Steven Crowell

Husserl adopted the Kantian term ‘transcendental’ to describe his phenomenological philosophy, but his use of the term differs in important ways from Kant’s. The first substantive section of this chapter examines certain problems inherent in the leading approaches to Kant’s transcendental project in order to situate the thesis that distinguishes the phenomenological contribution to the tradition of transcendental philosophy is that it makes meaning as such thematic. Phenomenology expands the scope of Kant’s transcendental question of validity beyond cognitive experience to all intentionality. The second section explains the phenomenological understanding of the intentional object. The third and final section shows why the neo-Kantian attempt to eliminate subjectivity from the transcendental project must fail, and then explains how Husserl’s reflection on conscious ‘acts’, complemented by Heidegger’s understanding of existential ‘projects’, provides the key element in any transcendental account of meaning or intentionality: the subject’s responsiveness to norms.

The thirteen essays in this volume represent the most sustained investigation, in any language, of the connections between Heidegger's thought and the tradition of transcendental philosophy inaugurated by Kant. This collection examines Heidegger's stand on central themes of transcendental philosophy: subjectivity, judgment, intentionality, truth, practice, and idealism. Several essays in the volume also explore hitherto hidden connections between Heidegger's later "post-metaphysical" thinking—where he develops a "topological" approach that draws as much upon poetry as upon the philosophical tradition—and the transcendental project of grasping the conditions that make experience of a meaningful world possible. This volume will interest philosophers in the continental tradition, where Heidegger's thought has long had a central role, as well as those many philosophers in the analytic tradition whose own approach to knowledge, semantics, and philosophy of mind traces its roots to Kant.

Richard Rorty famously characterized the attitude of philosophical pragmatism as a kind of irony with respect to traditional metaphysical positions or “final vocabularies.” In both Husserl and Heidegger, phenomenology is a kind of transcendental philosophy and so would seem, despite the many connections between phenomenology and pragmatism, to be “metaphysical” in Rorty’s sense. But, as I shall argue, it too gives rise to a certain attitudinal irony. The argument will proceed by first examining some connections between Husserl’s phenomenology and the pragmatic conception of truth developed by William James, arriving at a point where Husserl might be said to become a “metaphysician.” I will then consider some connections between Heidegger’s phenomenology of Dasein (“care”) and the pragmatic conception of truth. We will then be in a position to understand that, while the attitude in which transcendental phenomenology is practiced is not one of irony, the essential element of what, for Rorty, characterizes pragmatism’s irony – namely, the incommensurability between the norms at issue in our commitments and the project of ultimate grounding – plays a crucial role in transcendental phenomenology as well.

Neo‐Kantianism, a movement with roots deep in the nineteenth century, dominated German academic philosophy between 1890 and 1920. Though it carried the impulse of German Idealism into the culture of the twentieth century and set the agenda for philosophies which displaced it, the movement is little studied now. One encounters it primarily in liberation narratives constructed by those whose own thinking took shape in the clash between neo‐Kantianism and the “rebellious” interwar generation spearheaded by jaspers (see Article 17) and heidegger (see Article 18). Thus, before Heidegger – so Hannah Arendt (Arendt 1978, p. 294) – “philosophy was not so much communicated as drowned in a sea of boredom.” And with Heidegger – so Hans‐Georg Gadamer (Gadamer 1977, p. 214) – “the complacent system‐building of neo‐Kantian methodologism” gave way; its “calm and confident aloofness … suddenly seemed to be mere child's play” (Gadamer 1977, p. 230). Here neo‐Kantianism is the terminus ad quem of a “liberation from the unbreakable circle of reflection” toward recovery of the “evocative power of conceptual thinking and philosophical language” (Gadamer 1977, p. 202). It thus enters the lore of Continental philosophy as the father who had to be slain in order that philosophy might live.

With the publication of the Husserliana series and Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe both nearing completion, a strikingly different picture of their work than was available to earlier generations is emerging. It has become quite clear that phenomenological philosophy is not a fixed “system” but an ongoing philosophical practice that has much to contribute to debates in contemporary philosophy generally. It would be impossible here to canvass all the “horizons” of phenomenology that this situation has opened up, so in this chapter I will focus on one issue that Husserl considered to be a Grenzproblem of his phenomenology, namely, the relation between transcendental-phenomenological method (the “reduction”) and metaphysics. Section 1 presents an overview of my understanding of transcendental phenomenology as concerned specifically with clarifying issues of normatively structured meaning (Sinn). Section 2 argues that transcendental phenomenology is metaphysically neutral and considers an ambiguity in Husserl’s Ideas I that suggests the possibility that it is actually a metaphysical idealism – specifically, the claim that real things “depend” on consciousness for their existence. Section 3 takes up three accounts of this dependence-question and argues that only one of them takes full account of Husserl’s own views on metaphysics. Finally, in section 4, I argue that Husserl’s metaphysical “monadology” is based on dialectical arguments rather than on phenomenological evidence, and I suggest that it thus becomes the antinomical mirror-image of Theodore Sider’s metaphysical realism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 33.1 (2003) 3-22 [Access article in PDF] Rationalism in History Steven Crowell Mark Bevir. The Logic of the History of Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. [L] When Hegel spoke of history as the "slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states, and the virtue of individuals have been sacrificed" [27], he wished his hearers to find satisfaction in the contemplation of a "reason" in history that would redeem those sacrifices by explaining their necessity. A "logic" of history in this sense—a logic of the events themselves (res gestae) and not merely of discourses about them (historia rerum gestarum)—does not merely relate events to one another by means of a narrative in which they can be seen to make sense, but, going further, attributes necessity to these events by relating them to the (absolute) Idea. That this "Idea or Reason is the True," that "nothing but it... manifests itself in the world," is not, Hegel reminds us, something established historically but "has been proved in philosophy" [11]. Seen thus, post-Hegelian historicism begins the moment that the Idea of history becomes the "history of ideas"—that is, the moment when reason becomes merely the thematic object, rather than the generative subject, of history. In its many forms—Begriffsgeschichte, intellectual history, history of worldviews, Ideologiekritik, history of mentalités, and so on—the history of ideas bears the traces of its birth in the retreat of speculative philosophy of history's robust rationalism, whether of the idealistic Hegelian or the materialist Marxian variety. Under such conditions, to announce a "logic" of the history of ideas is to link historiography with philosophy in a way that might surprise those many who have grown accustomed to thinking that the latter is dead and the former is anything but logical.For "history" has been the shibboleth under which contemporary critical discourse has sought to free itself from the "philosophical" model of knowing that dominated earlier times. If at the outset of the twentieth century the new currents in European philosophy—Husserlian phenomenology and Russellian analysis—were militantly antihistorical, by century's end only the latter remained so. The former very quickly spawned or influenced a host of offshoots (existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, genealogy) with little in common but the belief that philosophy is thoroughly historical. When, in the guise of "theory," critical discourse in fields such as literature, cultural studies, feminism, or postcolonial studies draws close to philosophy, then, it is generally a philosophy that sees itself entangled in history, no longer capable of "master narratives" or logics because suspicious of its own past. Significantly, this skepticism has made itself felt in the discipline of history itself, where the theory of historiography is increasingly integrated into a general postmodern, postphilosophical, model of cultural production that emphasizes politics or poetics over reason, rhetoric over cognition.1 Mark Bevir's proposal for a logic of the history of ideas is a protest against such [End Page 3] integration: historical inquiry—whose principles provide the basis not only for a "general logic of history" but also for a "theory of culture" as such [L 316]—is a rational enterprise that yields objective knowledge guided by the regulative idea of truth as correspondence to a fixed historical reality.There is scarcely a debate in historiography—and in the philosophy of mind, language, and science, as it pertains to such debates—about which Bevir does not have something important to say, but reduced to its bare outline Bevir's book lays out the elements, modes of justification, and modes of explanation that are normative for the practice of the history of ideas. At its basis is the philosophical view, introduced in chapter one and successively developed in subsequent chapters, that the "folk-psychological" concepts we use to understand and explain human behavior—above all, the concept of rationality—are indispensable in the history of ideas as well. A central element of the practice of intellectual history, for example, is the concept of "meaning," and in chapter two, against challenges from contextualists, conventionalists, and others who reject intentionalism, Bevir argues that...

This essay begins with some of the author’s recollections of George Psathas during their collaboration in organizing and administering the annual Schutz Lecture. These lead to reflections on the role of phenomenology in social scientific method, as represented, in different ways, by Schutz, Goffman, and Garfinkel. Examining a tension between cognitivist and pragmatic approaches to the normative orders in which social life takes place, George Psathas identifies a distinctive role for phenomenology, one that the author endorses as an essential moment of “idiosyncrasy” in scientific inquiry.

For a long time now, a dispute has raged over whether Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism is somehow a necessary consequence of the analysis of Dasein he offers in Being and Time. While this paper does not address this question directly, it does make a distinction that, I believe, is necessary for approaching an answer - a distinction between the transcendental approach to Dasein in Being and Time and the metaphysical approach to the human being Heidegger takes up between 1927 and 1935. Heidegger called this latter approach “metontology.” I argue that it is the attempt to bridge the gap between the transcendental and the metaphysical - between inquiry into the disclosure of the meaning of being and an ontic inquiry into “beings as a whole” - that leads Heidegger necessarily to political philosophy, which he calls “metapolitics.” The key to this attempt is Heidegger’s appropriation of Leibniz’s idea of the monad, which serves Heidegger first as a way of clarifying the distinction between Dasein and animal life, and then as a way of determining the metaphysical character of a Volk. The failure of this metaphysical project - which Heidegger himself soon came to recognize - leaves the validity of the transcendental phenomenology in Being and Time untouched.

Robert Scharff's new book wants to set the record straight. For too long, scholars have focused on the topic of Heidegger's thinking, being, and have read Being and Time as a hermeneutic revision of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, which, like the latter, "takes positions" on philosophical questions, advances "theses," and, for all its emphasis on subjective experience, invites "objective" assessment. Scharff's alternative picture, focused almost exclusively on Heidegger's lecture courses between 1919 and 1925, looks something like this:If one carefully examines Heidegger's reading of Dilthey during this period, one will see that Heidegger always approaches Husserl's phenomenology with a "Diltheyan" question...

This paper focuses on the connection between meaning, the specific field of phenomenological philosophy, and mattering, the cornerstone of personal identity. Doing so requires that we take a stand on the scope and method of phenomenological philosophy itself. I will argue that while we can describe our lives in an “impersonal” way, such descriptions will necessarily omit what makes it the case that such lives can matter at all. This will require distinguishing between “personal” identity and “self” identity, an idea well-established in the phenomenological literature – for instance, in Husserl’s distinction between the “transcendental ego” and the person -- but I will argue that self-identity is a normative achievement whose clarification requires a move into second-person phenomenology. The argument moves through three sections. First, I will discuss Aron Gurwitsch’s “non-egological” conception of consciousness and will explain the most important reason Husserl rejected this view in his transcendental phenomenology. Second, I will discuss some contemporary approaches to Husserl’s distinction between person and ego. Third, I will argue that these approaches testify to an ambiguity in Husserl’s account of being “true” to oneself that requires us to understand selfhood as having the structure Heidegger called care. The importance of this will be demonstrated phenomenologically in a critical examination of Paul Ricoeur’s ontology of selfhood, particularly his interpretation of the second-person phenomenology of conscience.

What does the Kantian “transcendental turn” tell us about who we are? In his claim to “deny knowledge in order to make room for faith,” some have understood Kant’s achievement to have been a failed attempt to ward off nihilism, the idea that human existence is devoid of meaning. Karsten Harries argues that we can neither accept Kant’s solution nor give up what it sought to reconcile: a robust affirmation of science and an equally robust insistence on our freedom. Harries argues that phenomenology - here represented by Husserl and Heidegger - cannot adequately lead us out of these antinomies, but I will argue that he underestimates the resources of transcendental phenomenology to address nihilism because he operates with a restricted concept of reason. By examining the clues Harries offers for confronting nihilism - in art, in our experience of persons, in Hans Blumenberg’s notion of Unbegrifflichkeit - I will argue that such clues draw upon insights that belong within the scope of a transcendental phenomenology and that the concept of “human” reason they entail is not subject to the antinomies Harries attributes to transcendental philosophy.

Despite recent interest in his work, little has been written about Løgstrup’s relation to phenomenology—what he thinks phenomenology is, how it informs his approach to ethics, and what he believes it can accomplish. Here I hope to stimulate further discussion of these matters. In this, consideration of Levinas’s understanding of phenomenology will be useful. While sharing many of Løgstrup’s concerns, Levinas insists on a distinction between phenomenological ontology and “metaphysics,” one that Løgstrup tends to blur in support of his argument that “absolute nihilism is an impossibility.” After showing why this distinction matters, I will argue that Løgstrup’s goal is better achieved if we embrace Heidegger’s transcendental version of phenomenology rather than follow Løgstrup or Levinas, despite much that remains phenomenologically valuable in both.

This paper explores, from a phenomenological perspective, the conditions necessary for the possession of intentional content, i.e., for being intentionally directed toward the world. It argues that Levinas's concept of ethics as first philosophy makes an important contribution to this task. Intentional directedness, as understood here, is normatively structured. Levinas's ‘ethics’ can be understood as a phenomenological account of how our experience of the other subject as another subject takes place in the recognition of the normative force of a command. This supplies a condition that—as the paper shows by examining Husserl and Sartre on how our experience of the Other constitutes an ‘objective’ world—earlier phenomenologists have misunderstood, because they have treated ethical experience as ‘founded’ on a prior theory of representation (‘ontology’ in Levinas's language). Ethics is first philosophy because it is only by acknowledging the command in the ‘face’ of the Other that we can account for the sensitivity to the normative distinctions that structure intentional content. Throughout, the paper shows how Levinas's analyses, in Totality and Infinity, draw upon and develop the analyses of Husserl and Sartre.

Existentialism exerts a continuing fascination on students of philosophy and general readers. As a philosophical phenomenon, though, it is often poorly understood, as a form of radical subjectivism that turns its back on reason and argumentation and possesses all the liabilities of philosophical idealism but without any idealistic conceptual clarity. In this volume of original essays, the first to be devoted exclusively to existentialism in over forty years, a team of distinguished commentators discuss the ideas of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir and show how their focus on existence provides a compelling perspective on contemporary issues in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, language and history. A further sequence of chapters examines the influence of existential ideas beyond philosophy, in literature, religion, politics and psychiatry. The volume offers a rich and comprehensive assessment of the continuing vitality of existentialism as a philosophical movement and a cultural phenomenon.