Lilian Alweiss

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.

In 'Time and Being' Heidegger claims that the task is to 'cease all overcoming and to leave metaphysics to itself'. This paper asks what it actually means to leave metaphysics to itself, and how we are meant to understand the difference between "leaving metaphysics to itself" and "overcoming metaphysics". To understand this distinction, the paper compares Heidegger's later position with those of Husserl and Wittgenstein and with his own earlier position expressed in Being and Time. While we find different interpretations of what it means to leave metaphysics to itself, this paper shows that none of them, apart from Wittgenstein's, draw a clear distinction between leaving metaphysics to itself and overcoming metaphysics. Indeed, rather than leaving metaphysics to itself, Heidegger in 'Time and Being' comes to articulate a negative metaphysics. To avoid such a move, this paper draws on Wittgenstein to show how we can truly leave metaphysics to itself and cease all overcoming.

There is a strong consensus among analytic philosophers that Husserl is an internalist and that his internalism must be understood in conjunction with his methodological solipsism. This paper focuses on Husserl's early work the, Logical Investigations, and explores whether such a reading is justified. It shows that Husserl is not a methodological solipsist: He neither believes that meaning can be reduced to the individual, nor does he assign an explanatory role for meaning to the subject. Explanatory priority is assigned to objects which have an intrinsic property independently of any access or attitude we may have to them. Although not a methodological solipsist, there are nonetheless internalist elements to Husserl's thought: He believes that we can think of non-existent objects and his account of indexicals and demonstratives shows that there are two kinds of meaning: one is context independent and internally individuated, the other is partly determined by context and so externally individuated. The paper leaves it open whether this is sufficient to mark Husserl out as an internalist. However, even if he were considered as such, we can be sure of one thing, namely, that his internalism would not be a species of methodological solipsism.