From Dan Zahavi’s Husserl’s Phenomenology, paydirt: The relation between the transcendental subject and the empirical subject is not a relation between two different subjects, but between two different self-apprehensions, a primary and a secondary. The transcendental subject is the subject in its primary constitutive function. The empirical subject is the same subject, but now apprehended … Continue reading Transcendental subject versus psychological subject →

I am finally getting around to reading Husserl’s Ideas. I should have read this long, long ago. He already developed the language I’ve needed to say what I most need to say. One important capability of phenomenology — in my opinion, the most important capability — is this: a phenomenological attitude permits us to port … Continue reading First principles last →

From Tim Morton’s Hyperobjects: The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory spearheaded by Bohr holds that though quantum theory is a powerfully accurate heuristic tool, peering underneath this tool to see what kind of reality might underlie it would be absurd because quantum phenomena are “irreducibly inaccessible to us.” “Powerfully accurate heuristic tool” jumps out of … Continue reading Eureka →

Gadamer, from the foreword to the second edition of Truth and Method: This fundamental methodical approach avoids implying any metaphysical conclusions. In subsequent publications, especially in my research reports “Hermeneutics and Historicism” and “The Phenomenological Movement” (in Philosophical Hermeneutics), I have recorded my acceptance of Kant’s conclusions in the Critique of Pure Reason: I regard … Continue reading More scaffolding →

The essence of morality (in its relationship to phenomenological philosophy) from Levinas’s Totality and Infinity. But the presentation and the development of the notions employed [in Totality and Infinity] owe everything to the phenomenological method. Intentional analysis is the search for the concrete. Notions held under the direct gaze of the thought that defines them … Continue reading There it is →

Your world stands on your immediate experience in the same way that a tree stands on its trunk.  * From Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, 54: What, at bottom, is the whole of modern philosophy doing? Since Descartes – and indeed rather in spite of him than on the basis of his precedent – all … Continue reading Nietzsche on anatta →