Are there any recommendations for an introduction to Phenomenology?
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1jxn
Optional background information/explanation:
I have read a one or two short secondary works about Edmund Husserl and phenomenology and much of the works of Phenomenologically-influenced thinkers, namely Emmanuel Lévinas and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as a couple of modern thinkers, and I have emerged with a fairly convoluted understanding, I think, of Phenomenology.
All of my phenomenologically-inclined friends have long argued with me against my initial conclusions that Husserl's phenomenology sought knowable essences--not unlike Plato's forms, but confined to particular subject-object relations rather than to universals. I had until recently taken their word that I had misunderstood phenomenology, but I found my same criticisms expressed quite clearly by Albert Camus (a contemporary of these thinkers) in his Myth of Sisyphus. I should like to know if I have misunderstood phenomenology or not--and furthermore to know more about the theory's structure, nuances, internal disputes, and application to epistemology/ethics/praxis.
Much obliged,
jxn
I have read a one or two short secondary works about Edmund Husserl and phenomenology and much of the works of Phenomenologically-influenced thinkers, namely Emmanuel Lévinas and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as a couple of modern thinkers, and I have emerged with a fairly convoluted understanding, I think, of Phenomenology.
All of my phenomenologically-inclined friends have long argued with me against my initial conclusions that Husserl's phenomenology sought knowable essences--not unlike Plato's forms, but confined to particular subject-object relations rather than to universals. I had until recently taken their word that I had misunderstood phenomenology, but I found my same criticisms expressed quite clearly by Albert Camus (a contemporary of these thinkers) in his Myth of Sisyphus. I should like to know if I have misunderstood phenomenology or not--and furthermore to know more about the theory's structure, nuances, internal disputes, and application to epistemology/ethics/praxis.
Much obliged,
jxn
2Mr.Durick
The fat book I have waiting at hand to be read is Introduction to Phenomenology by Dermot Moran. I've read only a few sentences, but they were lucid. The organization looks comprehensive and straightforward.
Have fun,
Robert
Have fun,
Robert
3Third_cheek
1>
I'm a little late with this post.
Jxn, your Platonist interpretation is not implausible, but it depends on which of Husserl's texts you are considering. His views shifted significantly in this regard.
If you want to understand phenomenology post Husserl, then you absolutely have to read Heidegger: Sartre and Merleau-Ponty et al follow the Heideggerian paradigm in their most celebrated works. Early Sartre is more like Husserl, but Being and Nothingness is Heidegger.
Get a copy of Being and Time (be careful about the translation - Dreyfus will tell you.....) and listen to Hubert Dreyfus's lectures on that text which are freely available (all 40 hours) on the internet.
2> Dermot Moran is excellent on all this stuff.
I'm a little late with this post.
Jxn, your Platonist interpretation is not implausible, but it depends on which of Husserl's texts you are considering. His views shifted significantly in this regard.
If you want to understand phenomenology post Husserl, then you absolutely have to read Heidegger: Sartre and Merleau-Ponty et al follow the Heideggerian paradigm in their most celebrated works. Early Sartre is more like Husserl, but Being and Nothingness is Heidegger.
Get a copy of Being and Time (be careful about the translation - Dreyfus will tell you.....) and listen to Hubert Dreyfus's lectures on that text which are freely available (all 40 hours) on the internet.
2> Dermot Moran is excellent on all this stuff.
5Dzerzhinsky
I haven't gone yet with Hubert, choosing another commentator instead. Husserl, I am not all that interested in. I agree that Heidegger is the better place to start and Sartre as well.
But the guy who really blows the doors off is Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty is for me where everything leads toward, where everything winds up. Sartre helps you shed old conventions and Heidegger advances a bold new framework which rings all over as true; but Heidegger doesn't fully give you a way to 'go through the world' as aptly as MP does.
For, what Heidegger wants you to do first of all is doubt; we must doubt the onslaught of 'daily reality' ...but our sensory inputs will not bow to his ideas. Our senses are overpowering. Only after you read MP can you reach a state (one much prized by eastern mystics) where you can deny your senses and do so in a very capable manner. Why? Because MP shows how faulty they are. There's no need to be slave to such woefully inadequate sensory glands. No need to take pride in them. No need to constantly be coerced by them.
It's incredibly 'freeing'.
But the guy who really blows the doors off is Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty is for me where everything leads toward, where everything winds up. Sartre helps you shed old conventions and Heidegger advances a bold new framework which rings all over as true; but Heidegger doesn't fully give you a way to 'go through the world' as aptly as MP does.
For, what Heidegger wants you to do first of all is doubt; we must doubt the onslaught of 'daily reality' ...but our sensory inputs will not bow to his ideas. Our senses are overpowering. Only after you read MP can you reach a state (one much prized by eastern mystics) where you can deny your senses and do so in a very capable manner. Why? Because MP shows how faulty they are. There's no need to be slave to such woefully inadequate sensory glands. No need to take pride in them. No need to constantly be coerced by them.
It's incredibly 'freeing'.
