Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Husserl

  • A Problem in Husserl

    Edmund Husserl has a beef with Descartes. In Cartesian Meditations, sec. 10, Husserl alleges that the Frenchman fails to make the transcendental turn (die transzendentale Wendung).  He stops short at a little tag-end of the world (ein kleines Endchen der Welt), from which he then argues to get back what he had earlier doubted, including…

  • Faith, Reason, and Edith Stein

    Today, August 9th, is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy.  She is better known to philosophers as the Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic church.…

  • Fragment of an Open Letter to Edmund Husserl on His Birthday

    Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859.  Philosophy was the mission of my life. I had to philosophize otherwise I could not live in this world. (Here) Dear Husserl, It may be that the truth we need cannot be known in a way that satisfies modern scruples. Not everything worth knowing can be…

  • Edith Stein on Cognitio Fidei: Is Faith a Kind of Knowledge?

    One finds the phrase cognitio fidei in Thomas Aquinas and in such Thomist writers as Josef Pieper. It translates as 'knowledge of faith.' The genitive is to be interpreted subjectively, not objectively: faith is not the object of knowledge; faith is a form or type of knowledge. But how can faith be a type of knowledge? One…

  • God and the Transcendental Ego

    God does what Husserl's transcendental ego wanted to do but couldn't pull off, namely, constitute beings not as mere unities of sense, but as beings, as "independent reals" to borrow a phrase from Josiah Royce.  Husserl's transcendental idealism never gets the length of Sein; it reaches only as far as Seinsinn. This leads us to…

  • Husserl, Knight of Reason

    Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859. Ich muss meinen Weg gehen so sicher, so fest entschlossen und so ernst wie Duerers Ritter, Tod und Teufel. (Edmund Husserl, "Persoenliche Aufzeichnungen" )  "I must go my way as surely, as seriously, and as resolutely as the knight in Duerer's Knight, Death, and Devil." (tr.…

  • Butchvarov’s Paradox of Antirealism and Husserl’s Paradox of Human Subjectivity

    From Kant on, transcendental philosophy has been bedeviled by a certain paradox.  Here again is the Paradox of Antirealism discussed by Butchvarov, as I construe it, the numbers in parentheses being page references to his 2015 Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: PA: On the one hand, we cannot know the world as it is in itself, but only…

  • A Meditation on Certainty on Husserl’s Birthday

    Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859. In his magisterial Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown writes of Augustine, "He wanted complete certainty on ultimate questions." (1st ed., p. 88) If you don't thrill to that line, you are no philosopher. Compare Edmund Husserl: "Ohne Gewissheit kann ich eben nicht leben." "I just can't…

  • Husserl’s Critique of the Image-Theory of Consciousness

    Suppose I am conscious of an object in the mode of visual perception:  I see a bobcat in the backyard. Does it make sense to try to analyze  this perceptual situation by saying that 'in my mind' there is an image or picture that represents something 'outside my mind'? In the Fifth of his Logical…

  • Phenomenon and Existence

    E. C. writes: In the recent post Mary Neal’s Out of Body Experiences you state: "No experience, no matter how intense or unusual or protracted, conclusively proves the veridicality of its intentional object.  Phenomenology alone won't get you to metaphysics." I have been attempting to reconstruct your reasoning here, and the following is the best…

  • My Body and I

    My body is my body and not my body's body.  So I am not my body.  I have a body.  This having, presumably sui generis and unlike any other type of having, is yet a having and not a being.  My body doesn't have a body.  I know that I have a body.  My body…

  • On This Day in 1859 . . .

    . . . Edmund Husserl was born. 

  • Husserl, Knight of Reason

    Ich muss meinen Weg gehen so sicher, so fest entschlossen und so ernst wie Duerers Ritter, Tod und Teufel. (Edmund Husserl, "Persoenliche Aufzeichnungen" )  "I must go my way as surely, as seriously, and as resolutely as the knight in Duerer's Knight, Death, and Devil." (tr. MavPhil)  Note the castle on the hill, the hour…

  • Kleingeld, Meine Herren, Kleingeld!

    Husserl used to say that to his seminarians to keep them careful and wissenschaftlich and away from assertions of the high-flying and sweeping sort.  Unfortunately, the philosophical small change doesn't add up.  Specialization, no matter how narrow and protracted, no matter how carefully pursued, fails to put us on the "sure path of science." Given…

  • Edith Stein on Cognitio Fidei: Is Faith a Kind of Knowledge?

    One finds the phrase cognitio fidei in Thomas Aquinas and in such Thomist writers as Josef Pieper. It translates as 'knowledge of faith.' The genitive is to be interpreted subjectively, not objectively: faith is not the object of knowledge; faith is a form or type of knowledge. But how can faith be a type of knowledge? One…