David Detmer - Phenomenology Explained: From Experience to Insight

Phenomenology Explained

IDEAS EXPLAINED

Daoism Explained, Hans-Georg Moeller

Frege Explained, Joan Weiner

Luhmann Explained, Hans-Georg Moeller

Heidegger Explained, Graham Harman

Atheism Explained, David Ramsay Steele

Sartre Explained, David Detmer

Ockham Explained, Rondo Keele

Rawls Explained, Paul Voice

Phenomenology Explained, David Detmer

Ayn Rand Explained, Ronald E. Merrill, revised and updated by Marsha Familaro Enright

The Tea Party Explained, Yuri Maltsev and Roman Skaskiw

IN PREPARATION

Deleuze and Guattari Explained, Rohit Dalvi

The Occupy Movement Explained, Nicholas Smaligo

Phenomenology

Explained

From Experience to Insight

DAVID DETMER

OPEN COURT

Chicago

Volume 9 in the Ideas Explained Series

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First printing 2013

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ISBN: 978-0-8126-9805-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013944051

Contents

I have had the good fortune to study Husserl and phenomenology with several excellent teachers, most notably Erazim Kohk (the worlds foremost authority on Jan Patoka, and author of the best commentary on Ideas I known to me, Idea & Experience), John Findlay (translator of the Logical Investigations), James Edie (author of Edmund Husserls Phenomenology: A Critical Commentary), and David Michael Levin (now Kleinberg-Levin, author of Reason and Evidence in Husserls Phenomenology). While I have learned an enormous amount from each of these four fine scholars, they cannot be blamed for my mistakes.

Also deserving of thanks are my friends in the North American Sartre Society and at Sartre Studies International, especially Bruce Baugh and Connie Mui. One does not even have to perform the eidetic reduction to realize that they are the best of colleagues.

My colleagues in philosophy at Purdue University Calumet have helped me to develop my ideas over many years of stimulating philosophical discussions, both informally and through our regular colloquia. In this connection, I would like to thank John Wachala, Connie Sowa-Wachala, Neil Florek, Phyllis Bergiel, John Rowan, Eugene Schlossberger, Renee Conroy, Sam Zinaich, David Turpin, Robin Turpin, Howard Cohen, Charmaine Boswell, Kevin Kliver, Michael Stevens, Jason Melton, and Stephen Meinster. I apologize to anyone I have forgotten.

Finally, as always, my biggest thanks go to Kerri and Arlo, for their love, support, encouragement, ideas, and life-sustaining sense of fun.

T he following abbreviations have been used for frequently cited works. The date in square brackets at the conclusion of each entry is the date of the original publication in the original language. In most cases, where possible, I have included section numbers, in addition to page numbers, for quoted passages, thus enabling readers to find the passages in any edition (and in any language) of the works cited.

By Michael Dummett

By Edmund Husserl

By Gary B. Madison

By Maurice Merleau-Ponty

By Jean-Paul Sartre

P henomenology is one of the most important and influential philosophical movements to have emerged since the dawn of the twentieth century. However, while it remains a major force in contemporary European thought (excluding Great Britain), it is neither well known nor well understood in the English-speaking world. In response to this situation, my goal in this book is to provide a concise, accurate account of phenomenology, one that will be clear enough to be accessible to undergraduates and interested general readers, and yet also sufficiently rigorous and original as to appeal to advanced scholars.

Phenomenology is the study of the essential structures of experience. It seeks to describe the objects of experience and the acts of consciousness (for example, thinking, perceiving, imagining, doubting, questioning, loving, hating, etc.) by and through which these objects are disclosed. Its aim is to focus on the world as given in experience, and to describe it with unprecedented care, rigor, subtlety, and completeness. This applies not only to the objects of sense experience, but to all phenomena: moral, aesthetic, political, mathematical, and so forth.