Phenomenology and Existentialism: An Introduction

✍ Scribed by Reinhardt Grossmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 291
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Professor Grossman’s introduction to the revolutionary work of Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre studies the ideas of their predecessors too, explaining in detail Descartes’s conception of the mind, Brentano’s theory of intentionality, and Kierkegaard’s emphasis on dread, while tracing the debate over existence and essence as far back as Aquinas and Aristotle.

For a full understanding of the existentialists and phenomenologists, we must also understand the problems that they were trying to solve. This book, originally published in 1984, presents clearly how the main concerns of phenomenology and existentialism grew out of tradition.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Phenomenology and Existentialism
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Part I The background
1. Descartes: a new conception of the mind
(1) The traditional distinction between substance, essence and accident
(2) Descartes' distinction between bodies and minds
(3) The problem of causal interaction
(4) The problem of representation by ideas
(5) The distinction between ideas and sensations
(6) The attack on substance: Berkeley
(7) The attack on substance: Leibniz
2. Brentano: the thesis of intentionality
(1) Brentano's distinction between mental and physical phenomena
(2) Kinds, contents, and objects of mental acts
(3) The nature of the intentional nexus
(4) The problem of nonexistent objects
(5) The infinite regress argument against mental acts
(6) The nature of 'unconscious' mental acts
(7) The importance of structures
(8) Four dogmas of Gestalt psychology
3. Kierkegaard: a different conception of man
(1) Man as the rational animal
(2) The importance of being anxious
(3) A Freudian interpretation of Kierkegaard's theses
Part II Edmund Husserl: the problem of knowledge
4. The distinction between particulars and universals
(1) The world of being and the world of becoming
(2) The riddle of the nature of exemplification
(3) Perception versus reflection
5. Husserl's early view on numbers
(1) The historical background
(2) What are numbers?
(3) Husserl's analysis of the concept of number
6. Husserl's distinction between essences and their instances
(1) The Platonic dogma and eidetic intuition
(2) The argument for essences
(3) The objects of perception
7. Husserl's distinction between individuals and their aspects
(1) Aspects and partial bundles
(2) Aspects as properties of sense-impressions
(3) Aspects as spatial parts
(4) Aspects, descriptions, and noemata
(5) The exaltation of consciousness
8. The phenomenological method
(1) The age of method-philosophizing
(2) Eidetic reduction
(3) Phenomenological reduction
(4) Phenomenological reflection
Part III Martin Heidegger: the meaning of being
9. Heidegger's project
(1) The main question of philosophy
(2) The priority of human being
(3) The unity and uniqueness of human beings
(4) Being-in-the-world
10. Modes of being
(1) Heidegger's way of multiplying modes of being
(2) Existence and exemplification
(3) Existence and the categories
(4) Existence and being an object
11. The nature of existence
(1) Existence as a property
(2) Existence as a property of properties
(3) Attempts to define existence
(4) Existence as the substance of the world
(5) Another look at Heidegger's view
Part IV Jean-Paul Sartre: the quest for freedom
12. The structure of mind
(1) Being-in-itself and being-for-itself
(2) The existence of selves
(3) The transcendence of the ego
(4) The constitution of the ego
(5) The accessibility of the ego
(6) Bad faith
13. The origin of nothingness
(1) The nature of negation
(2) The givenness of negation
(3) The nature of nothingness
(4) Being and non-being
(5) Everything and nothing
(6) Questioning being
14. The pliancy of the past
(1) An explication of determinism
(2) Freedom versus determinism
(3) Freedom and reasons for actions
(4) Freedom and original choice
(5) Metaphysical freedom
Index