Dans cet ouvrage publié en 1942, complété en 1945 par la Phénoménologie de la perception, « s’affirme pour la première fois une philosophie existentielle où le mode d’être ultime du pour-soi ne s’avère pas être, en dépit des intentions et des descriptions contraires, celui d’une conscience-témoin » (A. de Waelhens, préface). La structure du comportement se place au niveau de l’expérience non pas naturelle mais scientifique et s’efforce de prouver que cette expérience, c’est-à-dire l’ensemble des faits qui constituent le comportement, (...) n’est pas compréhensible dans les perspectives ontologiques que la science adopte spontanément. (shrink)

Le 27 avril 1938, Edmund HUSSERL, l'initiateur et principal representant du courant phenomenologique dans la philosophie contemporaine, mourut a Fribourg en Brisgau, age de pres de quatre-vingts ans. Depuis la parution de ses Logische Untersuchungen en 190~ 1901, le monde philosophique international avait suivi, avec UD interet toujours croissant, les exposes successifs et de plus en plus approfondis, que le maUre fribourgeois publiait sur les prin~ cipes de sa methode, dite pMnomenologique, sur les applications concretes de celle-ci aux problemes philosophiques (...) les plus divers, ainsi que sur la phenomenologie comme systeme philo­ sophique autonome et pour ainsi dire "autarchique". Ces publi­ cations, relativement peu nombreuses, mais fort remarquees des leur parution, furent etudiees avec le plus grand soin par les representants les plus autorises des differents courants de la pensee contemporaine. Les critiques, il va sans dire, ne manquerent point. On attira l'attention sur le caractere plutöt programmatique de ces etudes, sur la terminologie fort neuve, quelque peu arbitraire, parfois meme deroutante, dont se servait l'auteur, sur son pen­ chant prononce pour des distinctions subtiles et pour des defini­ tions minutieuses a l'exces, sur la difficulte de son style et les complications parfois inutiles de son expose, enfin et surtout -­ au moins depuis 1913 - sur le caractere audacieux de sa theorie de la reduction, presentee par lui avec une insistance toute par­ ticuliere comme le fondement dernier et indispensable de toute phenomenologie presente ou future. (shrink)

James F. Sheridan Allegheny College As we come to the end of the century, an attentive student of con temporary European philosophy will no doubt be startled by a volume titled Husserl in Contemporary Context. Such philosophers are most likely to believe that Hussed has now been declared II classical" rather than a contemporary thinker or, worse, simply old fashioned. Access to Hussed today will most likely come through the allegedly definitive critiques of his work by Heidegger and Derrida and (...) to a lesser extent through the readings of his work by Levinas and Merleau Ponty although Merleau-Ponty himself has been declared old fashioned by some postmodems. Hence, if by II contemporary" one understands the problematic set by the work of the late Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, et. al., Hussed's work seems strange indeed in such a contemporary context, seems better understood as the last gasp of philosophy dominated by metaphysics and thus fit only for inclusion in courses in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Lawlor’s investigations of the work of Jean Cavaillès, Tran-Duc-Thao, and Jean Hyppolite, as well as recent texts by Derrida, reveal the depth of Derrida’s relationship to Husserl’s phenomenology.

In this paper I examine how well Merleau-Ponty's philosophy can respond to Deleuze's challenge to phenomenology. The Deleuzian challenge is double, that of immanence and that of difference; in other words, the double challenge is what Deleuze calls the paradox of expression. I bring together, in particular, Deleuze's 1969 The Logic of Sense and Merleau-Ponty's 1945 the Phenomenology of Perception, and am able to discover a lot of similarities mainly centered around the notion of a past that has never been (...) present. However, this comparison is not decisive; what alone can decide is an interpretation of expression in Merleau-Ponty's final, unfinished The Visible and the Invisible. (shrink)

"... no other book undertakes to relate all these French philosophers to each other the way that [Lawlor] does, brilliantly." —François Raffoul For many, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze represent one of the greatest movements in French philosophy. But these philosophers and their works did not materialize without a philosophical heritage. In Thinking through French Philosophy, Leonard Lawlor shows how the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty formed an important current in sustaining the development of structuralism and post-structuralism. Seeking the (...) "point of diffraction," or the specific ideas and concepts that link Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, Lawlor discovers differences and convergences in these thinkers who worked the same terrain. Major themes include metaphysics, archaeology, language and documentation, expression and interrogation, and the very experience of thinking. Lawlor’s focus on the experience of the question brings out critical differences in immanence and transcendence. This illuminating and provocative book brings new vitality to debates on contemporary French philosophy. (shrink)