Continental Philosophy

JBSP: Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

Volume 40 – No 2 – May 2009

Husserl’s Lectures on Internal Time-Consciousness

Including the following articles:

RUDOLF BERNET

Husserl’s Early Time-Analysis in Historical Context

NICOLAS DE WARREN

Time and the Double-Life of Subjectivity:
On Rudolf Bernet’s ‘Introduction’ to Husserl’s Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness

LANEI M. RODEMEYER

How do we Imagine the Past?

Reconsidering Retention and Recollection in
Husserl’s Phenomenology of Inner Time-Consciousness

GINA ZAVOTA

The Importance of Number in Husserl’s
Early Theory of Time-Constitution

ALIA AL-SAJI

An Absence that counts in the World:
Merleau-Ponty’s Later Philosophy of Time in Light of Bernet’s ‘Einleitung’

Many of the philosophers commonly described as “existentialist” have made original and decisive contributions to aesthetic thinking. In most cases, a substantial involvement in artistic practice (as novelists, playwrights or musicians) nourished their thinking on aesthetic experience. This is true already of two of the major philosophers who inspired 20^th century existentialism: Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. For reasons of space, however, this entry is restricted to 20^th century thinkers who at one point or another accepted the tag “existentialist” as an accurate characterisation of their thinking, and who have made the most significant contributions to aesthetics: Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre.

The rest

TOC (open access)

La notion de Weltanschauung : généalogie d’un concept et d’un processus
ÉLODIE BOUBLIL
Inter et Inter: A Report on the Metamorphosis of an Actress
ISOBEL BOWDITCH
Spirit and/or Flesh: Merleau-Ponty’s Encounter with Hegel
DAVID STOREY
Les objets intentionnels – à la frontière entre les actes et le monde
MARIA GYEMANT
Est-il possible de dire l’éthique de la proximité? Contribution au dossier Kierkegaard – Levinas
DOMINIC DESROCHES
The “Inversions” of Intentionality in Levinas and the Later Heidegger
ADAM KONOPKA

Lucid and rigorous in equal measure, Watkin’s Phenomenology and Deconstruction is both a timely intervention and a critical introduction to a vital current in contemporary European thought. It is also an essential reconfiguration of the intellectual landscape as concerns phenomenology, giving us back the bodies we need, but stranger and richer. –Prof. Patrick ffrench, Department of French, King’s College, London

Description
Phenomenology or Deconstruction? challenges traditional understandings of the relationship between phenomenology and deconstruction through new readings of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Paul Ricoeur and Jean-Luc Nancy. A constant dialogue with Jacques Derrida’s engagement with phenomenological themes provides the impetus to establishing a new understanding of ‘being’ and ‘presence’ that exposes significant blindspots inherent in traditional readings of both phenomenology and deconstruction. In reproducing neither a stock phenomenological reaction to deconstruction nor the routine deconstructive reading of phenomenology, Christopher Watkin provides a fresh assessment of the possibilities for the future of phenomenology, along with a new reading of the deconstructive legacy. Through detailed studies of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur and Nancy, he shows how a phenomenological tradition much wider and richer than Husserlian or Heideggerean thought alone can take account of Derrida’s critique of ontology and yet still hold a commitment to the ontological.This new reading of being and presence fundamentally re-draws our understanding of the relation of deconstruction and phenomenology, and provides the first sustained discussion of the possibilities and problems for any future ‘deconstructive phenomenology’.

Christopher Watkin is a Junior Research Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is currently working on atheism and the death of God in Nancy, Badiou, Zizek and Meillassoux.

Link

2008 is the centenary of the birth of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He was a friend of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and a man who wanted to get philosophy back to its basics and the physical reality of the lived body. This week, we pay tribute to his work and his influence on modern cognitive science.

Audio file

Edited by Francois Raffoul and David Pettigrew, French Interpretations of Heidegger: An Exceptional Reception

From the publisher’s site:

French Interpretations of Heidegger undertakes a philosophical engagement with the work of the most significant and creative figures involved in the reception of Heidegger in France. The essays address those thinkers who have been influenced by Heidegger’s thought and have interpreted it in remarkable ways, including Levinas, Beaufret, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, Irigaray, Zarader, Greisch, and Dastur. The volume explores the extraordinary impact that Heidegger’s thought has had on contemporary French philosophy, including such movements as existentialism, deconstruction, feminist theory, post-structuralism, and hermeneutics, and illustrates its impact on the American continental scene as well.

Click here for Table of Contents

A review of Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-ponty (Re-Reading the Canon)

Link to the review

Recent articles in Reset:

The Primacy of Perception in the era of communication

A “post-secular” society – What does that mean?, by Habermas

On the Public Spehere, Deliberation, Journalism and Dignity, an interview with Benhabib

The International Merleau-Ponty Circle Conference, 2008: Time, Memory and the Self: Remembering Merleau-Ponty at 100, 18-20 September 2008, Ryerson University, Toronto [preliminary program]

*********************************************

TIME, MEMORY, SELF:

REMEMBERING MERLEAU-PONTY AT 100

www.trentu.ca/philosophy/mpc2008

33^rd Annual Conference of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle;

Centenary Celebration of Merleau-Ponty

Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada

September 18-20, 2008

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Elizabeth Behnke  (Study Project for Phenomenology of the Body, USA)

Edward Casey  (Stony Brook University, USA)

Bernhard Waldenfels  (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany)

INVITED SPEAKERS:

Veronique Foti  (Pennsylvania State University, USA)

Leonard Lawlor  (Pennsylvania State University, USA)

John O’Neill   (York University, Canada)

John Russon  (University of Guelph, Canada)

Hugh Silverman  (Stony Brook University, USA)

OTHER SPEAKERS:

Susan Bredlau (Northern Arizona Univ., USA); Annette Hilt (Univ. of Heidelberg, Germany); Kirsten Jacobson (Univ. of Maine, USA); Galen Johnson (Univ. of Rhode Island, USA); Emma Jones (Univ. of Oregon, USA); Michael Kelly (Boston College, USA); Don Landes (Stony Brook Univ., USA); Scott Marratto (Univ. of King’s College, Canada); Glen Mazis (Pennsylvania State Univ. Harrisburg, USA); James Mensch (St. Francis Xavier Univ., Canada); Ann Murphy (Fordham Univ., USA); Paul Qualtere-Burcher (Univ. of Oregon, USA); Gayle Salamon (Princeton Univ., USA); Fiona Utley (Univ. of New England, Australia); Gail Weiss (George Washington Univ., USA)

The full program is available at: http://www.trentu.ca/academic/philosophy/mpc2008/MPC2008%20Preliminary%20Program.pdf
Registration is now open (http://www.trentu.ca/academic/philosophy/mpc2008/registration.htm);  please note that the International Merleau-Ponty Circle has no membership fees, and new members are welcome.

To benefit from conference rates for hotels, rooms must be booked before August 17.  See the conference website for more details.  www.trentu.ca/philosophy/mpc2008

A Conference Poster (8.5” x 11”) is available; you are welcome to print and post it:

http://www.trentu.ca/academic/philosophy/mpc2008/MPC2008poster.pdf

Questions? Please contact the conference co-organizers:

Kym Maclaren (Ryerson University) kym.maclaren@ryerson.ca

David Morris (Concordia University) davimorr@alcor.concordia.ca

A review of Reading Merleau-Ponty: On the Phenomenology of Perception

This excellent volume contains most of the papers read at an Anglo-French colloquium on Merleau-Ponty held at the Collège de France in the summer of 2005, plus two additional essays (by Sean Kelly and Mark Wrathall) not presented there. The colloquium itself may have been Anglo-French, but the authors are overwhelmingly Anglo. The book is neither an introduction for beginners wholly unfamiliar with Merleau-Ponty’s thought nor an academic exercise exclusively for specialists. Instead, the collection offers an engaging mixture of textual interpretation and critical argument to those who already have at least a rough sense of what Phenomenology of Perception is all about.

Read the rest of the review

Description of Rethinking Facticity, eds, Francois Raffoul and Eric Sean Nelson

The concept of facticity has undergone crucial transformations over the last century in hermeneutics and phenomenology, but it has not yet received the attention that it warrants. Following a suggestion by Merleau-Ponty that philosophy is not about essences but rather the facticity of existence, prominent philosophers examine the significance of facticity in its historical context and reflect on its contemporary relevance. Focusing on the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, and Fanon, among others, they trace its significance from life-philosophy to contemporary European thought and explore its philosophical implications. The following questions are addressed: What thoughts of experience, of subjectivity, of finitude, of nature, of the body, of racial and sexual difference does facticity provoke? What thinking of language, of history, of birth and death, of our ethical being-in-the-world does it mobilize? Exploring these questions, the contributors offer new interpretations of facticity.

See the publisher’s site for more details, such as the table of contents and the pdf of the introduction.

Derrida’s Dissemination.
Merleau-Ponty’s Le visible and l’invisible
And some Wittgenstein and Jean-Luc Nancy

Click here for part two

MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND RUDOLF CARNAP: RADICAL PHENOMENOLOGY, LOGICAL POSITIVISM, AND THE ROOTS OF THE CONTINENTAL/ANALYTIC DIVIDE — James Luchte. Philosophy

REPRESENTATION AND POIESIS: THE IMAGINATION IN THE LATER HEIDEGGER — John W M Krummel
           
HEIDEGGER'S ETYMOLOGICAL METHOD: DISCOVERING BEING BY RECOVERING THE RICHNESS OF THE WORD — Matthew King

THOUGHTS IN POTENTIALITY: PROVISIONAL REFLECTIONS ON AGAMBEN'S UNDERSTANDING OF POTENTIALITY AND ITS RELEVANCE FOR THEOLOGY AND POLITICS — Alberto Bertozzi.       

A CRITIQUE OF SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR'S EXISTENTIAL ETHICS — Matthew Braddock

TWO NOTIONS OF OBJECTIFICATION — Iddo Landau.

COMMITTED PERCEPTION: MERLEAU-PONTY, CARROLL, AND IRANIAN CINEMA — Farhang Erfani

ON GIVING HEGEL HIS DUE: THE "END OF HISTORY" AND THE HEGELIAN ROOTS OF POSTMODERN THOUGHT — Jere O'Neill Surber

INNOCENCE, PERVERSION, AND ABU GHRAIB — Kelly Oliver

"OURS IS NOT A TERRIBLE SITUATION" — Alain Badiou, Simon Critchley

The 33rd Annual Conference of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle, marking the centenary of Merleau-Ponty’s birth, will take place at Ryerson University, Toronto, September 18—20, 2008. The topic is “Time, Memory and the Self: Remembering Merleau-Ponty at 100.” Keynote speakers are Bernhard Waldenfels, Edward S. Casey, and Elizabeth Behnke.

In addition to papers on the topics of time, memory and the self, we would be interested in papers, appropriate to this centenary occasion, that critically appraise Merleau-Ponty’s significance or reception in various areas of philosophy or related disciplines. But papers on any area of current research in Merleau-Ponty studies will also be considered for inclusion in the program. We may also consider including one or two panels, appropriate to the centenary occasion, geared to critical appraisal of Merleau-Ponty’s significance or reception.

Papers: Submit completed papers (maximum 4,000 words/30 minutes reading time) with 100-150 word abstracts. The conference features the annual M. C. Dillon Memorial Lecture, an honor and monetary award for the best graduate student submission. Graduate students who wish to be considered for the Dillon award should indicate this in their cover letter.

Panel proposals: Submit a panel title, a proposal of 500 words for the panel as a whole, and, for each paper in the panel, either a) a complete paper or b) long abstract (minimum 750 words) and CV of the participant. Also include a short (100-150 word) abstract for each paper in the panel. Panels would be scheduled for 90 minute slots, with either two 30 minute papers, three 20 minute papers, or four 15 minute papers.

Submit materials to the address below. Submissions by email attachment (in RTF or PDF) are preferred. Hardcopy must be submitted in triplicate.

Deadline for submissions: March 17th 2008

Kym Maclaren and David Morris
Merleau-Ponty Circle Conference
Department of Philosophy, Ryerson University
350 Victoria Street, Toronto, Ontario
CANADA M5B 2K3
mpc2008@trentu.ca

Further information & updates: www.trentu.ca/philosophy/mpc2008

Kevin Winters points out that Sean Kelley is working on a new translation of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. The “Preface: is out on his blog. Here is the link.

Cross X Forum has posted some etexts: Derrida’s Ear of the Other, MP’s Phenomenology of Perception, and Deleuze’s Dualism, Monism and Multiplicities.

I have not checked them out but the poster on the forum warns that they are large files. Update: I am told that this is not the newest edition of the Phenomenology of Perception.

Russ Ford reviews Len Lawler’s Thinking Through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question

This is not merely a good book, it is a necessary one, for the following reasons. First, it provides a detailed and persuasive account of the connection between the French philosophy of the 1960s and the phenomenological tradition that begins with Husserl and continues in the work of Merleau-Ponty. Second, in making this connection clear Lawlor is able to argue that rather than constituting a confusion or abandonment of the philosophical tradition, the philosophies of Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault, when read against the backdrop of Merleau-Ponty, constitute new trajectories for what appears as the decisive problem of twentieth-century philosophy: the question of the transcendental reduction. Third, the identification of the reduction as a question fosters a recognition of the necessity of the change in style that so strongly characterizes postwar French philosophy. This is a change demanded by the transformation of the question of a proper description of the phenomenological reduction into a questioning of the very philosophical program that generates such a question. Thus, Lawlor’s book argues pointedly for the necessity of an engagement with the work of the French philosophers of the sixties insofar as they constitute not an exception to but a furthering of the philosophical project of classical phenomenology.

The crux of Lawlor’s argument is the centrality of the phenomenological reduction for the direction of philosophical inquiry in the twentieth century. As formulated by Husserl in Ideas I, the phenomenological reduction, or epoche, is a methodological step that exposes transcendental subjectivity in the midst of the immanent world that it grounds. Heidegger’s ontology, insofar as it can be read as a development and enrichment of Husserl’s phenomenology, implicitly challenges the latter insofar as it presents the interrelationship of subjectivity and the world as a question. The subtitle of Lawlor’s book indicates the importance that Heidegger’s questioning ontology has for the French philosophers of the sixties, as well as the peculiar “refraction” that occurs through the work of Eugen Fink and Merleau-Ponty. Fink’s 1939 essay on Husserl—a pivotal essay for Lawlor, both in this book and in his Derrida and Husserl—contests the purity of the transcendental subjectivity exposed by the reduction and simultaneously emphasizes the impossibility of merely asserting an unproblematic correspondence between this subjectivity and the world (and even its worldly self, as Lawlor emphasizes in his discussion of the conception of the unconscious and its impact on classical phenomenology in the second of the essays in his book, “The Chiasm and the Fold”). Along with the work of Heidegger and Fink, Merleau-Ponty’s later ontological work is read by Lawlor as the persistence of the phenomenological breakthrough that followed the formulation of the reduction as the pervading question of twentieth-century philosophy. “The Being of the Question” that provides the subtitle for Lawlor’s book is the reduction conceived as a problematic dissimilarity between pure subjectivity and the world, and it is this dissimilarity, “figured” in Merleau-Ponty’s chiasm, that provides what Lawlor calls the “point of diffraction” for the philosophies of Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault.

The rest

Affective Proprioception — Jonathan Cole & Barbara Montero

Controlling Gaze, Chess Play and Seduction in Dance: Phenomenological Analysis of the Natural Attitude of the Body in Modern Ballroom Dance — Gediminis Karoblis

To Peform the Layered Body–A Short Exploration of the Body in Performance — Helena De Preester

Situated Cognition, Dynamic Systems, and Art: On Artistic Creativity and Aesthetic Experience — Ingar Brinck

Situating Situatedness through Æffect and the Architectural Body of Arakawa and Gins – Jondi Keane

The Uncanny Body: From Medical to Aesthetic Abnormality — Alexander Kozin

Pre-Reflective Self-Consciousness: On Being Bodily in the World — Dorothée Legrand

Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenological Itinerary From Body Schema to Situated Knowledge: On How We Are and How We Are Not to "Sing the World" — Stephen H. Watson

On Naturally Embodied Cyborgs: Identities, Metaphors, and Models – Evan Selinger and Timothy Engström

Negotiating Embodiment: A Reply to Selinger and Engström — Andy Clark

Disembodied Consciousness and the Transcendence of the Limitations of the Biological Body — Rob Harle

A Situated or a Metaphysical Body? Problematics of Body as Mediation or a Site of Inscription — Andrew R. Rawnsley