Edmund Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations: Commentary, Interpretations, Discussions

Cover Introduction Introduction and First Cartesian Meditation: Husserl on the Threefold Significance of Descartes’ Meditationes 1. Introduction 2. Preliminary distinctions 2.1. The »motif« and the »content« 2.2. The repetition and variation of the »motif« 2.3. The critique of the »doctrinal content«. 2.4. Insightfulness and tradition 2.5. The »motif« and the »motive« 2.6. The »idea« of science and the »factual« sciences 3. The »everlasting significance.« Descartes and the beginning of philosophy 3.1. On the manifold beginnings of philosophy 3.2. The »first beginning«: the Pre-Socratics 3.3. Towards the »second beginning«: the Sophists 3.4. The »second beginning«: Socrates and Plato 3.5. The »third beginning«: Descartes 3.6. Descartes and the Sophist 4. The »present significance.« Descartes and the crisis of philosophy 4.1. Splinters 4.2. Unity and pseudo-unity 4.3. The Sophist within 4.4. The scientist without 5. The »phenomenological significance.« Descartes and the future of philosophy 5.1. Biographical and structural dependency 5.2. The variation of the first layer: from »private« to »personal ego« 5.3. The variation of the first layer and its way to the »deeper« layer 5.4. The variation of the deeper layer: from »doubt« to »bracketing« 5.5. The variation of the deeper layer: from »pure« to »transcendental« ego 5.6. The variation of the deeper layer: from »sheer« to »inadequate« apodicticity 5.6. The variation of the second layer and its way to the doctrinal critique 5.7. The critique of the doctrine: »substances« and »axioms« 5.8. The critique of the doctrine: »solipsism« 6. Concluding remark. Columbus above the Tartarus—an analogy Second Cartesian Meditation: »Horizon« as a Universal Principle of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology Introduction 1. A broadening of, and deviation from, the Cartesian doctrinal content: The theoretical background of the conceptual network of the horizon 2. The transcendental ego as a field of work: Intentionality, synthesis, horizon a. Intentionality and reflection b. Synthesis. c. Horizon 3. Intentional analysis Conclusion Third Cartesian Meditation: Ontology after Kant 1. Introduction 2. The Bracketing of the Natural Attitude 3. An Inquiry into Existence and Non-Existence 4. Kant’s response to Hume’s circle 5. Husserl’s response to Hume’s circle 6. The limit of ontology Fourth Cartesian Meditation: Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism and the Monad 1. Introduction 2. Preliminary remarks on transcendental idealism 3. The essence of the monad Intermezzo on Ideas I 4. The structure of the monad 5. Systematic remarks on transcendental idealism Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§§ 42–54): Analysis of Otherness and Embodiment 1. Introduction 2. The Problem 3. The Sphere of Ownness 4. Living Bodiliness (Leiblichkeit) 5. Transfer of Sense Fifth Cartesian Meditation (§§ 55–64): The Schema »Unity-Multiplicity« as the (Not-So) Hidden Metaphysics in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations 1. Introduction 2. Unity as a nucleus of presentation (§ 55) 4. The unity of the monad 5. Conclusions: Phenomenology and metaphysics Eugen Fink and the Hegelian Motifs Underlying Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations 1. The sublation of the natural attitude 2. The sublation of the disinterested onlooker 3. Unconscious life and the method of phenomenology Roman Ingarden’s Remarks on the Cartesian Meditations: Context, Main Arguments and Developments 1. Introduction 2. On the historical context of Ingarden’s reading of CM 3. Ingarden on CM and the realism-idealism controversy 4. The problem of the beginning 5. Developments of Ingarden’s reading of CM 6. Conclusion Horizons of Self-Reflection: Remarks on Ludwig Landgrebe’s Critique of Husserl’s Theory of Phenomenological Reflection 1. Landgrebe and the reception of Husserl’s Cartesianism after World War II 2. Landgrebe’s argument in Husserl’s departure from Cartesianism 3. Behind Husserl’s back: Contexts and motivations of Landgrebe’s position 4. Critical assessment of Landgrebe’s interpretation of the role of horizons in his critique of Husserl’s Cartesianism The Influence of the Cartesian Meditations on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas 1. Between objectivity and intersubjectivity: Levinas on the place of the Meditations in Husserl’s work 2. Deduction and dissimulation: The interpretation of the Fifth Meditation 3. Apodicticity and intersubjective reduction: Extending the Cartesian Meditations beyond Husserl’s phenomenology Sharing and Exposure: Merleau-Ponty and The Cartesian Meditations 1. Criticism: Husserl made the problem of the other unsolvable 2. Encountering others: Sharing of the same corporeity and culture 3. Undifferentiated generality vs. appresentation 4. »We must return to the cogito« Conclusion: Sharing and exposure Paul Ricoeur’s Husserlian Heresies: The Case of the Cartesian Meditations 1. Introduction 2. How Cartesian are the Cartesian Meditations? 3. How descriptive is Husserl’s descriptive phenomenology? 4. How egological is Husserl’s egology? 5. Conclusion: Ricoeur and the Husserlian Heresies Jan Patočka on Descartes and Husserl’s Cartesianism 1. Introduction 1.1. Patočka’s stay in Paris and his first encounter with Husserl 1.2. Deepening the Cartesian theme 2. Patočka’s Interpretation of Descartes 2.1. Descartes as the thinker of the total system of the scientific revolution 2.2. Descartes as a cunning destroyer of ancient metaphysics 2.3. Descartes as the founder of psychologized subjectivity 2.4. Descartes and the end of metaphysics through its instrumentalization 3. Patočka’s Critique of Husserl’s Cartesianism 3.1. The Brentanian roots of Husserl’s Cartesianism 3.2 Epochē and reduction 3.3. Aspects of Husserl’s Cartesianism 4. Conclusion Meditations on Purity: Edmund Husserl and Hans Kelsen 1. Where and when 2. »Kantian« meditations: A dispute about science 3. »Cartesian« (and »neo-Kantian«) meditations: Grundnorm and intersubjectivity 4. Kelsen versus Husserl? Remarks on Evidence and Truth in Husserl’s Theory of Justification 0. Introduction 1. Husserl’s theory of justification: The Standard View 1.1 The core thesis 1.2 The corollary thesis 2. Against The Standard View 2.1 Evidence and the truth-connection 2.2 The incompatibility of metaphysical realism and the phenomenological perspective 2.3 An alternative to The Standard View 3. Why evidence justifies belief 4. Conclusion First Philosophy and Ultimate Foundations: Revisiting Husserl’s Cartesian Way 1. An »ancient staging of an ancient theater« 2. Two directions: Begründung and Fundierung 3. Husserl’s two antithetical rational demands 4. The Cartesian Meditations and the so-called »Cartesian way« 5. Geltungsfundierung and Genesisfundierung in the Cartesian Meditations 5. Concluding remarks Self-Othering, Self-Transformation, and Theoretical Freedom: Self-Variation and Husserl’s Phenomenology as Radical Immanent Critique 1. Husserl on self-variation and eidetic variation 2. Reflexion, Ichspaltung, Wiedererfahrung—self-imagining reconsidered 3. Self-variation anew ... Radikale Selbstbesinnung revisited Jean-François Lavigne’s Objection to Phenomenological Idealism: Critical Remarks with the Help of the Cartesian Meditations 1. The powerful work of Jean-François Lavigne 2. The so-called »ontological psychologism« of the Logical Investigations 3. The metaphysical postulates of transcendental phenomenology 4. Absolute affection and transcendence The Distinction between »First« and »Universal« Philosophy in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations: On a Basic Precondition for the Transformation of Philosophy into a Rigorous Science 1. The Cartesian path 2. The basic distinction 3. First philosophy as such 4. Closing remarks: first philosophy and phenomenology From »Second Philosophy« to »Last Philosophy«: Husserl’s Idea of Metaphysics as the Absolute Science of Factual Reality 1. From »First Philosophy« to »Second Philosophy« 2. From »Second Philosophy« to »Last Philosophy« 3. »Last Philosophy« in the Cartesian Meditations