This paper takes a fresh look at a classical theme in philosophical scholarship, the meaning of transcendental idealism, by contrasting Kant's and Husserl's versions of it. I present Kant's transcendental idealism as a theory distinguishing between the world as in-itself and as given to the experiencing human being. This reconstruction provides the backdrop for Husserl's transcendental phenomenology as a brand of transcendental idealism expanding on Kant: through the phenomenological reduction Husserl universalizes Kant's transcendental philosophy to an eidetic science of subjectivity. (...) He thereby furnishes a new sense of transcendental philosophy, rephrases the quid iuris-question, and provides a new conception of the thing-in-itself. What needs to be clarified is not exclusively the possibility of a priori cognition but, to start at a much lower level, the validity of objects that give themselves in experience. The thing-in-itself is not an unknowable object, but the idea of the object in all possible appearances experienced at once. In spite of these changes Husserl remains committed to the basic sense of Kant's Copernican Turn. I end with some comments on how both Kant and Husserl view the relation between theoretical and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Tom Sparrow shows how, in the 21st century, speculative realism aims to do what phenomenology could not: provide a philosophical method that disengages the human-centred approach to metaphysics in order to chronicle the complex realm of nonhuman reality. -/- Through a focused reading of the methodological statements and metaphysical commitments of key phenomenologists and speculative realists, Sparrow shows how speculative realism is replacing phenomenology as the beacon of realism in contemporary Continental philosophy.

There are several ways one can make an appraisal of Husserl’s turn to transcendental phenomenology. One way would be to look at some of the implications of this turn, such as, whether Husserl is thereby prevented from answering certain philosophical questions. Taking this course here, I treat one of the implications that appears when one critically examines the transcendental turn, namely that Husserl’s philosophy is idealistic. This is an implication that many critics of transcendental phenomenology have alleged is philosophically intolerable (...) and requires modification or abandonment of Husserl’s transcendental turn. Important to this task is the distinction between what I shall call “epistemological idealism” and “metaphysical idealism”. As I detail later, epistemological idealism can be characterized as the thesis that consciousness is the sole medium of access to whatever is seen as actually or possibly existing and “metaphysical idealism” can be characterized as including the additional thesis that consciousness creates whatever actually or possibly exists and what exists is dependent on it. It is my contention that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, which he labels transcendental idealism, is epistemologically idealistic but metaphysically neutral. Also I contend that metaphysical neutrality is not a deficiency of his philosophy but that such is the necessary conclusion of any philosophy that successfully adheres to the policy of describing, explicating and accepting all objectivities only as they present themselves to the consciousness of them, and in terms of the consciousness of them. (shrink)

The accessibility of these essays, coupled with Mohanty's consideration of lesser-known phenomenologists (Ingarden, Scheler, Hartmann, et. al.) mark this as a major updating of phenomenology for a contemporary audience.