Donn Welton

This collection makes available, in one place, the very best essays on the founding father of phenomenology, reprinting key writings on Husserl's thought from the past seventy years. It draws together a range of writings, many otherwise inaccessible, that have been recognized as seminal contributions not only to an understanding of this great philosopher but also to the development of his phenomenology. The four volumes are arranged as follows: Volume I Classic essays from Husserl's assistants, students and earlier interlocutors. Including a selection of papers from such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Ricoeur and Levinas. Volume II Classic commentaries on Husserl's published works. Covering the Logical Investigations , Ideas I , Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness , and Formal and Transcendental Logic . Volumes III and IV Papers concentrating on particular aspects of Husserl's theory including: Husserl's account of mathematics and logic, his theory of science, the nature of phenomenological reduction, his account of perception and language, the theory of space and time, his phenomenology of imagination and empathy, the concept of the life-world and his epistemology.

Face às afirmações da fenomenologiade que todo ato de consciência é intencionalna estrutura, há a dificuldade de caractertzaraquela que temos em nossa vida mental. Senosso conhecimento é produzido somentenuma segunda ordem de atos de reflexão queatingem o objeto, que parece ser exigido pelanoção de intencionalidade, então somos presade um infinito retorno de atos reflexos. Husserl,contudo, sustenta que nosso conhecimento éimediato e direto. Ele discrtmina istoa partir de uma subseqüente e reflexiva análisemas equivocadamente cleduzida de que aprecepção como refletida é transparente eadequada. Isto nos leva àquestão da natureza do pré-reflexivo conhecimentode si mesmo. Husserl afirma que talmodalidade de contato é de tal maneira queeste conhecimento depende de uma reflexiva conexão entre a mão, porexemplo, e o objeto tocado. Quandoo toque se torna referencial e a mão que toca éa mão tocada, o conhecimento está inevitavelmentearraigado na vida e tem o efeitode deslocar os elementos da teorta fenomenológicade Kant e Descartes na análise fenomenológica.

The recent first-time publication of works from Edmund Husserl’s later years, especially his Freiburg period, combined with new studies of his method and theories, has stimulated a remarkable shift in perceptions of the scope and significance of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. Informed by a deep reading of not just the works published during Husserl’s lifetime but also the countless lectures and manuscripts he wrote in his later years, the essays in The New Husserl provide an alternative approach to Husserl by examining his work and his method as a whole and by probing issues, old and new, that occupied him during this exceptionally productive period. The noted Husserl specialist Klaus Held opens the book with two essays, published here in English for the first time, that provide an insightful and lucid introduction to Husserl’s central texts. Other prominent Husserl scholars treat his most important and lasting contributions to philosophy, such as the concept of intentionality, the theory of types, time-consciousness, consciousness and subjectivity, the phenomenological method, and the problem of generativity. By inviting readers to discover this "new Husserl," the present collection is likely to shape scholarly discussions of Husserl’s thought for some time to come

This essay situates itself on the ground of a very powerful but as yet unanswered critique of Husserl’s theory of intentionality and language proposed by Ernst Tugendhat. After suggesting the necessity of a dialogue between linguistic analysis and phenomenology, Tugendhat turns a critical eye toward Husserl. In the first section we reproduce his attack. Then in the second section we attempt to give a response to his critique from within the boundaries he has superimposed upon the discussion. In the third and fourth sections, however, we attempt to enliven the problem by introducing several historical considerations which have been overlooked by Tugendhat and by taking the first steps toward reclaiming the productivity of language for genetic analysis. It is only when one makes this turn that Husserl’s notion of intentionality finds its solvency.

"With provocations on every page, this book is a philosophical feast. The specialist will find familiar ingredients assembled here in a perspicuous and compelling way, while the nonspecialist will discover a Husserl whose philosophy is made of flesh and blood." —Journal of the History of Philosophy In this thorough study of the full body of his writings, Donn Welton uncovers a Husserl very different from the established view. Arguing against established interpretations, The Other Husserl traces Husserl’s move from static to genetic phenomenology and uses accounts of perception, discourse, subjectivity, and world to elaborate the scope of his systematic phenomenology. This serious reflection on the meaning of phenomenology is the first book in English to outline in full Husserl’s phenomenological method and to argue for its cogency. Welton’s stimulating interpretation highlights Husserl’s relevance for current philosophical debates.

WE CONTINUE TO BE SURPRISED that the only pieces of sustained philosophizing that Husserl published in the 15 years between Ideas I and Internal Time-Consciousness were three articles that appeared in Kaizo, a Japanese periodical, in 1923 and 1924. We also find well-written drafts of two other articles that were to follow in the series but were never completed and submitted. We are even more intrigued when we realize that in these texts Husserl takes up themes never touched in publications before and not touched again until his very late work. While we know that his manuscripts contain continuous and extensive analyses of the essential forms of social and cultural life and of ethical normativity, the Kaizo articles build the only slender bridge actually published on these topics between his attack on "the new Weltanschauung philosophy" in his 1911 Logos article and the 1934-37 texts surrounding the The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy; slender, indeed, when we think that the articles were published in Japan and that the second and third appeared only in Japanese translation. Yet our intrigue is coupled with anticipation, for we have long wondered what Husserl would say to the Japanese, a society highly developed and yet not Western, a culture that does not have its beginnings in the Greek conception of science and knowledge and which clearly poses the question of cultural diversity. And we have wondered how he could define ethical life in this context, how the analysis would proceed, and how the human and social sciences could play a role in the account that he gives.

The complex of problems suggested by the term life-world pervades contemporary thought, even though such a complex is rarely called by this name [...] Time does not allow us, however, to perform an extensive review of the secondary literature on the 'Crisis'. I will only suggest that a survey of this literature, especially the works of Brand, Merleau-Ponty and Habermas, presents us with a dilemma. It seems that there is a difficulty in Husserl's characterization of the life-world. On the one hand, it is understood as the plurality of individually different socio-cultural environments and thus the result of an historical development; on the other hand, it is interpreted as a single structural basis common to all environments and thus an a priori for that history through which they become different. This dilemma concerning the content of Husserl's theory is coupled with a problem having to do with the method of his analysis: how is Husserl's procedure of phenomenological reflection upon a transcendental ego or "monad" able to account for the intersubjective life-world in either of the senses just sketched? Putting the question in this fashion is usually the first step on the way to abandoning a transcendental account of historicity, or, as is the case with Habermas, replacing the transcendental ego with a community of language users. What I want to propose in this essay is precisely what current thinkers seem unanimous in rejecting. I want to argue for a transcendental theory of the life-world and of historicity, and I want to do so by suggesting that a phenomenological reflection upon the transcendental ego - once correctly understood - is the proper procedure for constructing such a theory. In this paper I will discuss such a theory by undertaking a brief study of Husserl's concept of the life-world and by isolating several difficulties which I detect (Part I). I will then introduce a theory of the transcendental reduction as the key to resolving the difficulties I discover (Part II). Finally, I will undertake my own systematic analysis of the a priori of the life-world and will suggest a way of integrating such an analysis with what I will call a transcendental history of the experience of consciousness (Part III).

The Essential Husserl, the first anthology in English of Edmund Husserl's major writings, provides access to the scope of his philosophical studies, including selections from his key works: Logical Investigations, Ideas I and II, Formal and Transcendental Logic, Experience and Judgment, Cartesian Meditations, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, and On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time. The collection is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in twentieth-century philosophy.

This chapter, which deals with the notions of affectivity and engagement, explores the internal connection between basic affects to get at the emergence of affectivity. Additionally, it presents a discussion of motivation and the interplay of affectivity and engagement. Basic affects consist of needs, wants, and desires. Needs and then wants involve a kind of circumspective seeing in which ‘felt’ values are as much a part of objects as their utility. Intentions-in-action are rooted in basic affects. The basic types of affects are each triadically structured with the moments of each type being dyadically organised. The affectivity circuit usually begins with what is not yet a profile coming to prominence out of a dark background. The circuit of engagement is inducted by a bodily drive seeking resolution.