Dermot Moran

The phenomenology of Edmund Husserl had a permanent and profound impact on the philosophical formation of Paul Ricoeur. One could truly say, paraphrasing Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s brilliant 1959 essay ‘The Philosopher and his Shadow’,that Husserl is the philosopher in whose shadow Ricoeur, like Merleau-Ponty, also stands, the thinker to whom he constantly returns. Husserl is Ricoeur’s philosopher of reflection, par excellence. Indeed, Ricoeur always invokes Husserl when he is discussing a paradigmatic instance of contemporary philosophy of ‘reflection’ and also of descriptive, ‘eidetic’ phenomenology. Indeed, I shall argue in this chapter that Husserl’s influence on Ricoeur was decisive and provided an eidetic, descriptive methodology which is permanently in play, even when it has to be concretized and mediated by hermeneutics, as Ricoeur proposes after 1960.

Since 1976 Hilary Putnam has drawn parallels between his "internal", "pragmatic", "natural" or "common-sense" realism and Kant's transcendental idealism. Putnam reads Kant as rejecting the then current metaphysical picture with its in-built assumptions of a unique, mind-independent world, and truth understood as correspondence between the mind and that ready-made world. Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the false dichotomies inherent in that picture and even finds some glimmerings of conceptual relativity in Kant's proposed solution. Furthermore, Putnam reads Kant as overcoming the pernicious scientific realist distinction between primary and secondary qualities, between things that really exist and their projections, a distinction that haunts modern philosophy. Putnam's revitalisation of Kant is not just of historical interest, but challenges contemporary versions of scientific realism. Furthermore, Putnam has highlighted themes which have not received the attention they deserve in Kantian exegesis, namely, the problematic role of primary and secondary qualities in Kant's empirical realism, and the extent of Kant's commitment to conceptual pluralism.However, I argue that Putnam's qualified allegiance to Kant exposes him to some of the same metaphysical problems that affected Kant, namely, the familiar problem of postulating an absolute reality (Ding an sich), while at the same time disavowing the meaningfulness of so doing. In conclusion I suggest that Putnam might consider Hegel's attempts to solve this problem in Kant as a way of furthering his own natural realism.

This thesis is a study of the philosophical system of a little-studied, but important medieval thinker, John Scottus Eriugena , concentrating on his Periphyseon . ;I argue that Eriugena's system of nature must be approached through an investigation of his epistemology and general philosophy of mind. Instead of beginning with his fourfold classification of Nature, as most commentators have done, I begin with Eriugena's concept of the mind and its dialectical operations , and continue with an examination of his anthropology , and his concept of self-knowledge , before turning to his relativist ontology of being and non-being . Chapter Seven examines Eriugena's fourfold division of Nature in the light of the earlier chapters. ;Against some recent commentators, I argue that Eriugena should not be interpreted solely from within the framework of the Latin-Augustinian metaphysical tradition of the early Middle Ages, that it was his sympathy for Greek Christian Neoplatonism which led him to develop an idealist philosophical outlook . Eriugena synthesises the Greek Eastern and the Latin Western traditions into a profound and original philosophical system. ;I show further that Eriugena "deconstructs" Latin metaphysical realism in favour of his own "me-ontology" or "meta-ontology," inspired by the Greeks. He produces the most detailed account of non-being between Plato's Parmenides and the phenomenologies of nothingness of Heidegger and Sartre. ;The summit of Eriugena's system is infinite Non-being, or infinite self-identical subjectivity. This philosophy bears strong similarities to post-Kantian critical philosophy, especially the Idealism of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. My interpretation thus agrees with the nineteenth-century Idealist reading of Eriugena. At the same time, it suggests the implications of Eriugena's idealism for the interpretation of certain modern philosophies

Phenomenology, understood as a philosophy of immanence, has had an ambiguous, uneasy relationship with transcendence, with the wholly other, with the numinous. If phenomenology restricts its evidence to givenness and to what has phenomenality, what becomes of that which is withheld or cannot in principle come to givenness? In this paper I examine attempts to acknowledge the transcendent in the writings of two phenomenologists, Edmund Husserl and Edith Stein (who attempted to fuse phenomenology with Neo-Thomism), and also consider the influence of the existentialist Karl Jaspers, who made transcendence an explicit theme of his writing. I argue that Husserl does recognize the essential experience of transcendence within immanence; even the idea of a physical thinghas “dimensions of infinity” included within it. Similarly, he asserts profoundly that every “outside” is what it is only as understood from the inside. Jaspers toomakes the experience of transcendence central to human existence; it is the very measure of my own depth. For Edith Stein, everything temporal points towardthe timeless structural ground which makes it what it is. Transcendence is an intrinsic part of being itself. Furthermore, the very lack of self-sufficiency of my own self shows that the self requires a ground outside itself, in the transcendent. There is strong convergence between the three thinkers studied on the concept of transcendence, which is indeed a central, if largely unacknowledged, concept in phenomenology both in Husserl and his followers (Stein), but also, throughJaspers, in Heidegger.

Educating the Virtues David Carr Routledge, 1991. Pp. 304. ISBN 0?415?05746?9. £35. The Philosophical Theology of St Thomas Aquinas By Leo J. Elders E. J. Brill, 1990. Pp. 332. ISBN 0?04?09156?4. $74.36. The State and Justice: An Essay in Political Theory By Milton Fisk Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. x + 391. ISBN 0?521?38966?6. £10.95 pbk. Perspectives on Language and Thought: Interrelations in Development Edited by S. A. Gelman and J. P. Byrnes Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xii + 524. ISBN 0?521?37497?9. £50. Aristotle's First Principles By T. H. Irwin Oxford University Press, 1989. Pp. xviii + 702. ISBN 0?198?24717?6. £17.50 Pbk. Truth and Eros: Foucault, Lacan, and the Question of Ethics By John Rajchman Routledge, 1991. Pp. 155. ISBN 0?415?90380?7. £10.99. Logical Forms By Mark Sainsbury Blackwell, 1991. Pp. 408. ISBN 0?631?17777?9. £11.95. Form and Transformation. A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus By Frederic M. Schroeder McGill?Queen's University Press, 1992. Pp. xiv + 136. ISBN 0?7735?1016?8. £34.95. Did The Greeks Believe Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination By Paul Veyne, translated by Paula Wissing The University of Chicago Press, 1988. Pp. 161. ISBN 0?226?85434?5. £8.75 Pbk. What is Philosophy? By Dietrich von Hildebrand Routledge, 1991. Pp. lvii + 242. ISBN 0?415?02584?2. £12.99.

Inspired by Aristotle, Franz Brentano revived the concept of intentionality to characterize the domain of mental phenomena studied by descriptive psychology. Edmund Husserl, while discarding much of Brentano?s conceptual framework and presuppositions, located intentionality at the core of his science of pure consciousness (phenomenology). Martin Heidegger, Husserl?s assistant from 1919 to 1923, dropped all reference to intentionality and consciousness in Being and Time (1927), and so appeared to break sharply with his avowed mentors, Brentano and Husserl. Some recent commentators have sided with Heidegger and have endorsed his critique of Husserl and Brentano as still caught up in epistemological, representationalist approaches to intentionality. I argue that Heidegger is developing Husserl, focusing in particular on the ontological dimension of intentionality, not reversing or abandoning his account. Heidegger?s criticisms of representationalism merely repeat Husserl?s. Furthermore, I argue that Husserl?s account of cognitive intentionality, which recognizes the importance of the disinterested theoretical attitude for scientific knowledge, has been underestimated and misunderstood by Heidegger, who treats scientific cognition as a deficient form of practice. In short, Heidegger is more dependent on Husserl than he ever publicly acknowledged.

In recent years there have been attempts to integrate first-person phenomenology into naturalistic science. Traditionally, however, Husserlian phenomenology has been resolutely anti-naturalist. Husserl identified naturalism as the dominant tendency of twentieth-century science and philosophy and he regarded it as an essentially self-refuting doctrine. Naturalism is a point of view or attitude (a reification of the natural attitude into the naturalistic attitude) that does not know that it is an attitude. For phenomenology, naturalism is objectivism. But phenomenology maintains that objectivity is constituted through the intentional activity of cooperating subjects. Understanding the role of cooperating subjects in producing the experience of the one, shared, objective world keeps phenomenology committed to a resolutely anti-naturalist (or ) philosophy

Duns Scotus, Metaphysician. William A. Frank and Allan B. Wolter. Purdue University Press 1995, pp. 224 £27.50 Hb. ISBN 1–55753–071–8 £13.19 Pb. ISBN 1–55753–072–6 Plato in Renaissance England. Sears Jayne. Dordrecht, Boston & London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995, pp. 197 Dfl. 190.00, $122.00, £80.00 hb. ISBN 0–7923–3060–9 Mechanismus und Subjektivität in der Philosophie von Thomas Hobbes. Michael Esfeld. Frommann‐Holzboog, Stuttgart‐Bad Cannstatt 1995, pp. 434. ISBN 3–7728–1699–1 Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept of Substance in Seventeenth‐Century Metaphysics. R. S. Woolhouse. London: Routledge, 1993. £11.99. ISBN 0–415–09021–0, ISBN 0–415–09022–9 pb. Descartes et Regius. Autour de l'Explication de l'Esprit Humain. Edited by Theo Verbeek. Studies of the History of Ideas in the Low Countries. Rodopi, Amsterdam‐Atlanta, 1993, pp. 114 $23.50 pb. ISBN 90–5183–375‐X The God of Spinoza. A Philosophical Study. Richard Mason. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. xiv + 272. £35.00. ISBN 0–521–58162–1 Robert Boyle and the Limits of Reason. Jan Wojcik. Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 243. £40.00. ISBN 0521–56029–2 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. John Locke. Edited and abridged by Kenneth P. Winkler. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1996, pp. 416. £27.95 hb; £6.95 pb. ISBN 0–87220–217–8 hb. 0–87220–216‐X pb. John Locke and the Eighteenth Century Divines. Alan Sell. Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1997, pp. 444. £40.00 hb. ISBN 0–7083–1409–0 The Margins of Orthodoxy. Heterodox Writing and Cultural Response, 1660–1750. Edited by Roger D. Lund. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp. xiv + 298. £35.00. ISBN 0–521–47117‐X The Enigmatic Parting Shot: What was Hume's ‘Compleat Answer to Dr. Reid and to That Bigotted Silly Fellow, Beattie'? James Somerville. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1995. pp. 424. £47.50. ISBN 1–85972–083–8 Discursus Praeliminaris de Philosophia in Genere. Christian Wolff. Ed. and trans. into German by Günther Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl. Forschungen und Materialien zur deutschen Aufklärung, Abt. I, Bd. 1. Stuttgart: Frommann‐hotzboog, 1996, pp. lxviii + 299. ISBN 3–7728–1523–5 Practical Philosophy. Immanuel Kant. Translated and edited by Mary J. Gregor, with a General Introduction by Allen Wood. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. xxxiii + 668. £50.00. ISBN 0–521–37103–1 Religion and Rational Theology. Immanuel Kant. Translated and edited by Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, £45.00, pp. xxiv + 518. ISBN 0–521–25416–1 Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. Immanuel Kant. Translated by Paul Carus, with a collection of essays edited by Beryl Logan. London, Routledge, 1996. £45.00, hb. ISBN 0–415–11575–2 £14.99 pb. pp. 264. ISBN 0–415–11576–0 Kant: Philosophic de l'Histoire. Edited by Norbert Waszek. Revue Germanique Internationale 6/1996. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, pp. 220. ISBN 2–13–047698–8; ISSN 1253–7837 Johann Georg Hamann's Relational Metacriticism. Gwen Griffith Dickson.. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1995, pp. xix + 534. ISBN 3–11–014437–9 Frege. Anthony Kenny. London, Penguin Books, 1995, pp. xii + 223. £7.99 pb. ISBN 0–14–012550–7 Russell. A. C. Grayling. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. ix + 115. £5.99. ISBN 0–19–287683‐X

The contributors cover a wide range of philosophical writers and texts to which the label “idealism” has been or might reasonably be attached. These include Plato, the Roman Stoics, the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Augustinian Neoplatonism, Johannes Scottus Eriugena, the Arabic _Book of Causes_, George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, and classical German idealism. "This is a rich, subtle, thought-provoking collection on central, though neglected topics in idealism and its history, offering fresh and important insights into both familiar and less familiar major figures, views, and issues. Most important, perhaps, are its presentation and assessment of non-subjective forms of idealism, as well as mind-dependence forms of idealism prior to Descartes. Contemporary philosophers have become sophisticated about various forms of realism, anti-realism and irrealism. Such discussions, among others, will benefit significantly by accepting this volume’s invitation to become more sophisticated about idealism as well. This very welcome contribution to the literature should find a broad readership." —_Kenneth R. Westphal, University of East Anglia_ "If it is true—as Hegel and his followers have claimed—that being and truth are indissociable from history, then philosophy cannot be successful if it limits itself exclusively to investigations of individual thinkers and periods. What is at stake, ultimately, is the development of Western thought as a whole. In this volume, a fine international group of scholars investigate the meaning of idealism across the ages. Without sacrificing nuance, their contributions show that a core of shared assumptions characterizes idealist philosophies. The historical dialogue which this volume advances emphasizes the relevance of ancient and medieval thinkers for the current debate, but it also challenges us to place modern representatives of idealism—such as Berkeley, Kant, and Hegel—in historical perspective." —_Philipp W. Rosemann, University of Dallas_.

In this paper I explore Husserl’s and Foucault’s approaches to the historical a priori and defend Husserl’s richer notion. Foucault borrows the expression ‘historical a priori’ from Husserl and there are continuities, but also significant and ultimately irreconcilable differences, between their conceptions. Both are looking for ‘conditions of possibility,’ forms of ‘institution’ or instauration, and patterns of transformation, for scientific knowledge. Husserl identifies the ‘a priori of history’ with the ‘historical a priori’ and believes that the ‘invariant essential structures of the historical world’ can be identified. Foucault, on the other hand, is less interested in the Kantian inquiry into the limits or legitimization of knowledge than in the relation between knowledge and power. Foucault rejects the idea of universal and necessary a priori structures and denies that the structure of the conceptual framework governing an era can be fully determined. Both Foucault and Husserl contrast ‘inner’ history with external history, but, I argue, Foucault misconstrues Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology as a form of ‘absolute subjectivity’ against which his ‘archaeological’ method reacts. In fact, Foucault’s own conception of the historical a priori is ambiguous and fails to have explanatory value precisely because it misunderstands the need for the a priori to be both universal and necessary, and offers no account of the ‘a priori of historicity’ which, for Husserl, is essential to human cultural life.