Mohanty on the Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy

Abstract

J.N. Mohanty has devoted a substantial part of his philosophical career to engaging in dialogues with representatives of various approaches to contemporary philosophical problems. He has done this in order to further an alternative: transcendental philosophy in the form of Husserlian phenomenology. Nowhere is this more evident than in his recent book, The Possibility of Transcendental Philosophy,¹ which contains fifteen papers that were either published or delivered orally during the period 1970–83. In these essays, various types of argument are employed, one of which is best described as a dialectical strategy. Here an encounter between phenomenology and another philosophical position is created and used to draw attention to a “truth” presented by that other approach which phenomenology can neither fully accept nor ignore, but which it must assimilate and transform. The resources for doing this are found to be already present within phenomenology, although perhaps needing to be developed and deployed. The outcome of this dialectic is a contribution to the development of a concept of subjectivity that can serve as the basis of a transcendental philosophy that is viable within the contemporary philosophical setting.