•  84
    Phenomenology, Meaning, and Measure
    Philosophy Today 60 (1): 237-252. 2016.
    This paper responds to comments by Maxime Doyon and Thomas Sheehan on aspects of my book, Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger. Among the topics discussed are the relations between phenomenology and analytic philosophy, the difference between a Brentanian and an Husserlian approach to intentional content, the normative structure of the intentional content of noetic states such as thinking and imagining, the implications of taking a phenomenological approach to Heidegger’s conce…Read more
  •  5
    Editors’ Introduction
    Philosophy Today 46 (Supplement): 3-9. 2002.
  •  8
    Editors’ Introduction
    Philosophy Today 49 (Supplement): 3-12. 2005.
  •  44
    This paper introduces phenomenology as a distinctive form of transcendental philosophy by exploring a problem that arises with the phenomenological concept of “constitution,” namely, the “paradox of human subjectivity” – the idea that under the transcendental reduction the human subject is both a entity in the world and the ground of all such constitution. Focusing on the question of what conditions must obtain for something to be the bearer of normatively structured intentional content, the pap…Read more
  •  254
    This paper argues that transcendental phenomenology (here represented by Edmund Husserl) can accommodate the main thesis of semantic externalism, namely, that intentional content is not simply a matter of what is ‘in the head,’ but depends on how the world is. I first introduce the semantic problem as an issue of how linguistic tokens or mental states can have ‘content’—that is, how they can set up conditions of satisfaction or be responsive to norms such that they can succeed or fail at referri…Read more
  •  53
    Husserl’s existentialism: ideality, traditions, and the historical apriori
    Continental Philosophy Review 49 (1): 67-83. 2016.
    Husserl’s concept of an “historical apriori” is marked by a tension: It simultaneously departs from, and develops his long-standing commitment to philosophy as transcendental phenomenology. This paper looks at some reasons for this tension in the context of Husserl’s attempt to determine philosophy as a “tradition” in The Origin of Geometry. Husserl is convinced that philosophy is a scientific tradition, and the historical apriori serves in the analysis of the conditions that define a distinctiv…Read more
  •  146
    Existentialism
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
  •  2
    _The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy_ provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer.
  •  48
    Retrieving Husserl’s Phenomenology
    New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 11 297-311. 2011.
    Burt Hopkins provides a reading of the development of Husserl’s phenomenology, framing it with an account of its relation to Platonic and Aristotelian theories of unity-in-multiplicity, on the one hand, and the criticisms of Husserl found in Heidegger and Derrida, on the other. Here I introduce a further approach to the problem of unity-in-multiplicity – one based on normative ideality, drawing on Plato’s Idea of the Good -- and investigate three crucial aspects of phenomenological philosophy as…Read more
  •  59
    Is Transcendental Topology Phenomenological?
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 19 (2). 2011.
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Volume 19, Issue 2, Page 267-276, May 2011
  •  20
    Fink’s Untimely Nietzsche
    International Studies in Philosophy 38 (3): 15-31. 2006.
  •  2
    Conscience and reason: Heidegger and the grounds of intentionality
    In Steven Galt Crowell & Jeff Malpas (eds.), Transcendental Heidegger, Stanford University Press. pp. 43--62. 2007.
  •  40
    Taking Maurice Natanson's posthumously published book, The Erotic Bird: Phenomenology in Literature, as its point of departure, the essay argues that "fictive reality" is the specific content of transcendental-phenomenological reflection. Elaborating this concept allows us to see how phenomenological concepts such as constitution, horizon, and the "transcendental" have a tropological, rather than a psychological, meaning. Specifically, the article considers the metonymical structure of reality's…Read more
  •  23
    In a recent paper1 which critically examines and rejects several suggestions that have been made for “bridging the gap” between Husserl’s phenomenology and neuroscience, Rick Grush concludes on a positive note: It should be obvious enough that while I have been highly critical of van Gelder, Varela and Lloyd, there is a clear sense in which the four of us are on the same team. We all believe that an important source of insights for the task of understanding of mentality is what Lloyd describes a…Read more
  •  56
    Transcendental Heidegger (edited book)
    Stanford University Press. 2007.
    The thirteen essays in this volume represent the most sustained investigation, in any language, of the connections between Heidegger's thought and the tradition of transcendental philosophy inaugurated by Kant. This collection examines Heidegger's stand on central themes of transcendental philosophy: subjectivity, judgment, intentionality, truth, practice, and idealism. Several essays in the volume also explore hitherto hidden connections between Heidegger's later "post-metaphysical" thinking—wh…Read more
  •  18
    Retrieving Husserl’s Phenomenology
    New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 11 297-311. 2011.
    Burt Hopkins provides a reading of the development of Husserl’s phenomenology, framing it with an account of its relation to Platonic and Aristotelian theories of unity-in-multiplicity, on the one hand, and the criticisms of Husserl found in Heidegger and Derrida, on the other. Here I introduce a further approach to the problem of unity-in-multiplicity – one based on normative ideality, drawing on Plato’s Idea of the Good -- and investigate three crucial aspects of phenomenological philosophy as…Read more
  •  154
    Measure-taking: meaning and normativity in Heidegger’s philosophy (review)
    Continental Philosophy Review 41 (3): 261-276. 2008.
    Following Marc Richir and others, László Tengelyi has recently developed the idea of Sinnereignis (meaning-event) as a way of capturing the emergence of meaning that does not flow from some prior project or constitutive act. As such, it might seem to pose something of a challenge to phenomenology: the paradox of an experience that is mine without being my accomplishment. This article offers a different sort of interpretation of meaning-events, claiming that in their structure they always involve…Read more
  •  12
    Fink’s Untimely Nietzsche
    International Studies in Philosophy 38 (3): 15-31. 2006.
  •  15
  •  104
    Why is Ethics First Philosophy? Levinas in Phenomenological Context
    European Journal of Philosophy 20 (4): 564-588. 2012.
    This paper explores, from a phenomenological perspective, the conditions necessary for the possession of intentional content, i.e., for being intentionally directed toward the world. It argues that Levinas's concept of ethics as first philosophy makes an important contribution to this task. Intentional directedness, as understood here, is normatively structured. Levinas's ‘ethics’ can be understood as a phenomenological account of how our experience of the other subject as another subject takes …Read more
  •  99
    Subjectivity: Locating the first-person in being and time
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 44 (4). 2001.
    It is often held that, in contrast to Husserl, Heidegger's account of intentionality makes no essential reference to the first- person stance. This paper argues, on the contrary, that an account of the first- person, or 'subjectivity', is crucial to Heidegger's account of intelligibility and so of the intentionality, or 'aboutness' of our acts and thoughts, that rests upon it. It first offers an argument as to why the account of intelligibility in Division I of Being and Time, based on a form of…Read more