Home and Beyond traces the development of Husserl’s thought, paying special attention to Husserl’s phenomenology in his late works. Steinbock demonstrates that each stage of Husserl’s extensive life work becomes a necessary condition for Husserl’s next finding in phenomenology. The work concludes with an interpretation of Husserl’s final definition of phenomenology that demands a phenomenology beyond Husserl. Also, Steinbock provides for an interpretation of the concepts of homeworld/alienworld that most likely will capture the interest of social philosophers.

Alterity and Transcendence contains essays by Levinas that were published between 1967 and 1989. The book is divided into four parts. It first displays Levinas’s analysis of the history of Western philosophy. Then it explores intersubjectivity before discussing the issue of the rights of man. The collection concludes with interviews on the philosophy of death and on the violence of the face.

Content and Comportment discusses and challenges the epistemological claim that reality cannot be comprehended. The claim is based on the inherent limitation of the senses as mediators of knowledge of the world. The author argues that the body provides for an additional access to the world. This approach promises a more solid account of realism than the ones construed out of dominant epistemological theories.

This book contains the translation of a collection of Emmanuel Levinas’s essays on Husserl. The essays reflect Levinas’s reading of Husserl from 1929 until 1977. The book is divided into three parts reflecting on Levinas’s changing interpretation of Husserl during this time period. Part 1 is called “Husserl’s Phenomenology” and contains essays written from 1929 to 1940. Part 2, “Levinas’s Husserl,” spans the period of 1959–65. Part 3, “Beyond Husserl,” only holds two essays. One is dated 1974, the other 1977. (...) They display Levinas’s own phenomenology. (shrink)

Idealism and Corporeity is James Dodd’s doctoral thesis. The book deals with the most developed form of Husserl’s phenomenology of the body. Dodd remarks that Husserl’s published work barely touches on the analysis of the body, though Husserl’s Nachlass demonstrates his preoccupation with it. This is because the analysis of the body is subsumed under the “basic problems of phenomenology”. Dodd’s treatise is divided into four chapters.

Patocka’s Heretical Essays were first published in Czechoslovakia in 1975. The essays display a unique phenomenological interpretation of Western history. In the first essay, Patocka explains his project as being based on a phenomenology of “work, production, action, and creation”. Following Heidegger’s phenomenology, Patocka accepts concealment of being and the distinction of ontic and ontological phenomena. However, Patocka departs from Heidegger by emphasizing the historical dependencies of being. Initially, people were natural. They worked to survive without using their ability to (...) problematize. The transition to historical being is marked by the conception of divine life. This life is not marred by work, pain, birth, and death. Human life is distinct from divine life though there is resemblance through the eternal character of the human community by means of generative continuity. This idea presupposes a questioning that puts humankind on the journey of history. (shrink)

Logic and Time deals with Husserl’s response to “psychologism” in chapter 1. Chapter 2 explores the difference between Husserl’s and Descartes’s understanding of meaning. Chapter 3 discusses Husserl’s categorization of time and its importance for consciousness. Throughout the book Michalski describes Husserl’s philosophical development with regard to the discussed themes. Logic and Time concludes with a short Postscript stating the inclusion of historicity by the late Husserl.

The book explores Hegel’s epistemology and philosophy of mind, primarily using Hegel’s Encyclopedia and his Logics.

Entre Nous is the English translation of a collection of essays by Levinas that were first published in 1991. The twenty essays themselves were written in the time period of 1951 to 1988. The common theme throughout the book is Levinas’s application of his ethics of otherness where responsibility in the face of the other precedes ontology.

Structure and Diversity deals with Scheler’s writings highlighting his arguments against relativism, his ethics, his philosophy of religion, the late Scheler’s adoption of Buddhism, and his social-political philosophy. Kelly argues that Scheler is influenced by Husserl in his conviction of the realm of essences that is revealed through “phenomenologically reduced cognitive acts”. Both philosophers apply the “natural standpoint.” However, Scheler argues to go beyond Husserl’s phenomenology of objects by means of his account of “structural and material essences that condition human (...) consciousness”. Consciousness is necessarily individual and situated within a “milieu.” Phenomenology can use perceptions to elucidate “meaning-elements” that form a unified realm of essence. (shrink)

Truth and Singularity discusses works of poststructuralism and phenomenology in order to establish a middle ground for relativism and universalism. The book consists of an introduction, three sections, each containing 4 chapters, and a conclusion. The first section is entitled “Truth and Finitude.” In chapter 1 Heidegger’s Being and Time establishes the inescapable embeddedness of authentic Dasein in the “they.” Authenticity is characterized by aletheia. In chapter 2 Visker compares Foucault with Heidegger. He claims that Heidegger is distinguished from Foucault (...) by the ethos accompanying aletheia. Heidegger’s aletheia uncovers a Dasein that is situated in the mystery of being. The ethos of aletheia refers to a willingness to confront this mystery. Chapter 3 assesses Habermas’s criticism of Foucault and Heidegger. Accordingly, Habermas’s pragmatism considers Foucault and Heidegger as framework relativists because both philosophers do not base validity on knowing. Visker contends that Habermas insists on a universal validity within horizons of meaning. This is contrasted with Foucault’s and Heidegger’s attempt to accept a finite truth due to being’s finitude necessitating circumspective concern for Dasein. Visker criticizes Habermas to neglect the need for an ethics regulating discourse and to neglect the subject in favor of intersubjectivity. In chapter 4 Visker argues that Merleau-Ponty’s “raw being” stands for a singularity that cannot be separated from its world. This acknowledgment of mineness calls for ethical considerations. (shrink)

The Body contains excerpts of mainly Continental philosophers contemplating the body. The texts are characterized by envisioning the body to be more than a Cartesian thing that can be measured in terms of space and time. The book is divided into three parts. Each part displays the texts from important and often historical scholars as well as contemporary analyses of these writings. Part 1, entitled “Phenomenological Formulations,” contains texts from Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Mer-leau-Ponty. Part 2, entitled “Psycho- (...) and Sociotropic Genealogical Analyses,” contains texts from Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault. Part 3, entitled “Towards a Semiotics of the Gendered Body,” contains texts by Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. (shrink)

The book explores Sartre’s concept of consciousness. Chapter 1 compares Sartre’s with Descartes’s, Locke’s, and Kant’s definitions of consciousness. Wider then provides for a detailed account of Sartre’s concept in chapter 2. Consequently, this account is exposed to an internal critique in chapter 3 and an external critique in chapter 4. Chapter 5 displays a variety of theories dealing with bodily intentionality. Chapter 6 exploits Sartre’s assertion that the body is the subject of consciousness to overcome shortcomings in his concept (...) of consciousness. (shrink)

Stewart in this book uses essays from well-known Hegel scholars such as Shlomo Avineri, Emil Fackenheim, T. M. Knox, and Henning Ottmann to identify and to correct Hegel myths. Five myths are discussed thoroughly. Part 1 deals with the myth of Hegel justifying the status quo derived from the dictum "was vernünftig ist, das ist wirklich; und was wirklich ist, das ist vernünftig" in the preface of the Philosophy of Right. This allegation does not consider that "according to his [Hegel's] (...) dialectic of culture and spirit, philosophical knowledge must emerge from within the development of actual knowledge and cultural forms, and not as an artificial imposition upon them". (shrink)

Birnbaum explores alterity in Husserl’s phenomenology by analyzing Husserl’s thoughts about the other and about temporality. The study is directed toward explicating Husserl’s phenomenology of the “I” which reveals that the “I’s” structure contains intersubjective influences and a relation to itself as another.

The Language of Hermeneutics is an insightful exercise in hermeneutics. Coltman discusses the seemingly irreconcilable positions of Heidegger and Gadamer. The Language of Hermeneutics ventures into both philosophers’ interpretations of Aristotle and Plato in part 1. Part 2 explores the rationale behind the late Heidegger’s fascination with the work of Friedrich Hölderlin. Coltman compares this rationale with Gadamer’s use of the Hegelian dialectic. In the course of his interpretations, Coltman reveals a surprising closeness of Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s philosophical points of (...) view. (shrink)

This book contains a collection of essays written by Castaeda. With the exception of the previously unpublished chapter 7, the essays were originally published in German, Austrian, and American journals and books in the time period from 1966 to 1990. They explore, with often very detailed arguments, the nature of the I and the structure of consciousness.

Willing and Nothingness contains eight essays by eight scholars explaining and comparing aspects of Nietzsche’s and Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The themes are summarized in Janaway’s introduction. Appended are a translation of Nietzsche’s notes called “On Schopenhauer” from 1868 as well as a list of Nietzsche references to Schopenhauer in Nietzsche’s works. The first essay, written by Janaway, provides for an account of the evaluation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy in Nietzsche’s works. The other essays deal with both philosophers’ views on truth, on art, (...) moral philosophy, the will, optimism and pessimism, the self and materialism. (shrink)