Lilian Alweiss

This paper asks whether we should still be haunted by scepticism about other minds. It draws on the writings of Cavell and Husserl to show that there is some truth in the Cartesian premise that has given rise to scepticism about other minds, namely, that our self-awareness is of a fundamentally different type from our awareness of objects and other subjects. While this leads Cavell to argue that there is a truth to scepticism, it proves the opposite to Husserl, viz. that other minds scepticism is necessarily non-sensical. The paper shows why Husserl's position is more convincing than Cavell's. 1.

__The World Unclaimed__ argues that Heidegger's critique of modern epistemology in _Being and Time_ is seriously flawed. Heidegger believes he has done away with epistemological problems concerning the external world by showing that the world is an existential structure of Dasein. However, the author argues that Heidegger fails to make good his claim that he has “rescued” the phenomenon of the world, which he believes the tradition of philosophy has bypassed. Heidegger fails not only to reclaim the world but also to acknowledge its loss. Alweiss thus calls into question Heidegger's claim that ontology is more fundamental than epistemology._ _ The World Unclaimed__ develops its powerful critique of Being and Time by arguing for a return to Husserl. It draws on Husserl's insight that it is the moving and sensing body that discloses how we are already familiar with the world. Kinaesthesia provides a key for understanding our relation to the world. The author thus suggests that thinkers in the vein of Husserl and Kant -who, for Heidegger, epitomize the tradition of modern philosophy by returning to a “worldless subject”- may provide us with the resources to reclaim the phenomenon of the world that _Being and Time_ sets out to salvage. Alweiss's fresh and innovative study demonstrates that it is possible to overcome epistemological skepticism without ever losing sight of the phenomenon of the world. Moreover, Alweiss challenges us to reconsider the relation between Husserl and Heidegger by providing a forceful defense of Husserl's critique of cognition.

This article explores the extent to which Heidegger promises a novel understanding of the concept of time. Heidegger believes that the tradition of philosophy was mistaken in interpreting time as a moveable image of eternity. We are told that this definition of time is intelligible only if we have eternity as a point of departure to understand the meaning of time. Yet, Heidegger believes that we are barred from such a viewpoint. We can only understand the phenomenon of time from our mortal or finite vantage point. Contrary to the tradition of philosophy, Heidegger argues that time does not find its meaning in eternity, time finds its meaning in death. The article takes Heidegger's position to task. It argues that it is not evident why Heidegger's account of time should in any way be superior to the traditional conception of time. Drawing on the criticism raised by Lévinas and Blanchot, that death — like eternity — is never at our disposal to understand the phenomenon of time, it shows that although Heidegger is aware that death is never an event in our life, he nonetheless claims that it is the awareness of our finitude that informs our understanding of time. Yet if Heidegger does not see it as a problem that death is never at our disposal, then it becomes questionable whether Heidegger's initial critique launched against the tradition of philosophy still holds, because it is no longer evident why it matters that eternity, as a point of departure, is never at our disposal to understand the phenomenon of time.

It is a study of the phenomenological philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger. Through a critical discussion including practically all previously published English and German literature on the subject, the aim is to present a thorough and evenhanded account of the relation between the two. The book provides a detailed presentation of their respective projects and methods, and examines several of their key phenomenological analyses, centering on the phenomenon of being-in-the-world. It offers new perspectives on Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology, e.g. concerning the importance of Husserl's phenomenology of the body, the relationship between the Husserlian concept of "constitution" and Heidegger's notion of "transcendence", as well as in its argument that "being" designates the central phenomenon for both phenomenologists. Though the study sacrifices nothing in terms of argumentative rigor or interpretative detail, it is written in such a way as to be accessible and rewarding to non-specialists and specialists alike.

When Husserl speaks of the so-called ‘transcendental reduction’ or ‘phenomenological epochē’ many believe that he is eschewing the question of truth or existence. Two reasons are given for this: First, Husserl explicitly states that when we perform the reduction, we should no longer naively ‘accept [the world] as it presents itself to me as factually existing’ (Id I §30, p. 53) and should suspend our judgement with regard to ‘the positing of its actual being’ (Id I §88, p. 182). Second, Husserl seems to have no problem in referring to an ‘object’ of thought even when we refer to non-existent, hallucinatory or indeed impossible objects. This seems to suggest that he is not interested in the question whether or not there is a corresponding ‘ordinary’ object. The paper seeks to question this and will show that his inquiry never loses sight of the questions of truth and existence but rather brings them into the foreground.

However, the book, with its promising title, is in many ways disappointing. You may have expected to find a rare discussion between Habermas and Derrida, but there is no dialogue at all. Instead we are presented with two separate fairly short interviews conducted by Giovanna Borradori in New York just after 9/11. The interview with Habermas comprises twenty pages and the one with Derrida fifty-two pages. The rest of the book is written by the interviewer Borradori herself, who compares and contrasts Habermas’s and Derrida’s positions in a rather didactic fashion. Considering that both interviews are easy to follow, such detailed commentary seems rather superfluous, although it may be of help to readers who are not familiar with the thought of the two philosophers.