PLEASE NOTE this is a sample reading list for the 2015-16
academic year – precise seminar content may change from year to
year.
Weeks 1-5: Husserl
Texts and translations
Husserl’s ideas are scattered across many of his writings. He never produced a comprehensive
presentation of them in a ‘main work’. However, there is now a fairly good collection of extracts
from his writings, which contains much of what he has to say on the issues we shall be concerned
with:
The Essential Husserl, ed. Donn Welton (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999 f.)
I would recommend this as the text you should mostly use for this first part of the module. But
since not everything we shall be discussing is contained in the Welton Reader, I shall also give
references in the reading list below to Husserl’s writings themselves, indicating when the
material I shall be referring to is not contained in the Reader. The following texts by Husserl will
be referred to:
Edmund Husserl: Logical Investigations, trans. J. N. Findlay (London: Routledge, 1973), 2 vols.
(Originally published 1900-1).
Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First
Book (= Ideas I), trans. F. Kersten, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982). (Originally published 1913)
Ideas pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy,
Second Book (= Ideas II), trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989). (Written
1912-15, 1924-8; first published 1952)
On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917), trans. J. B.
Brough (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990). (Originally published 1928).
Experience and Judgement, trans. J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks, (London: Routledge,
1973). (Originally published 1938).
Cartesian Meditations, trans. D. Cairns, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977).
(Originally published, in French translation, 1931).
Lecture/seminar topics:
1. General Introduction. The phenomenological turn in continental European
philosophy. Husserl’s early development of phenomenology as a theory of
intentionality.
Thought and expression (1st LI), senses and objects (1st LI), essences/properties as ideal objects (2 nd
LI), the nature of intentional experiences: act-matter and act-quality (5th LI). Noema/noesis (Ideas I).
Primary Husserl texts:
Logical Investigation 1 (intentionality and
language). LI 2, §§1-4 (ideal objects). LI 5,
§§10-14 and 20-2. Ideas I, §§ 87-90, 93-95,
Reader:
97-98, 128-133 (structure of intentional
experience).
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pp. 26-51 (intentionality and lang.); pp. 282-87
(ideal objects – weak); pp. 86-108 (the
structure of intentional experience)
Selected secondary readings:
Intentionality: Consciousness, Sense and Object
J. J. Drummond, ‘The Structure of Intentionality’, in Donn Welton (ed), The New Husserl
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003)
A. D. Smith, Husserl and the ‘Cartesian Meditations’ (London:Routledge, 2003), esp. pp. 33-60, 6475. (A very good general introduction).
Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003), esp. ch.. 1 (Another good
general introduction)
On intentionality and language:
Peter Simons, ‘Meaning and Language’, in B. Smith and D. W. Smith (eds), The Cambridge
Companion to Husserl (Cambridge, CUP, 1995).
Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena (Evanston, Northwestern UP), esp. chapters 1 and 2.
Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity (Athens, Ohio UP, 2001), chapter 7.
On ideal (universal) objects:
Bernet, Kern, Marbach, An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology, (Evanston: Northwestern UP,
1993), chapter 2.2.
Moreland, J. P., Universals (Chesham, Acumen, 2001). A comprehensive treatment of the problem of
universals, with sympathies for Husserl’s approach.
T.L.S.Sprigge, Facts, Words and Beliefs (London, Routledge, 1970), chapters 2 and 4, (An
independent defence of Husserl’s concept of ideal objects).
2. Husserl’s theory of truth. On method: the phenomenological reduction
‘Authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ thinking: meaning intention and fulfilment (6th LI), Husserl’s concept of
truth as fully adequate meaning fulfilment.
Epochè and the phenomenological reduction. Two interpretations of the reduction. Phenomenology and
its relation to the ‘natural attitude’, to science, and to metaphysics.
Primary Husserl texts:
Logical Investigation 6, §§ 4-12 (meaning
fulfilment) §§37-39 (truth); Ideas I, §§27-32
and 47-75 (method).
Reader:
pp. 52-59, 117-121 (meaning fulfilment);
sections on truth missing; pp.60-65 and 79-85
(method)
Selected secondary readings:
The phenomenological reduction as method
Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern, Eduard Marbach, An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology, (Evanston:
Northwestern UP, 1993), chapter 2.1
J. J. Drummond, Husserlian Intentionality and Non-Foundational Realism: Noema and Object
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), esp. chs. 3 and 6.
Peter Poellner, ‘Consciousness in the World: Husserlian Phenomenology and Externalism, in B. Leiter
and M. Rosen (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 2007), pp. 409461.
Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, chapter 1.
Truth and meaning fulfilment
D. Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth (Cambridge, CUP, 2001), ch. 2.1.
A. D. Smith, Husserl and the ‘Cartesian Meditations’, pp. 158-178.
3. Pre-predicative experience and the genesis of conceptual thought.
The pre-givenness of the world as the ground of all intentional object-constitution (‘passive
synthesis’). Thematic vs. marginal/background consciousness. The concept of the horizon. The
transcendental subject.
Primary Husserl texts:
Experience and Judgement, §§7-32; esp. §§1521 (pre-predicative experience & judgement,
Reader:
H.s later understanding of hyle). Ideas I, §§2728, 35-37; Ideas II, §§ 22-26 (thematic vs pre-
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objective consciousness, the horizon). Ideas I,
§92; Ideas II, §§22-24 (transcendental ego).
(the horizon); 221-233 (horizon and
perception); sections on transcendental ego are
missing.
Sections on pre-predicative
experience/judgement are missing; pp 108-112
Selected Secondary Readings:
Horizons
M. D. Barber, ‘Holism and Horizon: Husserl and McDowell on Non-Conceptual Content’, Husserl
Studies 24 (2008), pp. 79-97.
C. B. Cristensen, ‘Sense, Subject and Horizon’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53
(1993), pp. 749-779.
Geniusas, S., The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Dordrecht, Springer, 2012).
Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness, (Pittsburgh, Duquesne UP, 1964)
Aron Gurwitsch, Marginal Consciousness (Athens, Ohio UP, 1985).
D. Welton, ‘World as Horizon’, in Donn Welton (ed), The New Husserl (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2003)
The transcendental subject
Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity, chapter 8.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, (New York: Octagon, 1972).
4. The subject and its time.
The temporality of consciousness. The ‘ekstatic’ nature of original temporality. Absolute vs. objectified
subjectivity: why a lived experience is not an object
Primary Husserl texts:
On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness
of Internal Time (time consciousness, absolute
subjectivity). Ideas I, §§33-46 (lived
experiences).
Reader:
pp. 186-211 (time consciousness, absolute
subjectivity), pp. 66-79 (lived experiences).
Selected secondary readings:
Dan Zahavi, ‘Brentano and Husserl on Self-Awareness’, in Études Phénoménologiques, 27/28 (1998).
( Chapter 5 of his Self-Awareness and Alterity is a revised version of this essay).
For an alternative reading of Husserl on time:
J.B.Brough, ‘The Emergence of an Absolute Consciousness in Husserl’s Early Writings on TimeConsciousness’, in Man and World 5 (1972).
Peter Poellner, ‘Nonconceptual content, experience and the self’, Journal of Consciousness Studies
10/2, 2003, esp. pp. 45-56 (on absolute subjectivity).
5. The body and the Other.
Primary Husserl texts:
Ideas II, §§18, 35-42 (the subject as essentially
embodied, the lived body vs. the body-object.
Ideas II, §§43-47; Cartesian Meditations, 5th
Meditation (alterity and intersubjectivity).
pp. 175-185 (the embodied subject; lived body
vs. body object), pp. 135-160 (alterity and
intersubjectivity).
Reader:
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Selected secondary readings:
The body
E. Behnke, ‘Husserl’s Contribution to a Phenomenology of the Body in Ideas II’, in T. Nenon & L. Embree
(eds) Issues in Husserl’s ‘Ideas II’ (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996).
J. J. Drummond, ‘On Seeing a Material Thing in Space’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (197980), pp. 19-32.
Peter Poellner, ‘Consciousness in the World: Husserlian Phenomenology and Externalism’, esp. pp. 426-444.
Dan Zahavi, Self-Awareness and Alterity, ch. 6.
Intersubjectivity: The Other
Jan Almäng, Intentionality and Intersubjectivity (Gothenburg: Göteborg University Press, 2007), esp ch. 8 (a
development of Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts).
Natalie Depraz, ‘The Husserlian Theory of Intersubjectivity as Alterology’, in Journal of Consciousness Studies
8, no 5-7 (2001). (Special issue on intersubjectivity).
A. D.Smith, Husserl and the ‘Cartesian Meditation’s, ch. 5.
Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989).
Dan Zahavi, Husserl and Transcendental Intersubjectivity, esp. chapters 1-5.
Weeks 6-10: Early Heidegger
Texts and translations
This part of the module will consist in a detailed study of Heidegger’s main work:
Being and Time, (BT), trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell).
In week 6, we shall also look at Heidegger’s criticism of Husserl’s phenomenology in the 1925 Marburg
lectures, published as: History of the Concept of Time, (HCT), trans. Theodore Kisiel, (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1992).
Lecture/seminar topics:
1. Heidegger’s project
Critique of classical phenomenology (HCT, §§10-13).
The question of being (BT, Introduction I). Methodological preliminaries (BT, Introduction II). The task of an
analysis of human being (Dasein) and the preliminary sketch of an analysis of Dasein as being-in-the-world).
Thematic judgement as a derivative mode of intentionality. (BT, §§ 9-13).
Selected Secondary Reading:
C. Christensen, ‘What Does the (young) Heidegger Mean by the Seinsfrage?, Inquiry 43 (2000)
Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ (Cambridge MA, MIT
Press, 1991), chs. 1 and 2.
Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness (Evanston, Northwestern UP, 1998), esp. ch. 1 and 2.
2. Dasein’s average everydayness as absorption in its world
Coping with ready-to-hand equipment (BT, §§ 15-18).
Being-with others and the ‘Anyone’ (BT, §§25-27).
Selected Secondary Reading:
On ready-to-hand equipment
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, chs. 3 and 4.
Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness (Evanston, Northwestern UP, 1998), esp. ch. 3 (‘The Ego and
Dasein’).
Frederick Olafson, ‘Heidegger a la Wittgenstein or “Coping” with Professor Dreyfus’, Inquiry 37 (1994).
Theodore Schatzki ‘Coping with Others with Folk Psychology’ in M. Wrathall and J. Malpas (eds) Heidegger,
Coping and Cognitive Science (Cambridge MA, MIT Press 2000).
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Being-With and das Man
Taylor Carman, ‘On Being Social: A Reply to Olafson’, Inquiry 37, 1994
Stephen Crowell, ‘Locating the First Person in Being and Time’, Inquiry 44 (2001)
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, ch. 8.
Frederick Olafson Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics: A Study of Mitsein (Cambridge, CUP 1998).
3. The structure of being-in as care
The three moments of being-in(-the world):
Affectivity (thrownness), Understanding (projection), Falling (immersion).
(BT, §§ 28-38).
Selected secondary reading:
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, chapters 10-14.
William Blattner, Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism (Cambridge: CUP, 1999), ch. 1.
4. Authenticity, conscience, and death
The privileged attunement of anxiety (BT, § 40).
Dasein’s finitude: death and the call of conscience (BT, §§ 46-60)
Selected secondary reading:
William Blattner, ‘The Concept of Death in Being and Time’ in H. Dreyfus and M. Wrathall (eds), Heidegger
Reexamined (London: Routledge, 2002), vol. 1.
William Bracken, ‘Is there a Puzzle about how Authentic Dasein can Act?’, Inquiry 48 (2005).
Taylor Carman, ‘Must we be Inauthentic?’, in M. Wrathall and J. Malpas, Heidegger, Authenticity and
Modernity (Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 2000). (Also other essays in this volume).
C. Guignon, ‘Authenticity, Moral Values and Psychotherapy’ in C. Guignon (ed.) The Cambridge Companion
to Heidegger (Cambridge, CUP, 1993).
Beatrice Han-Pile, ‘Freedom and the Choice to Choose Oneself in Being and Time’, in Mark Wrathall (ed), The
Cambridge Companion to Heidegger’s Being and Time (CUP, 2013).
Denis McManus (ed), Heidegger, Authenticity and the Self (Routledge, 2015).
Ernst Tugendhat, ‘Heidegger on the Relation of Oneself to Oneself: Choosing Oneself’ in H. Dreyfus and M.
Wrathall (eds), Heidegger Reexamined (London: Routledge, 2002), vol. 1.
5. Truth and the temporal interpretation of the care structure.
On truth (BT, §§43-44, 60).
The temporality of care (BT, §§ 67-69).
Selected secondary reading:
Truth
Taylor Carman, Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse and Authenticity in ‘Being and Time’
(Cambridge, CUP 2003), ch. 5.
Daniel Dahlstrom, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth (Cambridge, CUP 2001), chs. 4 and 5.
M. Wrathall, ‘Heidegger and Truth as Correspondence’ in H. Dreyfus and M. Wrathall (eds), Heidegger
Reexamined (London: Routledge, 2002), vol. 2.
Time and original temporality
William Blattner, Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism, chs. 2-5.
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