This paper begins by presenting Lawlor's Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problems of Philosophy, an account of how deconstruction emerges as Derrida discusses Husserl's phenomenology (I.). It then determines the genre of Lawlor's intellectual history. Lawlor writes a continuist narrative history of ideas and concepts (II.). In the subsequent main section the paper uses Lawlor's material to take a position in the debate between Husserl and Derrida (III.). This is done in three parts. The first part reconstructs Derrida's version of (...) Husserlian time consciousness (III. 1). The second part proposes an alternative and revisionist reading of Husserl's theory of internal temporality. On this reading Husserl is a process theoretician of consciousness (III. 2). The third part juxtaposes Husserl and Derrida's critical views (III. 3), arguing that Husserl's fluxive theory of time consciousness does not suffer from the problems Derrida finds in his Husserl. The final section (IV.) points to relativizing consequences for deconstruction and identifies programmatic consequences for phenomenology. (shrink)

Derrida's Husserl thinks of meaning as self-presence and of self-presence as transparent and complete presence of meaning to the mind. Expression and thought are but particular modes or media of the more englobing relation of a self-acquainted life. Reflection is the highest form and telos of the other forms of presence. In contrast, the — by no means complete — Husserl who has begun to appear in my interpretation does not unconditionally subscribe to the value of presence. Not only is (...) an important part of intentional life directed towards objects which it does not possess in their plenitude — hence its emptiness —, this part of intentional life is also blind towards itself. Reflection tries to fill this gap by grasping what is not present to a life immersed in its world. But a retreat from life is the price of presence, a presence, in addition, whose power is essentially limited by the fluidity of its material and by the limits of its bearers. And yet Husserl maintains, passionately maintains, the claim and value of reflection and of a scientific attitude which Derrida rejects with equal passion. May they not have a positive function in a frame which is no longer that of presence metaphysics? As deconstruction has evolved its philosophy of anti-presence, it has brushed away the reflexive potential of Phenomenology and chosen to reject ‘its own origin”. (shrink)

Another "reckoning" with Heidegger! Bambach's main thesis is that "authochthonic rootedness" is a "never abandoned ontological myth", it functions as a leading value, and it grounds Heidegger's fundamental ontology and history of being. It survives the turns of Heidegger's philosophical trajectory. Heidegger attributes his principle to the Greeks, but he uses it to legitimate a specifically German rootedness, a major critical tool and antidote to the cultural ills he diagnoses. Heidegger thus asserts German superiority and power in thought, culture, and (...) political mission. Adequate thought and right value need to have chthonic origin. In addition, Heidegger's fundamental ontology and metaphysical history of being are exclusionary: only autochthonously rooted cultures have dignity and are entitled to reign. Heidegger's "originary thinking" excludes from that dignity Russian Communism, American capitalism, modern democracy, the ideas of 1789, Enlightenment rationality, Latinity, Galilean and Newtonian science, calculative thinking, technology, universalizing ethics, Cartesian subjectivity. (shrink)