Dagfinn Føllesdal

"There is a philosophical vision at work in Davidson's thinking that exceeds in importance and attraction his masterly analyses of meaning and action even while it matches them in subtlety. This volume brings that vision to the fore, engaging with it, as well as with other aspects of the Davidsonian position, in a way that demonstrates its intrinsic significance as well as its connection with the mainstream of contemporary thought."/Dieter Henrich, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Munich.

SummaryIntentionality, the central theme of Husserl's phenomenology, is the characteristic feature of consciousness that it always seems to be directed towards an object. There need not always be such an object, but consciousness is always as if of an object. Consciousness structures our surroundings, within the limits imposed upon us by sensory experience. The structuring involves the past and the future as well as the present. It also involves values and practical functions, and our body and bodily skills play an important role in the structuring. Husserl's notions of constitution and of inner and outer horizon are discussed, as well as his theory of intersubjectivity. Finally, the notion of ‘positing’ is discussed, and the role of the body in the emergence of our notions of reality and existence

Ontology has traditionally been regarded as a core area of philosophy. However, during the 20th century, some philosophers have maintained that issues concerning existence and ontology are meaningless or inexpressible. Others, like Quine, have argued that these issues are both intelligible and important. After a short discussion of these views, the paper goes on to discuss the twist Husserl gives to our way of looking at this kind of philosophical knowledge through his notion of the thetic component of acts

Can we have objective knowledge of the world? Can we understand what is morally right or wrong? Yes, to some extent. This is the answer given by Adam Smith and Edmund Husserl. Both rejected David Hume s skeptical account of what we can hope to understand. But they held his empirical method in high regard, inquiring into the way we perceive and emotionally experience the world, into the nature and function of human empathy and sympathy and the role of the imagination in processes of intersubjective understanding. The challenge is to overcome the natural constraints of perceptual and emotional experience and reach an agreement that is informed by the facts in the world and the nature of morality. This collection of philosophical essays addresses an audience of Smith- and Husserl scholars as well as everybody interested in theories of objective knowledge and proper morality which are informed by the way we perceive and think and communicate."

The article is a comparative critical discussion of the views of Brentano and Husserl on intentional objects and on perception. Brentano's views on intentional objects are first discussed, with special attention to the problems connected with the status of the intentional objects. It is then argued that Husserl overcomes these problems by help of his notion of noema. Similarly, in the case of perception, Brentano's notion of physical phenomena is argued to be less satisfactory than Husserl's notion of hyle, whose role in Husserl's theory of perception is briefly sketched.