Andrew W. Lamb

: Many philosophers interpret Edmund Husserl as relying upon his phenomenological epoché to escape contextual powers so as to recover a contextually unconditioned "constituting" consciousness. I show, however, that in both Ideas I and Cartesian Meditations Husserl relies upon the epoché for something more modest, though important: studying the immanent "reaches" of experience—experience providing, among other things, intuitive disclosures that ultimately legitimate all "science." For this study, experience is to be taken as it exists, even if contextually conditioned. The epoché thus supports a study of experiential immanence—a study definitive of phenomenology—compatible with contextual conditioning

This essay argues against David Carr’s relativism by clarifying the in principle requirements appropriate to non-relative truths and showing that de facto differences of conceptual frameworks threaten none of them. Non-relative truths are not threatened by history. This defense of non-relative truth belongs to a larger defense of Husserlian “science” that shows how essences, even those “delivered” by history, have a universal “governance” and can be affirmed in nonrelative truths-as such science requires. If history also allows the other qualities of Husserlian science to obtain, then, the essay concludes, such science can exist even as a “situated science.”

This essay argues against David Carr’s relativism by clarifying the in principle requirements appropriate to non-relative truths and showing that de facto differences of conceptual frameworks threaten none of them. Non-relative truths are not threatened by history. This defense of non-relative truth belongs to a larger defense of Husserlian “science” that shows how essences, even those “delivered” by history, have a universal “governance” and can be affirmed in nonrelative truths-as such science requires. If history also allows the other qualities of Husserlian science to obtain, then, the essay concludes, such science can exist even as a “situated science.”

Drawing upon his almost thirty years of reading and lecturing on phenomenology, Moran provides in this book an introduction to the phenomenological movement—a movement that, as he rightly claims, “in many ways, typifies the course of European philosophy in the twentieth century”. Moran’s book sketches the views of nine philosophers whose works either fall squarely within the parameters of phenomenology or draw a significant inspiration from phenomenology. He begins with an introduction to the thought of Franz Brentano, whose concern for an “exact scientific philosophy, and, specifically, his project for descriptive psychology” provide much intellectual impetus for the founding of phenomenology by Edmund Husserl. Moran then devotes four of the remaining twelve chapters to the views of Husserl, two chapters to those of Martin Heidegger, and one chapter each to the philosophies of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jacques Derrida.

Many philosophers who support a four-dimensionalist metaphysics of things also conceive of experience as a state of a mind having temporal extension or existing as a momentary feature of the dimension of time. This essay shows that such a strict four-dimensionalism — suggested in works by D. M. Armstrong, Mark Heller, and David Lewis — cannot be correct, since it cannot allow for the passing of time that is essential to awareness. The argument demonstrates that the positing of any temporal process at all must compromise the strict four-dimensionalist view of the temporality of experience. This is not to say that the traditional endurantist view is left wholeheartedly endorsed. As I point out, this traditional view makes several questionable claims of its own that must be carefully scrutinized. Still, the criticism of the strict four-dimensionalist ontology indicates a direction to be followed in developing a successful metaphysics of experience.