Like the latter, it unites into one and the same function the possibility of giving things a sign, of representing one thing by another, and the possibility of causing a sign to shift in relation to what it designates. The four functions that define the ...

A series of essays treating, among other topics, the definition of orthodox Marxism, the question of legality and illegality, Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist, the changing function of Historic Marxism, class consciousness, and the ...

The original Gallimard edition of Merleau-Ponty’s last-published essay, "Eye and Mind," which was printed as a slim, separate volume containing only this essay, includes a visual preface of seven artworks, chosen by Merleau-Ponty. This essay takes the key assertion of "Eye and Mind"—that rather than seeing depth as the “third dimension,” as seen traditionally, “if [depth] were a dimension, it would be the first one” (180)—and applies it to the reading of these artworks preceding the text. There is an analysis (...) of how and why depth is the first rank in not only rethinking art, but also in rethinking Being itself. The development of the idea of depth as the going together of incompossibles in time and in space is explored by turning to Merleau-Ponty’s texts, beginning with the Phenomenology of Perception through to his last works. The last section of the essay carefully analyses six of the seven visual works of art (omitting Cézanne about whom so much has been written) to see the ways in which they instantiate this new notion of depth as the motive force of art and the heart of the flesh of the world. (shrink)

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) is a key figure in the development of Twentieth Century thought. It was his work that set Husserl on to the road of phenomenology and intentionality, that inspired Meinong's theory of the object which influenced Bertrand Russell, and the entire Polish school of philosophy. ^Descriptive Psychology presents a series of lectures given by Brentano in 1887; they were the culmination of his work, and the clearest statement of his mature thought. It was this later period which proved (...) to be so important in the work of his student, Husserl. This is the first English translation of his work. Benito Muller has added a concise introduction which places Brentano within the history of philosophy and psychology, and locates his influence in contemporary thought. (shrink)

Latour is a world famous and widely published French sociologist who has written with great eloquence and perception about the relationship between people, science, and technology. He is also closely associated with the school of thought known as Actor Network Theory. In this book he sets out for the first time in one place his own ideas about Actor Network Theory and its relevance to management and organization theory.

The "Cartesian Meditations" translation is based primarily on the printed text, edited by Professor S. Strasser and published in the first volume of Husserliana ...

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

Resume. of. the. Course: Husserl. at. the. Limits. of. Phenomenology. Translated by John O'Neill and revised by Leonard Lawlor Since we still lack a complete edition of Husserl's Nachlass, the following discussion can hardly pretend to be ...

This book contains the unfinished manuscript and working notes of the book Merleau-Ponty was writing when he died.

In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism.

Speech and phenomena.--Form and meaning.--Differance.

A summation of the work of one of the most influential and provocative interpreters of science, it aims at saving what is good and valuable in modernity and ...

This is the first English translation of Husserliana XXIII, the volume in the critical edition of Edmund Husserl's works that gathers together a rich array of posthumous texts on representational consciousness. The lectures and sketches comprising this work make available the most profound and comprehensive Husserlian account of image consciousness. They explore phantasy in depth, and furnish nuanced accounts of perception and memory.

Merleau-Ponty’s appropriation of Gestalt theory in The Structure of Behavior is central to his entire corpus. Yet commentators exhibit little agreement about what lesson is to be learned from his critique, and provide little exegesis of how his argument proceeds. I fill this exegetical gap. I show that the Gestaltist’s fundamental error is to reify forms as transcendent realities, rather than treating them as phenomena of perceptual consciousness. From this, reductivist errors follow. The essay serves not only as a helpful (...) guide through parts of The Structure of Behavior for newcomers, but also offers a corrective to recent trends in philosophy of mind. Such influential commentators as Hubert Dreyfus, Taylor Carmen, and Evan Thompson have, I argue, risked serious misunderstanding of Merleau-Ponty’s view, by mistakenly treating “circular causality” as central to Merleau-Ponty’s own acausal view of forms. -/- [The version archived at Philpapers is closer to the author's preferred format. Formatting requirements in the published version make the section/subsection hierarchy needlessly difficult to follow. There are some changes to content in the published version. Please cite only the published version.]. (shrink)

"Renewal" is the expression Edmund Husserl used for the social, political, and ethical transformation of human culture (1922-1924). Considering the concept of renewal in the "generative" becoming of a culture, I first explain the phenomenological background in which Husserl approached the enterprise of renewal. I then describe Husserl's concept of renewal as an ethical task. Next, I take up the process of renewal as accomplishing "the best possible." Following this, I discuss the concept of critique advanced in the "Kaizo" articles. (...) My conclusion interprets Husserl's emphases on the urgency of critique and renewal in relation to the generation of a culture. (shrink)

Challenging and rewarding in equal measure, _Phenomenology of Perception_ is Merleau-Ponty's most famous work. Impressive in both scope and imagination, it uses the example of perception to return the _body_ to the forefront of philosophy for the first time since Plato. Drawing on case studies such as brain-damaged patients from the First World War, Merleau-Ponty brilliantly shows how the body plays a crucial role not only in perception but in speech, sexuality and our relation to others. Perhaps above all, Merleau-Ponty's (...) insights about the embodied mind are a bold and refreshing challenge to the new era of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, as scientists and psychologists discover the centrality of the body to mind and intelligence. (shrink)

Klarheit in betreff dieser Sätze anstrebt, d. i. Einsicht in das Wesen der bei dem Vollzug und den ideal-möglichen Anwendungen solcher Sätze ins Spiel tretenden Erkenntnisweisen und der mit diesen sich wesensmäßig konstituierenden Sinngebungen und objektiven Gel- 1 11 S tungen • Sprachliche Erörterungen gehören r nun sicherlich zu den 1 r philosophisch I unerläßlichen Vorbereitungen für den Aufbau der [A 4] reinen Logik, weil nur durch ihre Mithilfe die eigentlichen Objekte der logischen Forschung und, in weiterer Folge, die wesentlichen (...) Arten und Unterschiede dieser Objekte zu unmißverständlicher 10 Klarheit herauszuarbeiten sind. Es handelt sich dabei aber nicht um 12 grammatische Erörterungen im r empirischen, auf irgendeine historisch gegebene Sprache bezogenen Sinn, sondern um Erörterun gen jener allgemeinsten Art, die zur weiteren Sphäre einer objekti ven Theorie der Erkenntnis und, was damit innigst zusammen- 13 15 hängt, einer rreinen Phänomenologie der Denk- und Erkenntniserlebnisse gehören. rDicse, wie die sie umspannende reine Phänomenologie der Erlebnisse überhaupt, hat es ausschließlich mit den in der Intuition erlaßbaren und analysierba ren Erlebnissen in reiner Wesensallgemeinheit zu tun, nicht aber mit 20 empirisch apperzipierten Erlebnissen als realen Fakten, als Erlebnis sen erlebender Menschen oder Tiere in der erscheinenden und als Erfahrungsfaktum gesetzten Welt. Die in der Wesensintuition direkt erfaßten Wesen und rein in den Wesen gründenden Zusammenhän ge bringt sie deskriptiv in Wesensbegriffen und gesetzlichen 25 Wesensaussagen zu reinem Ausdruck. Jede solche Aussage ist eine 1 14 apriorische im vorzüglichsten Sinne des Wortes. (shrink)

Both critique and an appropriation of a large and diverse body of work, Home and Beyond is a major contribution to contemporary Husserl scholarship.

This is a major contribution to political theory and philosophy.

Der Herausgeber dieses Jahrbuchs hat geglaubt, mit derVerof- 5 fentlichung der seit dem Erscheinen des ersten Bandes eingelaufenen und zum Teil schon im Herbst 1913 in den Druck gegebenen Arbei­ ten nieht Hinger zogern zu diirfen. So viele geistige Krafte dieser unheilvolle Krieg fesselt und leider auch zerstort, wirklich unterbin­ den kann und wird er das deutsche Geistesleben nieht. Nach wie vor 10 ist es beseelt von der ererbten Liebe zu den Ewigkeitswerten der Kultur, und immerfort wirkt es sich aus (...) in treuer Arbeit an ihren groBen Aufgaben. 1m besonderen unsere phanomenologische Philo­ sophie hat nicht geruht, auch ist ihr unverkennbar das warme Inter­ esse wissenschaftlicher Kreise erhalten geblieben. So diirften die bei- 15 den Bande, in die wir die bereitliegenden Arbeiten verteilt haben, nieht unwillkommen geheiBen werden. Die neuen Jahrbuchsarbeiten unterscheiden sieh ganz so wie die des ersten Bandes nieht nur durch ihre Themen, sondern auch durch die merklich nuancierten Auffas­ sungen, die sieh ihre Verfasser iiber Ziele, Methoden und mancherlei 20 Einzelfragen der phlinomenologisehen Forsehung gebildet haben. Es brauchte eigentlich nieht gesagt zu werden und muG es doeh ange­ siehts vorgekommener MiBverstlindnisse, daB der Herausgeber nur fiir seine eigenen Arbeiten die Verantwortung iibernimmt so wie jeder Mitarbeiter fiir die seinen. Sieherlieh ist die innere Gemein- 25 samkeit der "Phanomenologen" darum doch keine geringere, ja eher eine groBere als innerlhalb irgendwelcher sonstigen Forschungs- [VI] gemeinschaften, z. B. der der Experimental-Psychologen. (shrink)

Describes the changing sounds of the rain, the slow soft sprinkle, the drip-drop tinkle, the sounding pounding roaring rain, and the fresh wet silent after-time of rain.

In _Speech and Phenomena,_ Jacques Derrida situates the philosophy of language in relation to logic and rhetoric, which have often been seen as irreconcilable criteria for the use and interpretations of signs. His critique of Husserl attacks the position that language is founded on logic rather than on rhetoric; instead, he claims, meaningful language is limited to expression because expression alone conveys sense. Derrida's larger project is to confront phenomenology with the tradition it has so often renounced--the tradition of Western (...) metaphysics. (shrink)

Beginning from Klee’s statement on truth in self-portraiture that his faces are truer than real ones and Cézanne’s promise to tell us the truth in painting, we consider the origins of truth in art for the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. We discover that truth in perception, in life, and incarnate existence, as in art, originates from bodily movement. Similar to Heidegger’s argument in “The Origin of the Work of Art,” a truth happens between the work and painter, between the work and (...) viewer, and is not limited to the domain of language, but words and symbols mix together with colors and forms, as in the paintings of Klee. Similar to Husserl’s argument in “The Origin of Geometry,” the originary sense of art, like geometry, is an interweaving of world, intersubjectivity, speech, and writing that achieves a more “militant” truth than mere logical propositions. Truth is marked by its endurance, mobility, agility, subtlety, and depth. These interweavings mean there is no single origin of truth in art and life but a plurality of origins in movement, pleasures, and desires for the becoming of creation. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences justify. When I look at the black laptop in front of me and my perceptual experience presents me with a black laptop placed on my desk, my perceptual experience has justificatory force with respect to the proposition that there is black laptop on the desk. The present paper addresses the question of why perceptual experiences are a source of immediate justification: What gives them their justificatory force? I shall argue that the most plausible and the most straightforward answer (...) to this question consists in what I call the phenomenological conception of perceptual justification. Perceptual experiences justify by virtue of their distinctive presentive phenomenology. This is a truly internalist conception that enjoys significant advantages over rival conceptions. In the course of his paper, I demonstrate the advantages of the phenomenological conception and defend it against a recent objection. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. The first is an interpretative one as I wish to provide a detailed account of Husserl’s conception of experiential justification. Here Ideas I and Introduction to Logic and Theory of Knowledge: Lectures 1906/07 will be my main resources. My second aim is to demonstrate the currency and relevance of Husserl’s conception. This means two things: Firstly, I will show that in current debates in analytic epistemology there is a movement sharing with Husserl the (...) basic idea that certain experiences gain their justificatory force simply from their distinctive phenomenal character. Secondly, I shall reveal the benefits of Husserl’s specific version of this view. Thus, one of my aims is to show that debates in current analytic epistemology could profit from adopting certain Husserlian elements. More precisely, I will defend Husserl’s claim that perceptual experiences are justifiers due to their self-giving phenomenal character as opposed to the currently popular view that it is the phenomenology of pushiness that makes them justifiers. To put it differently, what matters is what is originally given within experience and not how you feel about what is given. (shrink)

Written between 1945 and 1947, the essays in Sense and Non-Sense provide an excellent introduction to Merleau-Ponty's thought.

INTRODUCTION HOW DIFFERENT — HOW DOWNRIGHT INCONGRUOUS — the philosophical essays and the ad hoc, primarily political observations which make up this volume ...

Preface 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 ...

Dieser Band enthält Husserls letzte grosse Arbeit, an der er von 1934 bis 1937 arbeitete. Husserl weist darin die Probleme auf, die seiner Ansicht nach zu der Krise geführt haben, in der die Menschheit der Gegenwart sich befindet. Er verfolgt den Ursprung dieser Krise zurück bis zur Entstehung der neuzeitlichen mathematischen Naturwissenschaften bei Galilei, um aufzuweisen, wie es zu der verhängnisvollen Spaltung des physikalistischen Objektivismus und des transzendentalen Subjektivismus gekommen ist. Die Geschichte der neuzeitlichen Philosophie wird von Descartes über Locke (...) - Berkeley - Hume bis zu Kant verfolgt. Husserl stellt dar, wie es das eigentliche Anliegen der Phänomenologie ist den verhängnisvollen Riss zu überwinden, indem sie den Rückgang zu dem Sinnesfundament vollzieht, das in den Wissenschaften selbst und für diese verborgen bleibt. In diesem Zusammenhang kommt gerade der Wissenschaft vom Menschen, der Psychologie, eine fundamentale Bedeutung zu, allerdings einer Psychologie, die auf der Phänomenologie gründet und von ihren Erkenntnissen ausgeht. Ausser dem erhaltenen Haupttext befinden sich im Husserl-Archiv noch zahlreiche "Forschungsmanuskripte", die im Zusammenhang mit der Krisis-Problematik entstanden sind. Um auch in sie Einblick zu geben wurde eine umfassende Auswahl in Form von Beilagen veröffentlicht, sowie noch einige selbständige Abhandlungen die die Entstehungsgeschichte des Werkes erhellen. (shrink)

Despite the recent increase of interest in the work of Merleau-Ponty there is still a persistent tendency to overlook the uniqueness of the philosophical position he advances in Phenomenology of Perception. In this article I present a reading of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the phenomenological reduction that explains how it is original. I do this by contrasting his presentation of the reduction with that of the early Husserl, highlighting how his emphasis on the phenomenology of the ‘perceived world’ leads him to (...) reject Husserl’s conception of phenomenology as a ‘philosophical science,’ and the Kantian language in which the this account is framed. I go on to critically discuss the interpretations of the reduction advanced by Stephen Priest and Joel Smith as examples of readings that fail to fully grasp Merleau-Ponty’s account of the ‘natural attitude’ as resting on the inherent objectivizing structure that is built into perception itself. The way that these authors misinterpret Merleau-Ponty helps to make maximally clear the profound philosophical significance that he places on the phenomenology of the ‘perceived world’. (shrink)

How can phenomenology describe an object as "the political"? The article endeavours to show how it is possible to apprehend such a theme from a _transcendental<D> perspective. After going through the methodic difficulties of the Cartesian way, which involves an egology intersubjectively extended to the monadology, the essay analyzes the non-Cartesian ways. Indeed, both of them pave the way for a political based on a plural structure. The way through the life-world as well as the way through psychology succeed in (...) depicting the political, either as living sociality or as the play between ethical co-attitudes. In each case, the reduction operates in a specific manner, either as a pure Cartesian bracketing, as a retrocession to social originality or as a nonparticipating in the world-interests. Nevertheless, only the way through psychology reaches the political at a strict transcendental level, whereas the way through the life-world always runs the risk of falling back. (shrink)