question of Husserl's internalism. I argue that Husserl can only be understood as an internalist on the (...) assumption that immanence equates with internal. This, however, is not the case as can be seen once the reduction is understood not as setting aside the existence of the world, but rather a reflection on its meaning. Turning to Heidegger, I argue that his commitment to a form of the phenomenological reduction precludes him from being either a semantic or a social externalist. The place of authenticity and the first person perspective in his work derive from his phenomenological commitments, which can be seen in his accounts of discourse and language and of falling (Verfallen). I then go on to briefly outline a more plausible basis for understanding the difference between Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenologies in terms of their respective emphases on logic and on poetics. (shrink)

The analyses of the mind–world relation offered by transcendental idealists such as Husserl have often been dismissed with the argument that they remain committed to an outdated form of internalism. The first move in this paper will be to argue that there is a tight link between Husserl’s transcendental idealism and what has been called phenomenological externalism, and that Husserl’s endorsement of the former commits him to a version of the latter. Secondly, it will be shown that key elements in (...) Husserl’s transcendental idealism, including his rejection of representationalism and metaphysical realism, is shared with a number of prominent contemporary defenders of an externalist view on the mind. Ultimately, however, it will be suggested that the very alternative between internalism and externalism—an alternative based on the division between inner and outer—might be inapplicable when it comes to phenomenological conceptions of the mind–world relation. (shrink)

In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl argues that the only way to respond to the scientific Krisis of which he speaks is with phenomenological reflections on the history, method, and task of philosophy. On the assumption that an accurate diagnosis of a malady is a necessary condition for an effective remedy, this paper aims to formulate a precise concept of the Krisis of the European sciences with which Husserl operates in this work. Thus it seeks (...) an answer to the question: What exactly, according to Husserl, is “the ‘crisis’ [Krisis] of the European sciences”? There are two different tendencies in the literature on this question. According to the traditional interpretation, the Krisis of the European sciences lies not in the inadequacy of their scientificity but in the loss of their meaningfulness for life. According to an innovative suggestion, the Krisis lies not in the loss of their meaningfulness for life but in the inadequacy of their scientificity. These readings are mutually exclusive because each claims that the other misidentifies the Krisis as something that it is not. The argument of this paper, however, is that, given the many different senses of Krisis in The Crisis, an adequate understanding of the Krisis that Husserl identifies requires not a disjunctive but an inclusive approach. Therefore the paper proposes that Husserl’s Krisis of the European sciences is both a crisis of their scientificity and a crisis of their meaningfulness for life. The relevance of this result to Husserl’s philosophical and historical sense-investigations in The Crisis—as well as to the present critical situation of philosophy—is self-evident. (shrink)

This essay explores the practical significance of Michel Henry’s “material phenomenology.” Commencing with an exposition of his most basic philosophical intuition, i.e., his insight that transcendental affectivity is the primordial mode of revelation of our selfhood, the essay then brings to light how this intuition also establishes our relation to both the world and others. Animated by a radical form of the phenomenological reduction, Henry’s material phenomenology brackets the exterior world in a bid to reach the concrete interior transcendental experience (...) at the base of all exteriority. The essay argues that this “counter reduction,” designed as a practical orientation to the world, suspends all traditional parameters of onto(theo)logical individuation in order to rethink subjectivity in terms of its transcendental corporeality, i.e., in terms of the invisible display of “affective flesh.” The development of this “metaphysics of the individual” anchors his “practical philosophy” as he developed it—under shifting accents—throughout his oeuvre. In particular, the essay brings into focus Henry’s reflections on modernity, the industry of mass culture and their “barbaric” movements. The essay briefly puts these cultural and political areas of Henry’s of thinking into contact with his late “theological turn,” i.e., his Christological account of Life and the (inter)subjective self-realization to which it gives rise. (shrink)