Phenomenology Park: The Landscape of Husserlian Phenomenology

Abstract

Perplexed was I when invited to contribute a paper addressing the “landscape of Husserlian phenomenology.” I had no idea of the intended import of the landscape-metaphor. The issue was further complicated by the fact that the paper was to be part of a collection titled “Horizons of Phenomenology.” “Horizons” I get; it’s a technical term for Husserl, who distinguishes between inner and outer horizons. So, were I to talk about horizons, I would talk about phenomenology’s inner horizons, that is, about the possibilities for further explication of the implications of various, already articulated phenomenological approaches and positions. And I would talk too about phenomenology’s outer horizons, that is, about new areas indicated for phenomenological reflection by already existing analyses, including and especially those areas that bring phenomenology into contact with other philosophical approaches and other disciplines. So, “horizons” I could have dealt with. But “landscape”?

Perplexed was I when invited to contribute a paper addressing the “landscape of Husserlian phenomenology.” I had no idea of the intended import of the landscape-metaphor. The issue was further complicated by the fact that the paper was to be part of a collection titled “Horizons of Phenomenology.” “Horizons” I get; it’s a technical term for Husserl, who distinguishes between inner and outer horizons. So, were I to talk about horizons, I would talk about phenomenology’s inner horizons, that is, about the possibilities for further explication of the implications of various, already articulated phenomenological approaches and positions. And I would talk too about phenomenology’s outer horizons, that is, about new areas indicated for phenomenological reflection by already existing analyses, including and especially those areas that bring phenomenology into contact with other philosophical approaches and other disciplines. So, “horizons” I could have dealt with. But “landscape”?

It so happened that while attending a conference on the University’s Lincoln Center campus, I decided to spend the lunch break in Central Park—one block away from campus. I took a sandwich over to the park, ate while sitting on a park bench, and then walked through the park for the remainder of the break. Suddenly, it hit me: here was this beautiful landscape in the center of New York City that had this host of smaller, named areas within it. And thus was born the idea of Phenomenology Park—a vehicle to present the “lay of the land” in Husserlian phenomenology (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

An artist’s rendition of phenomenology park (Soraya Boza)

I’ll add just three caveats. First, I take it to be the case that the first great Husserlian phenomenologist —after Husserl, of course—was Heidegger. That, given the clear differences between them, sounds a bold claim, but it is clear to me that Heidegger—at least the Heidegger of the 1920s—understood what Husserl was doing and put his own stamp on it rather than simply rejecting it. Second, the philosophers mentioned herein are selected somewhat arbitrarily. I do not intend to give a comprehensive list of philosophers working in Husserlian phenomenology or of positions taken by Husserlian phenomenologists. Third, I am selecting representative thinkers, but all of them are also thinkers who connect their phenomenological reflections to developments in other philosophical approaches. I am selecting, in other words, philosophers—again, by no means all of them—who also expand the outer horizons of Husserlian phenomenology. The selections undoubtedly reflect my interests, but, then again, it’s my park!

So, take a stroll through the park with me, and you’ll discover my somewhat snarky, semi-serious, probably semi-accurate, certainly semi-inaccurate, and very brief survey of the current state of interpreters and interpretations of Husserl’s phenomenology (broadly construed).

You enter the park from the south on a path taking you about 25 yards into the park. It’s a beautiful day, and tourists are streaming into the park, among them many philosophers. In fact, people are coming in droves. Phenomenology Park has become a tourist attraction!

To the left of the path is Brentano Garden. It’s appropriate that it borders the entry path to Phenomenology Park, since Brentano’s descriptive psychology is a forerunner of phenomenology. Brentano reintroduced the scholastic doctrine of intentionality, and he identified intentionality as the mark of the mental. As an empiricist, however, he did not recognize the transcendental dimension of intentionality and, to that extent, fell short of phenomenology. In the gardens, I can see Uriah Kriegel (2018) and Tim Crane (2014), both of whom are indebted to Brentanian ideas, albeit not always the same ideas.

It’s fitting, too, that on the other side of the path is Manchester Meadow, a tribute to Austrian philosophers and members of the Munich Circle that were Husserl’s interlocutors or influenced by Husserl’s early thought but who were ambivalent about, if not opposed to, Husserl’s transcendental turn. Arranged in a circle at the center of the meadow are busts of Bernard Bolzano, Theodor Conrad, Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Johannes Daubert, Moritz Geiger, Roman Ingarden, Anton Marty, Alexius Meinong, Alexander Pfänder, Adolf Reinach, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, and Gerda Walther. Walking in the meadow and viewing the busts are Kevin Mulligan (1990; see also Cesalli and Mulligan 2017), Peter Simons (2014), and Barry Smith (1994)—no surprises there!

At the end of the entry path, you come upon two large statues of—you guessed it!—Husserl and Heidegger. What immediately catches your attention is that the statues do not directly face the entry path. Nor do they face one another, but they don’t have their backs to one another either. Each is turned about 45°—not quite in harmony, but not quite opposed either. It looks like they are simultaneously trying to keep the other in view while appearing to ignore him.

At the north end of the entryway and moving to the left from the statues, there’s a small grassy plain, and I can overhear Charles Siewert explaining phenomenology to someone. Is that John McDowell? McDowell’s Mind and World names the intentional correlation, the main theme of phenomenological investigations, so it’s possible it’s him. Siewert (2007) on consciousness, McDowell (1994) on intentionality—no matter how close to phenomenology, it still ain’t transcendental phenomenology.

Continuing northward, you cross the plain and come to a spot where the terrain slopes down toward a lake. The sudden and sharp contrast between the shore of the lake (there’s a little beach there) and the quickly rising terrain adjacent to the beach could almost remind you a bit of the west coast. Dagfinn Føllesdal, Ron McIntyre and David Woodruff Smith are sharing a picnic on the beach. Of course, you’ll immediately understand that “west coast” here is not a geographic name, even though Føllesdal, McIntyre, and Smith have all taught on the west coast (California). Like Husserl’s use of the term “Europe,” “west coast” and it opposite “east coast” refer to certain ideas, in particular, ideas about how best to understand the Husserlian doctrines of the phenomenological reduction and the structure of intentionality, especially the noema (more on that when we get to the other side of the park).

That’s a Husserlian west coast, but there’s a Heideggerian west coast as well. That accounts for the recent busts of Hubert Dreyfus and John Haugeland placed at one of the entrances to the beach. This part of the beach sees gatherings of folks like Bill Blattner (1999), Taylor Carman (2003), Jeff Malpas (2006, 2012)—I wonder why he’s not landscaping the park!—Mark Wrathall (2006), Steven Crowell (although he’s something of an east-coast infiltrator), Mark Okrent (2019), and Michael Kelly (2016a). It’s not so much that these folks are committed to the same positions as the Husserlian west-coasters down the beach. It’s more that they (again, excepting Crowell) think the Husserlian west-coasters are right about what Husserl did say whereas the east-coasters are correct about what Husserl should have said. (I’ve heard that the Heideggerian west coasters have moved the get-togethers to the east coast!)

Beyond the west coast’s lake, we come to the north end of the park. As you continue across the north end toward the eastern edge of the park, you come to Speakers’ Corner right where you’re forced to turn south. Here your attention is called to expressive experiences of various kinds. Don’t stop now, though; we’ll return later. Just keep forging ahead, and you’ll soon come to the east-coast pond, an area where east-coasters gather to talk about the general structure of intentionality. A quick glance at some of the people here reinforces the idea of “east coast” as a non-geographical term: Robert Sokolowski and John Brough (District of Columbia), John Drummond and David Carr (New York), Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen), Richard Holmes (Ontario), Lenore Langsdorf (Illinois), Steven Crowell (Texas), James Hart (Indiana), Rudolf Bernet (Leuven), and many others as well. No coastline ties those places together! Nevertheless, these folks hang out together at the pond.

What divides the east-coasters and west-coasters is not the middle of the park but a dispute over the status of what Husserl calls the “noema”—what is thought about. West-coasters think that Husserl’s noema is an intensional entity distinct from the intentional (intended) object (Føllesdal, 1969, 1990); Smith & McIntyre, 1984). Consequently, the phenomenological reduction is for the west-coasters a methodological device that transfers our reflective gaze from worldly entities to intensional entities by virtue of which we intend those worldly entities, which might or might not exist. The east-coasters, by contrast, hold that the phenomenological reduction is a change in attitude. In other words, the east-coasters reject the idea that the reduction discloses an entity that is not manifest in ordinary, straightforward experience. The change in attitude is a shift in focus from the object as significant for us to the significance of the object for us. One object, one significance, but a shift of focus from the entity to its meaning as disclosed by subjects with an experiential history, particular interests and concerns, and a particular structure of embodiment—but, nevertheless, with shared traditions (Holmes, 1975; Sokolowski, 1984; Langsdorf, 1984; Bernet, 1989; Drummond, 1990, 2012).

Everyone in the park is also interested in more particular forms of intentionality. Consequently, people, even though partial to a particular part of the park, regularly move to and fro among the different areas. Since it’s in the areas along the path between the lake and the pond that the more particular forms of intentionality get discussed by folks from both coasts, let’s backtrack a bit and see what we find.

In the nord du parc, many conversations tend to revolve around the themes of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. These themes encompass the consciousness of inner-time, self-awareness, the self, the body, empathy, personal identity, we-consciousness, and ultimately, community—all those things that make us the kind of beings we are. The regulars in this area include John Brough (1972, 2008, 2011), Dan Zahavi (1999, 2008, 2014, 2015), Shaun Gallagher (2006, 2017; see also Gallagher and Zahavi 2020), Søren Overgaard (2017a, b; see also Krueger and Overgaard 2012; Overgaard and Michael 2015), Thomas Szanto (2018, 2020; see also Szanto and Krueger 2019; Szanto and Slaby 2020), Steven Crowell (2001, 2013, 2015), Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (2008, 2011, 2013), Sara Heinämaa (2010, 2017), Matthew Ratcliffe (2012), Jakub Čapek (2017, 2019a, b), Joona Taipale (2014, 2015, 2019; see also Taipale and Salice 2015), Rudolf Bernet (1993, 2020), Robert Sokolowski (1999, 2008), John Drummond (2006b, 2021), David Carr (1991, 1999, 2014), Daniel Dahlstrom (2000, 2003; see also Dahlstrom et al. 2015), Nicolas de Warren (2009), James Dodd (1997, 2005), Antonio Calcagno (2007, 2018), David Woodruff Smith (1986, 2005, 2011a), Ed Casey (2004), Hans Bernhard Schmid (2012, 2014a, b, 2018), Klaus Held (1966, 2000, 2007), James Jardine (2014, 2015; see also Jardine and Szanto 2017)), Donn Welton (2012), Sebastian Luft (2011), Hanne Jacobs (2014, 2016, 2021), and Dermot Moran (see Jensen and Moran 2012, Szanto and Moran 2015a, b). Quite a crowd, but this isn’t even a complete list because it’s impossible to talk about intentionality at all without talking about subjectivity and intersubjectivity.

Recent discussions here in the nord du parc have centered on conceptions of empathy, the “we,” and community in Husserl, Edith Stein, Gerda Walther, Max Scheler, and similarly minded thinkers. In such a large group of people as mentioned in the previous paragraph, there are bound to be differences of opinion, but what is striking about the discussions of these issues is that there appears to be a unified research program that continues to develop in cooperative and complementary work.

Heading over to Speakers’ Corner, we find people focusing on language and knowledge claims, on emotions and their expressive character, on action, including moral action, and on religious beliefs and practices. Just about everyone we saw up at nord du parc will turn up here at some time or another as well. With respect to language, however, standing out is the work of Robert Sokolowski (1974, 1978), Lenore Langsdorf (1983; see also Angus and Langsdorf 1992), Andrew Inkpin (2016), and the young upstart Hayden Kee (2018, 2020); with respect to knowledge, the work of Walter Hopp (2009, 2011) comes immediately to mind; and with respect to Husserlian approaches to religion, I think of Anthony Steinbock (2007a, 2012), Crina Gschwandtner (2012, 2015, 2020), and Bruce Benson (2013; see also Benson and Wirzba 2005).

When we turn to emotional expression—more generally, our affective lives—the explosion of work over the last 30 years or so has been enormous. There are fissures in this work. Fundamental is the division between axiological realists and constructivists, that is, the division between early phenomenologists (e.g., Husserl, Stein, Scheler) who believed that values are disclosed in and by intentional feelings and emotions and a later generation of phenomenological constructivists who believe that values are constituted in our exercises of freedom (e.g., Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Beauvoir). Then, among the feeling-axiologists, there is a division on the issue of realism and the relation between intentional feelings and cognition. Schelerians, for example, Anthony Steinbock (1994, 2007b, 2013, 2014; see also Steinbock and Depraz 2018) and Zachary Davis (2005, 2012; see also Davis and Steinbock 2019), are strong realists, claiming that intentional feelings grasp a priori values directly apart from any cognitive basis. The cognition of an object is only the occasion for the feeling’s apprehension of the value and its recognition of the object as a bearer of the value. By contrast, those following Husserl’s suggestions, for example, Íngrid Vendrell Ferran (2006, 2008, 2015a, b, 2018, 2020, 2021, forthcoming), Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl (2009, 2014a, b, 2016), and John Drummond (1995, 2006a, 2010, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021; see also Drummond and Rinofner-Kreidl 2017, Drummond and Timmons 2021) might be called weak realists. They claim that the axiological sense of the object—its value—is grounded in the non-axiological properties of the object. The sense of the object is given in a value-perception—an intentional feeling (or emotion) directed to the object as possessing the axiological attribute and the relevant non-axiological properties. This sense can be “perceptual,” that is, pre-predicative rather than propositional, although some complex emotions, while involving perception, have a propositional sense. Another way to characterize this opposition is to say that the strong realists understand emotions to be responses to the felt value, whereas weak realists apprehend the value (of the particular thing) in a feeling- or emotion-response to the thing’s non-axiological properties that are salient in the light of the subject’s physical constitution, experiential history, interests, and commitments.

The group of phenomenologists working on the emotions is large. Just a few others that I see up here by Speakers’ Corner, in addition to those already mentioned, are Sara Heinämaa (2020), Anne Ozar (2006, 2010, 2013), Sean Kelly (2002), Michael Kelly (2016b, c), and Paul Gyllenhammer (2011). There’s also another group up here, specifically Matthew Ratcliffe (2008, 2009, 2014, 2017) and Jan Slaby (2008, 2017); see also Slaby and Stephan (2008), Slaby et al. (2019), Schmitz et al. (2011), who take a different approach to the emotions. They exploit the Heideggerian discussions of Befindlichkeit (what John Haugeland called “sofindingness”), moods, and emotions and thereby expand the consideration to affectivity or affectedness or disposedness (depending on your translation of Befindlichkeit) in general. This captures the sense of how all these affective experiences are tied to what matters to us and how they encompass the evaluative dimension of our encounters of the world and entities therein.

Since actions express thoughts (perhaps more honestly than words!), Speakers’ Corner also attracts phenomenologists who connect their phenomenological reflections to ethics (and metaethics). Some of these thinkers are ones we’ve already seen in the park, ones who connect their (metaethical) discussions of feelings and emotions as evaluative to discussions of the actions undertaken to achieve the goods valued in our emotional experiences. Among those we’ve already mentioned in the discussion of emotions are Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, John Drummond, Anthony Steinbock, Paul Gyllenhammer, Sara Heinämaa, Anne Ozar, and Michael Kelly. Also contributing to these discussions are Ullrich Melle (1991, 2002, 2007) and Henning Peucker (2012), both of whom, in addition to editing Husserl’s ethical writings, have offered careful commentary on those writings. Jack Reynolds (2013), Janet Donohoe (2004), and James Hart (1992, 2009) have developed ethical views in relation to Husserl’s philosophy. Sophie Loidolt (2012, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2021) has developed ideas from both Husserl and Hannah Arendt, while Steven Crowell (2013, 2015), William Smith (2011b), and Irene McMullin (2018) have addressed the question of moral normativity from a Heideggerian perspective.

We’re back to the east-coast pond. Let’s complete the trip around the perimeter of the park. Wedged between the pond and Manchester Meadow lies a structure with a domed top and skylights that makes me think of a domed observatory with its opening for a telescope. I imagine that the skylights retract at night, and telescopes emerge to explore the night sky. Of course, that would never work in New York with all its ambient light. And alas, in any event the structure is less romantic than that; it just a meeting house, and a group interested in the purely formal side of Husserlian phenomenology meets in there now and then. (They should get out in the sunlight and fresh air!) Arguing the finer points of the interpretations of Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics by Gian-Carlo Rota, Richard Tieszen, and Robert Tragesser are Burt Hopkins (2002, 2011), Stefania Centrone (2010, 2017), Claire Ortiz Hill (2002, 2009, 2016), Dieter Lohmar (2002, 2010, 2011), Mark van Atten (2007, 2010, 2015), and Mirja Hartimo (2006, 2010, 2017).

We’ve been skirting the edges of the park, but all the while I’ve noticed that many folks are heading toward the middle of the park and the well-known Great Lawn where many a concert has been performed. Let’s follow the crowd. Ah, now I see why all those folks were earlier streaming into the park. There, on the Lawn, is an open-air, physically distanced conference whose program promises something to satisfy the interests of all the park-goers. In our covid-times, deprived of live music for so long, I confess I’d prefer an open-air concert.