Burt Hopkins

“Back to Husserl: Reclaiming the Traditional Philosophical Context ofthe Phenomenological ‘Problem’ of the Other: Leibniz’s Monadology”. The internalmotivation that led Husserl to revise his early view of the pure Ego as empty ofessential content is traced to the end of explicating his reformulation of phenomenologyas the egology of the concrete transcendental Ego. The necessity ofrecasting transcendental phenomenology as a transcendental idealism that followsfrom this reformulation is presented and the appearance of transcendentalsolipsism of this idealism exposed as unfounded. That the ground of this exposureis Husserl’s phenomenological appropriation of Leibniz’s metaphysical insightsinto the problem of accounting for the plurality of monads, and, therefore, not theCartesian problem of the other mind, is presented as the key to reclaiming thetraditional philosophical context of the phenomenological problem of the other

The dissertation endeavors to study the controversial relationship of the phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger by investigating their respective treatments of intentionality. Husserl's reflective and Heidegger's hermeneutical accounts of intentionality are brought into bold phenomenal relief in order to secure the phenomenal basis underlying their conflicting views of both the character and status of this phenomenon. Specifically, the study discusses Husserl's reflective exhibition of intentionality in terms of its manifestation of the phenomenally original essence of lived-experiences, and Heidegger's immanent critique of the same in terms of its manifestation of phenomenally derivative understanding of Being. ;The discussion shows that Husserl finds the reflective securing of intentionality to manifest the most original phenomenal manifestation of die Sachen selbst, while Heidegger finds the hermeneutical securing of the same to manifest the temporalization of Dasein's being-in-the-world. The issues underlying the discrepancies of these two phenomenological findings are brought into relief with a discussion of the philosophical "prerogatives" of each thinker's understanding of phenomenology. These issues emerge in terms of the Heideggerian 'prerogative' of the hermeneutical advance regard toward Being, and the Husserlian 'prerogative' of the reflective seeing of the phenomenological regard. The study finds that the unavoidable opposition of the phenomenal content of these issues has its basis in the character and status each accords to the essence of the phenomenon of "reflection." The study concludes with a consideration of the phenomenal warrant of what comes forward as die Sachen selbst of the Husserlian 'prerogative' of the ontologically neutral reflective uncovering of the phenomenon of transcendental subjectivity and the Heideggerian 'prerogative' of the hermeneutical disclosure of the ontico-ontological disclosedness of the unreflective phenomenon of Being

Jacob Klein’s account of the original phenomenon of formalization accomplished by the innovators of modern mathematics, when they transformed the Greek arithmos into the modern concept of number, and his suggestion that the essential structure of this historically located formalization has become paradigmaticfor the concept formation of non-mathematical concepts (and therefore the most salient characteristic of the “modern consciousness”), is situated within the context of Husserl’s and Heidegger’s understanding of formalization. I show that from the perspective of Klein’s account of formalization the questions thatinform Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenological responses to the problem of formalization are derivative, insofar as both phenomenologists presuppose that the essence of formalization is something that is knowable independent of its historicity. I then show that Klein’s philosophical achievement consists in his account of formalization and the formality of the concepts that it generates as being ungraspable so long as thinking approaches them as something is knowable, independent of its historicity.