CROWELL, S. is There a Phenomenological Research Program. Synthese. 2002!

STEVEN CROWELL

IS THERE A PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH PROGRAM?

1. PHENOMENOLOGY BETWEEN ANALYTIC AND CONTINENTAL

PHILOSOPHY

Writing in 1945 Maurice Merleau-Ponty asked, “What is phenomeno-logy?” and observed that it “may seem strange that this question has stillto be asked half a century after the first works of Husserl” (Merleau-Ponty1962, vii). One hundred years after the publication of Husserl’s LogischeUntersuchungen the question has a different ring to it. In 1945, in Paris, toask what phenomenology is was to ask about the undisputed fons et origoof the leading philosophical currents of the time, and thus the questionhad much the same anxious undertone that Michael Dummett’s questionabout analytic philosophy had, some fifty years later, in the philosophicalmilieu of Oxford (Dummett 1993). Today, though, the question is likely tobe asked only by an undergraduate seeking a definition that will obviatethe need to read, or by a non-philosopher making the phenomenologistuncomfortable at a social gathering. Among those who profess Continentalphilosophy, some answer to the question will generally be taken for grantedas obvious, while among professors of analytic philosophy there reigns awidespread indifference to the answer. Either way, the question does notget asked. This situation is regrettable, but the interesting circumstance thattwo books bearing the title Introduction to Phenomenology were publishedin 2000 suggests that it may be changing. Perhaps the complacency thathas lately surrounded the topic of phenomenology in both Continental andanalytic circles may be giving way to an interest in taking a fresh look at aphilosophical approach that has connections to both.

These two Introductions could not be more different. Dermot Moranpresents detailed accounts of major phenomenological thinkers on a scalethat has not been attempted since Herbert Spiegelberg’s The Phenomen-ological Movement, while Robert Sokolowski’s far shorter work consignsreference to individual philosophers to an appendix and proceeds topically.Moran offers a developmental account of phenomenology as “the story

Synthese 131: 419–444, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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of deviations from Husserl”, expertly laying out the biographical and his-torical relationships, as well as the philosophical conflicts. Sokolowski,in contrast, makes no reference to biography and history, concisely amal-gamating founding ideas and defensible “deviations” into a unified pictureof what phenomenology is. Thus where Moran for the most part adoptsthe stance of impartial historian, writing about disputes in phenomen-ology without taking sides in them, Sokolowski’s writing exemplifiesphenomenology by defending a distinctive position within it. Both booksare beautifully written, both are crafted to be accessible to those trainedin analytic philosophy, both are deeply philosophically informed. Andbecause their different excellences complement one another, when takentogether they provide the sort of introduction to phenomenology that thetimes demand.

And yet, their appearance brings out an ambiguity that was alreadypresent in Merleau-Ponty’s own answer to the question and that continuesto grumble in many of today’s philosophical discontents. For on the onehand, confronting the diversity of what passed under the heading “phe-nomenology” in 1945, and looking to historical precursors, Merleau-Pontywas moved to suggest that “phenomenology can be practiced and identifiedas a manner or style of thinking . . . before arriving at complete awarenessof itself as a philosophy”; yet, on the other hand, this very phenomeno-logy is said to be “accessible only through a phenomenological method”(Merleau-Ponty 1962, viii). The first observation suggests a loose tradition,a set of practices with family resemblances to one another, a cluster of re-latively independent voices, while the latter suggests something different:an orientation toward a common set of issues defined by commitment to arelatively explicit protocol; a mentality willing to limit itself to what canbe pursued methodologically and to leave alone all that cannot be; in short,something like a research program. There is little doubt that phenomeno-logy is a “manner or style of thinking”, but is there a phenomenologicalresearch program? This is the question I shall pose to our two Introduc-tions, since it seems to me that the answer is of some consequence forunderstanding the options facing philosophy in the twenty-first century.

Why does this question matter? One reason concerns the relationbetween phenomenology and analytic philosophy. Though few wouldagree with his account in all details, it seems that Michael Dummett’s viewof this relation is widely shared: because it was able to make the “linguisticturn”, analytic philosophy could establish itself as a viable program ofresearch into meaning; because it was unable to make the linguistic turn,phenomenology could not. By adhering to its “twin axioms” – “the belief,first, that a philosophical account of thought can be attained through a

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philosophical account of language, and, secondly, that a comprehensiveaccount can only be so attained” (Dummett 1993, 4) – analytic philosophycould get a grip on the non-psychological domain of “thought”, otherwiseunavailable for reasoned inquiry. Phenomenology, by contrast, followedHusserl in the generalization of the notion of Sinn from linguistic acts toall intentional acts – for instance, perception – and could not, therefore,take the linguistic turn, since “language can play no special part in thestudy and description of these non-linguistic animators of non-linguisticmental acts” (Dummett 1993, 27). Though Dummett does not quite sayso, his criticisms of Gareth Evans suggest that failure to take the linguisticturn condemns phenomenology to being a mere “tradition” – whose practi-tioners “[adopt] a certain philosophical style and [appeal] to certain writersrather than to certain others” – and not a research program (Dummett 1993,4–5).1 It is clear that Husserl would not have been pleased by such anassessment. But if, on the contrary, it were possible to identify somethinglike a phenomenological research program, might it not have implicationsfor all those “excommunicated” analytic philosophers (such as Evans, JohnMcDowell, or Christopher Peacocke) for whom reflection on thought, oreven perception, independent of “linguistic expression”, has a central rolein their theories?

The question matters for another reason as well, this one arising withinContinental philosophy. Of late there has been a flurry of writing de-voted to telling the story of this hybrid genre, the narrative impulsehere, as in the case of analytic philosophy, responding to anxieties aboutidentity.2 Despite their many differences, these stories largely turn on howphenomenology is understood and how its impact on twentieth-centuryEuropean thought is assessed. Though extensive review of this literaturewould take us too far afield, a glance at some of the issues will show whatis at stake in our question.

One issue over which the narratives differ concerns the historical scopeof the term “Continental” philosophy. Some writers – for instance, McNeilland Feldman, Critchley, Kearney, and West – stress a nineteenth-centurygenealogy. In West’s terms, Continental philosophy is “the outcome of aseries of critical responses to dominant currents of modern western andEnlightenment philosophy” (West 1996, vii) – and to Kant in particular –such that the names of Schelling, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzscheloom large. In these narratives the question of whether phenomenology isa viable research program is rather incidental to the identity of Continentalphilosophy. Some may acknowledge that “the phenomenological move-ment . . . would radically transform and revitalize Continental philosophy”(Kearney and Rainwater 1996, 3), but it is no more central to its identity

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than is structuralism, for example. This approach can produce queer ana-chronisms, however – for instance, the claim that “Kant’s philosophy maybe said to be the point at which so-called ‘Continental’ thought beginsto diverge from Anglo-American analytic philosophy” (McNeill and Feld-man 1998, 1), or that “it is with and after Hegel that it begins to make senseto speak of Continental and analytic” (West 1996, 3). Hence, a second setof writers – including Embree et al., Ihde, and May – locates the core ofContinental philosophy’s identity in the twentieth-century. The term itselfemerged in the United States in the 1970s as a way to identify the growingnumber of practitioners of a diverse cluster of contemporary philosophicalstyles generally arising in Europe – phenomenology, existentialism, her-meneutics, critical theory, deconstruction, and so on.3 And for this secondgroup of writers, what holds Continental philosophy together lies in therelation, however critical, of all these various movements to Husserl’s phe-nomenology. Hence the question of whether phenomenology can be takento be a research program, as Husserl proposed – and if not, why not – iscentral to the identity of Continental philosophy.

A second issue concerns whether the narrative is constructed as “de-velopment and progress” or as “decay and decline”. In the former (notsurprisingly, more common) sort, Husserl’s phenomenology generallyplays the role of a terminus a quo whose liberatory potential must be freedfrom its scientistic prison. Todd May (1997, 18–20) judges Husserl’s pro-ject to be “essentially the same” as Descartes’, and his story emphasizes thedepartures from this project, culminating in the structuralist inversion of it– the “primacy of structure over consciousness” – that “characterizes Con-tinental philosophy today”. Brogan and Risser (2000, 2–3) speak of a “turnfrom pure phenomenology in the direction of hermeneutic phenomeno-logy”, and finally of “a shift from phenomenology to poststructuralism”.Kearney (1994, 1–3) holds that “many concerns of Continental thoughtculminate in a radical anti-foundationalism”, though some, “like Husserl”,find this renunciation of “the metaphysical quest for absolute grounds”regrettable. A corollary of this narrative is a rejection of the very notionof a philosophical research program as “scientistic”. Continental philo-sophy is “more an art than a science” (Kearney 1994, 2). It is a “styleof philosophizing” that proceeds “historically” and works “beyond theperspective or objective of obtaining eternal truths” (McNeill and Feld-man 1998, 2). In its critique of Enlightenment rationality, it is “the distantrelation of those metaphysicians, moralists, and believers so causticallydismissed by Hume, . . . unwilling to abandon the concerns and insightsanimated by these modes of experience” (West 1996, 4). Critchley andSchroeder (1998, 12–13) get to the heart of the matter here: Continental


philosophy recognizes “the complicity between scientific culture . . . andnihilism” and thus seeks to preserve philosophy’s indigenous concern withmeaning.4 The very idea of a philosophical research program – of “normalscience” – is antithetical to philosophy since the latter is essentially crit-ical: “the responsibility of the philosopher . . . is the production of crisis”(Critchley and Schroeder 1998, 12). The philosopher should rather, inKearney’s words, take risks to “say the unsayable” with an “inimitablevoice” (Kearney 1994, 4).

Nevertheless, before moving on to the second sort of narrative it shouldbe noted that even within a field that is largely given over to post-structuralist concerns and issues, the term “phenomenology” can still serveas a marker of legitimation. Why, for instance, has there been such heatgenerated around the question of a “theological turn” in French phenomen-ology – with Dominique Janicaud arguing that philosophizing about the“unapparent”, the “radically other”, and so on, transgresses the boundariesof phenomenology, while Michel Henry, Jean-Luc Marion, or EmmanuelLevinas insist that such inquiries remain “phenomenological”?5 Here itwould seem that a certain authority inheres in phenomenological investig-ation that elevates the “inimitable voice” beyond a mere “style or mannerof inquiry” to something like rigor. No doubt this clinging to the term “phe-nomenology” signifies, in part, the uneasiness that someone who definesphilosophy as revelation or transgression must feel in the confines of anacademic career. But there is more to it than that, as can be seen by con-sidering an example of the second sort of narrative, in which the story isone of decay and decline.

Acknowledging that there are “large and contentious debates about itscore ideas”, Robert D’Amico nevertheless believes that analytic philo-sophy has “remained . . . a philosophical movement, whereas the contin-ental tradition has largely ceased to be one” (p. 253). His reasons for thisjudgment are several, but central is the claim that phenomenology wasnot able to constitute itself into a genuine philosophical research program– what D’Amico calls a “philosophical tradition”. What distinguishes aphilosophical tradition from traditions in general and makes talk of a“research program” plausible here are the normative features D’Amicoattributes to it: First, as a kind of inquiry a philosophical tradition “re-quires constraints. Others must be able to arrive . . . at the same conclusionson these topics in such a way that those conclusions follow, in somefashion . . . from either defended or broadly uncontroversial assumptions”.Otherwise one has merely “a single thinker’s personal vision”. Second,a philosophical tradition “requires an open horizon of issues, problems,and possible clarifications. It cannot consist of only the ‘founding’ texts”.

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Third, it “must also be clear how to go on and do what the ‘founding’ textsdid”. On all counts the promising beginning made by Husserl has beenabandoned, replaced by a Continental “philosophy” whose “intent is to beagainst the possibility of philosophy” – that is, to be free “from the con-straints of necessity, generality, and universality, which, once discredited,allow a thousand flowers to bloom” (p. 254).

In D’Amico’s narrative of decay and decline, then, phenomenologyonce more serves as the terminus a quo, this time for movements thathave abandoned what was distinctively philosophical about it. But forour question it is important to note that the developmental perspective –whether of progress or decline – can be empirically and historically accur-ate enough without thereby demonstrating that the development reflects anecessary consequence of the phenomenological beginning. That (some)post-phenomenological Continental philosophers reject the idea of a philo-sophical research program does not mean that phenomenology must fail tobe one. On the contrary, the fact that serious phenomenological work isbeing done around the world strongly suggests that D’Amico’s pessimisticjudgment on phenomenology (leaving aside the question of Continentalphilosophy) may be an artefact of his narrative perspective.6 It will be use-ful, then, to examine where D’Amico thinks phenomenology went wrong– namely, in the transition from Husserl to Heidegger. This will give us aset of benchmarks for assessing the answers that the Introductions give toour question.

On D’Amico’s account, Husserl’s phenomenology aimed to be a re-search program that would contribute to the “inextinguishable task” ofphilosophy, whose “core” lies in certain metaphysical and epistemologicalquestions (pp. 254, 2–3). Above all, Husserl held that philosophy was anautonomous form of inquiry that could not be superceded by results inother sciences. This is expressed philosophically as a sharp distinction“between what is empirical and what is a matter of a priori necessity”, andphenomenology stands as a counter-current to all movements that blur orreject this distinction – that is, as a counter-current to what Husserl called“naturalism”. Husserl was not content merely to offer arguments against“epistemological naturalism” – a “theory of knowledge masquerading asempirical science” (p. 7). Rather, he sought “a methodology of philosoph-ical research” that, employed in the spirit of communal investigation andmutual criticism, might succeed in clarifying the terrain that epistemolo-gical naturalism approached so obscurely – namely, “intentionality”. OnceHusserl saw through the impasses of Brentano’s approach and recognizedthe importance of meaning (Sinn; later the “noema”), he designed thephenomenological method specifically for its anti-naturalistic exploration.


According to D’Amico that method consists of three central elements.There is, first, an epoche or reduction in which all “theoretical claims,hypothetical explanations, or philosophical special pleading” are to bebracketed in favor of what Husserl calls Evidenz. The grasp of Evidenz,the “seeing” of phenomena as they give themselves from a first-personstance, is the second element in the method (p. 17). Husserl held that anepoche of theories, together with a commitment to unprejudiced evidentialdescription – the principle of phenomenological neutrality or “presup-positionlessness” – could lead to agreement and so adjudicate disputes“in much the way that strictly empirical evidence resolves scientific dis-putes”. Because of its neutrality regarding explanatory hypotheses andits reflective first-person stance, D’Amico labels Husserl’s strategy an“epistemological internalism”, yet he is aware that it is no psychologicalinternalism since the Evidenz of phenomenology does not consist exclus-ively in matters of fact but includes “essences”, or a priori necessities. Thethird central element in phenomenological method is thus the procedurefor grasping these essences. D’Amico objects to Husserl’s designating thisprocedure “eidetic intuition”, or seeing, since it appears to be “pure con-ceptual analysis”, that is, nothing more than grasping “abstract matters ofconceptual and logical necessity” (pp. 15, 17). Be that as it may, on thisbasis phenomenology can have an indirect impact on the philosophicaldisputes about which it otherwise remains neutral, since the necessitiesinvolved are constraints on possibility and thus can demonstrate that “somephilosophical positions [such as naturalism] are epistemologically idle”(pp. 17, 23).

Before moving on to see what becomes of the method in Heidegger’shands, we should note that D’Amico judges that already Husserl’s versionfails to be a distinctive research program. For while Husserl’s claims aboutessential structures of experience may indeed be correct, they do not seemto “require, let alone actually emerge from”, his method; phenomenolo-gical intuition “neither establishes nor defends such conclusions any moresecurely than does ordinary, pedestrian conceptual analysis”. Further, tospeak of “intuition” here is highly misleading, since “to ‘see’ a conclusionas inconsistent or a claim as incoherent is to grasp the reasoning involved”.To invoke intuition has the unsalutary effect of implying that once the es-sences are exhibited in this way “one is thereby absolved from any furtherdefense or argument” (p. 250). Clearly, then, if we are to address this re-jection of phenomenology’s claim to being a viable research program – anassessment that echoes Dummett’s – we will have to consult our Introduc-tions on the question of phenomenology’s account of the relation betweenargument and intuition and ask whether phenomenology’s eidetic method

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is indeed indistinguishable from conceptual analysis.7 First, however, wemust see how Heidegger fits into the story.

As do many commentators, D’Amico construes Heidegger’s embraceof ontology as a betrayal of central elements of Husserl’s research pro-gram. Though he recognizes that Heidegger shared many of Husserl’sconvictions – for instance, that philosophy is nothing psychological orsubjective; that it has to do with the a priori; that it is anti-naturalistic –his way of establishing these points was not phenomenological, accordingto D’Amico, but “metaphysical”. When Heidegger introduced “Dasein” inplace of Husserl’s transcendental ego he broke with the central methodolo-gical tenet of phenomenological neutrality and opted for “simply anotherversion of presuppositional philosophical debate”. According to D’Amico,the feature that Heidegger finds distinctive of Dasein – that it is essentiallycharacterized by “understanding of Being” – is not the result of phenomen-ological analysis but a philosophical postulate (pp. 83, 59). Thus, whilehe sees virtue in Heidegger’s distinction between “ontic” (empirical) and“ontological” (a priori metaphysical) matters, he insists that it is “vastlyunderargued” in Being and Time and is, furthermore, “incompatible withits supposed phenomenological derivation” (pp. 252, 85). For later Con-tinental philosophy, Heidegger’s break with phenomenological neutralitymeant that “what Husserl attacked as the ‘bewitching routine of resurrectedmetaphysics’ would not only replace his dream of philosophy as rigorousscience, but do so under his name” (p. 43).

Ironically, the very same ontological move to Dasein had the effectof opening the door to “epistemological naturalism” as well. This is be-cause Dasein is characterized as “factic” – historical being-in-the-world– rather than as a “transcenental” ego. Though for Heidegger this wasnot a rejection of the a priori, it had the effect of blurring Husserl’s dis-tinction between fact and essence, a blurring that, according to D’Amico,later poststructuralists, textualists, historicists, and hermeneuticists wouldexploit into Continental philosophy’s own version of epistemological nat-uralism. The result was the now-familiar rejection of anything like an“autonomous” form of philosophical inquiry (p. 254).

Finally, Heidegger’s style further exacerbated the rift between the pur-ported method of descriptive seeing and the results obtained. D’Amicofinds no discernable connection between Heidegger’s substantive claimsin Being and Time and the analyses that supposedly yield them (p. 67).8

After Being and Time, therefore, Heidegger supposedly drops this meth-odological pretense altogether and ushers in the current period in which“thought” becomes altogether a matter of “inimitable voice”.


This brief review of D’Amico’s narrative has yielded a framework, anda set of desiderata, for approaching what our two Introductions have to sayabout phenomenology’s claim to being a philosophical research program.How do they frame what has proved to be the crucial transition “from”Husserl “to” Heidegger, from “transcendental” philosophy to “ontology”?Can it be understood as belonging to phenomenology without sacrificingthe elements of phenomenological method (epoche, reflective Evidenz,eidetic intuition) that support its claim to be a research program? Can adifferent story – in which phenomenology is not subordinated to a narrat-ive about Continental philosophy – be told in which it continues to liveup to D’Amico’s desiderata for a research program: that there be genuineconstraints on what can be said, rather than just “personal visions”; thatthere be a common set of problems, not just “founding texts”; and thatthere be a clear method or sense of “how to go on”, normal science and notmerely the “production of crisis”? In Dermot Moran’s Introduction thesequestions are addressed specifically in narrative terms. It thus provides aconvenient place to begin.

2. DERMOT MORAN’S HISTORICIST PHENOMENOLOGY

At the outset of his ambitious book, Moran describes several featuresthat he takes to be characteristic of Husserl’s phenomenology. His ac-count lines up pretty closely with D’Amico’s:9 First, phenomenology isneutral or presuppositionless, that is, it practices an epoche. “In genuinephenomenological viewing, we are not permitted any scientific or philo-sophical hypotheses” (pp. 5, 9, 11). Second, this epoche is in the serviceof a “return to concrete lived human experience in all its richness” – areturn carried out descriptively in reflective, first-person grasp of Evidenzor “originary presentative intuition”: givenness as “the dative element inexperience” (pp. 5, 10–11). Third, it seeks the a priori, or “essences”,through eidetic intuition – a “kind of conceptual clarification” that doesnot examine “the role of concepts in a language” but relies on “self-evidentgivenness of insights in intuition” (p. 9). This implies a field of research– variously identified as “intentionality”, “consciousness”, or “meaning”– that Moran sums up this way: “The manner in which the world comesto appearance in and through human beings. Phenomenology’s conceptionof objectivity-for-subjectivity is arguably its major contribution to con-temporary philosophy” (p. 15). For this reason phenomenology remainsthe most “profound critique of naturalism as a philosophical program”, a“challenge to all third-person attempts to explain consciousness in termsof natural science” (pp. 21, xiv).

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However, if we ask whether these features of Husserl’s phenomenologyare features of phenomenology tout court, the answer we get from Moranis nuanced and highly qualified. Indeed, the very structure of his book – anintroduction to “phenomenology as a way of doing philosophy and . . . anintroduction to the philosophies of some of its most able practitioners”(p. 3) – systematically obscures our view of the question. On the onehand, Moran insists that even if phenomenology is a distinctive “way ofdoing philosophy”, it is “important not to exaggerate . . . the extent to whichphenomenology coheres into an agreed method”. Husserl’s “claims to befounding a new science have not been borne out by subsequent develop-ments in philosophy”. Phenomenology “never came to be a movement inthe sense that Husserl intended” (pp. 3, 189, 21). Hence Moran apparentlybelieves that phenomenology is not a philosophical research program –“Phenomenology cannot be understood simply as a method, a project, aset of tasks; in its historical form it is primarily a set of people” – and forthis reason he structures his book around what this set of people “took tobe the phenomenological programme for the future of philosophy” (pp.xiv, 3).

And yet, what is implied in saying that phenomenology cannot simplybe understood as a method, and that in its historical form it is what phe-nomenologists made of it? This seems to entail something like a normativecore that constitutes phenomenology as a “disciplined practice” and notjust a list of names (p. 14). Indeed, though Moran most often writes asan objective historian (thus making it hard to tell when he is narrating anelement of empirical history or asserting a normatively necessary trans-formation in his own voice), there is a strong normative component in hisconception of phenomenology. This is clear in his selection of figures totreat – for instance, his brilliant inclusion of Hannah Arendt demonstratesthat one need not actually have identified oneself as a phenomenologist inorder to be an “able practitioner” – and it is clearer still in his treatmentof some of these figures. There are definite ahistorical constraints on whatpeople can “take” the phenomenological program to be, as is evident inMoran’s chapters on Sartre and Levinas. Sartre is judged “guilty of empty-ing out the phenomenological method until it is no more than a form ofcreative intuition or artistic insight into the world”, while his ontologyis said to be a “speculative metaphysics of a very traditional kind, thevery kind repudiated by Husserl and Heidegger, and the phenomenologicaltradition generally” (pp. 363, 385). Thus a certain sort of methodologicalseeing, as well as metaphysical neutrality, seem to be normative for anyphenomenology. About Levinas Moran is even more blunt. While Levinascertainly had a role to play in the history of phenomenology, “it is un-


clear how [his] phenomenology of alterity can be a phenomenology at all”(p. 352). As did Janicaud, Moran bases this judgment on the paradoxicalnature of a phenomenology of what cannot “show itself”; it therefore im-plies commitment to some version of the principle of Evidenz and intuitiveself-givenness.

How are the normative and historical aspects of Moran’s approach tobe brought coherently together? There seems to be a kind of phenomeno-logical historicism at work that might be summed up as: “Phenomenologytransformed is still phenomenology”. Phenomenology does seem to be aresearch program, but one whose essential features emerge historicallyand were not present all at once with Husserl. Indeed, Moran definesphenomenology as “an enterprise begun and elaborated by Husserl andthen radically transformed by Heidegger”, appropriately devoting half thebook to these two thinkers (p. 4). We are thus brought back to the relationbetween Husserl and Heidegger, and our question becomes: in Heidegger’sradical transformation of phenomenology, according to Moran, can weidentify (as D’Amico could not) the elements of a continuing philosophicalresearch program – a program to whose normative features Moran himselfoccasionally makes appeal?

According to Moran, when Heidegger takes up the phenomenologicalprogram he rejects “three central facets of Husserl’s phenomenology”:First, against Husserl’s suspicion of world-view philosophy Heideggerargues that “phenomenology must be attentive to historicity or the facti-city of human living”. Second, against Husserl’s emphasis on descrip-tion Heidegger argues that “all description involves interpretation”. Andthird, against Husserl’s “transcendental idealism” Heidegger identifiesphenomenology with ontology. The consequence is that after Husserl,Heidegger “immediately reintroduced the historical and relative into phe-nomenology” (pp. 20–22). But everything depends on how and in whatform the “historical and relative” are reintroduced. For it was preciselyhere, according to D’Amico, that Heidegger opened the door to epistemo-logical naturalism by undermining the sharp phenomenological distinctionbetween fact and essence, the empirical and the a priori. In such a caseit would not be Husserl, as Moran asserts, who “never satisfactorily re-solved” the way in which “fact and essence are entwined in my ownself-relation” (p. 179), but rather Heidegger, since his move from tran-scendental idealism to the “hermeneutics of facticity” would amount toabandoning the only basis upon which the distinction could be maintained.Does Moran provide a view of Heidegger’s turn to the historicity and facti-city of human being that is compatible with his apparently normative viewof the anti-naturalism of phenomenology?

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Like D’Amico, Moran considers Husserl’s transcendental idealism tobe an epistemological “internalism”. In contrast, he takes Heidegger’stransformation to be a move toward “externalism” (p. 193). One way ofunderstanding this is to say that, for Heidegger, it is impossible to clarifymeaning and intentionality without taking the “world” into account. Thiscannot be meant in the sense of a “causal” theory of reference, however, forthis would import “ontic” or empirical explanatory hypotheses into philo-sophy – a move that Heidegger rejects. On Moran’s account, Heidegger’ssort of externalism remains phenomenological because, rather than appeal-ing to anything outside the phenomenological space of appearing (itself nolonger seen as belonging to “consciousness”), it invokes the “fundamental. . . relation between Dasein and Being” (p. 194). The trick, however, is tosay how this notion of “Being” can be given phenomenological sense; oth-erwise its claim to be other than a metaphysical postulate, on the one hand,or a naturalistic explanans, on the other, will evaporate. Unlike D’Amico,Moran is clear why Heidegger’s “Being” is not a metaphysical postulate.Where the tradition conceived being ultimately as an entity, Heidegger seesphenomenology as making inquiry possible “into the manner in which thestructures of Being are revealed through the structures of human exist-ence” (p. 197). Being “belongs” to the phenomenon qua phenomenon;phenomenology is ontology. However, if one asks about the method ofthis inquiry, Moran’s historicist thesis about Heidegger’s transformation ofphenomenology makes it difficult to decide whether the “relation betweenDasein and Being” does not collapse into a non-philosophical empiricismafter all.

On the one hand, Moran recognizes that Heidegger wants to “map outthe transcendental conditions that make human existence (Dasein) pos-sible”, and that he does so on the basis of “the appearing or disclosureof things” (pp. 197, 194). Heidegger thus embraces phenomenology’sprinciple of Evidenz or givenness, as well as its orientation toward theeidetic or a priori. On the other hand, Moran argues that on Heidegger’s“interpretive” transformation of phenomenology there is no “presupposi-tionless” description; rather, the descriptive project is “impossible unless itis situated inside a radically historicized hermeneutics” (pp. 278, 20). Butare these conceptions compatible? Won’t the latter end by rendering theformer otiose in the manner of epistemological naturalism or historicism– showing how all putative a priori structures are nothing but (temporary)historical products?

Moran notes that Heidegger ultimately gave up on the transcendentalproject – abandoning it as a “residue” of both his and the tradition’s theisticpast (pp. 208, 260). But it is not clear whether Moran thinks that Heidegger


also gave up on a phenomenological research program. It seems that hemight hold that view, since he argues that “Husserl’s attempt to achieve es-sential insight eventually became distorted into Heidegger’s gnomic way ofletting meanings appear” (p. 188). But if that is so, what is the difference,in Heidegger, between transforming phenomenology and abandoning it?It is finally hard to say what is implied for phenomenology as a researchprogram when Moran correctly describes the historical situation as onein which, after Being and Time, Heidegger “rejected the straitjacket oftranscendental philosophy”, or when he reports that Heidegger “turned[phenomenology] into anthropology” (pp. 198, 90). If this is not to amountto epistemological naturalism, must we not assume that a path to the “intu-itive” grasp of the a priori is still available after the turn to “interpretation”?And must we not affirm the possibility of a kind of neutrality – an epocheof explanatory theories at least – even if the idea of abandoning all one’sVor-urteile is chimerical?10

That Moran believes that at least a quasi-transcendental claim remainspossible for phenomenology – perhaps essential to its program – is sugges-ted by his treatment of Gadamer. Here too Moran emphasizes Gadamer’sbreak with Husserl, his desire to get at the “event of understanding”without reducing it “to a subjective or epistemological framework”. Nev-ertheless, “as” a phenomenologist Gadamer “is also producing a kind oftranscendental description of the conditions which make understandingpossible, and he is not as far removed from his neo-Kantian and Husserlianheritage as he often claims” (pp. 250, 283). Is this a good thing? Well, iftranscendental philosophy is a straitjacket, then probably not. But Moranis wary of an “excessive” historicism, judging that Gadamer’s “embrace ofhistorical relativism may also be a significant weakness in his philosophy”(p. 286). We are returned to the central question: how did Heidegger rein-troduce “the historical and relative” into phenomenology without runningafoul of this judgment? If Heidegger did radically transform phenomeno-logy, must it nevertheless not retain the core elements that we have seenconstitute it as a research program, elements that tie it to a transcendentalrather than a naturalistic philosophical outlook?

The delicacy of this issue is evident, finally, in Moran’s discussion ofMerleau-Ponty, who has provided the “most original and enduring contri-bution to post-Husserlian phenomenology in France” (p. 391). The key toMerleau-Ponty’s contribution is that his access to Husserl’s unpublishedresearch manuscripts allowed him to see that “Husserl’s researches intotranscendental phenomenology . . . developed side by side with his interestin intersubjectivity and the embodied subject” and that “for Husserl, thesewere complementary modes of access to the one domain of transcendental

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subjectivity and intersubjectivity” (pp. 67, 80). In Merleau-Ponty’s handsthis becomes the quest for what Moran calls the “living bond” betweenconsciousness and world, the unity that precedes their conceptual disso-ciation. But doesn’t this very quest, insisting on the “irreducibility of thereal world”, break with the above-noted complementarity of Husserl’s pro-ject? In fact, in confronting Merleau-Ponty Moran must give up his claimthat phenomenology is anti-naturalistic: Merleau-Ponty’s outlook “may becharacterized as a kind of dialectical naturalism”; it is “naturalistic in that itsees human beings as integrated into the natural order” (p. 403). But does itthen remain phenomenological (especially if it is also dialectical)? Ratherthan untie this knot, Moran shifts terms: phenomenology does not objectto naturalism per se but to “reductive scientism” (p. 433). This may beso, but then, when we are told that “Merleau-Ponty significantly expandedthe scope of phenomenological method and removed it entirely from thedomain of introspection” by reinterpreting “the Husserlian reduction asleading back to the pre-predicative and incarnate wellsprings of our ex-perience back to the Lebenswelt” (p. 419), we can only wonder how thisphenomenology manages to fulfill the desiderata that keep it a philosoph-ical method. Merleau-Ponty’s late work might well seem, to some, to befar along the road to an “artistic intuition” or “personal vision”.

How, then, does Moran’s picture of phenomenology fare againstD’Amico’s charge that it does not constitute a research program? On theobjection that Heidegger fatally opens the door to metaphysics with hisclaim about Dasein’s ontic-ontological distinctiveness, Moran helps ussee that Heidegger’s transformation of phenomenology need not have thisconsequence. Heidegger’s ontology can be metaphysically neutral sincethe question of Being is not distinct from the phenomenological questionof the “appearing” of things; its “externalism” does not exceed the phe-nomenological correlation of objectivity-for-subjectivity. With the chargethat Heidegger opens the door to epistemological naturalism, however,Moran has more difficulty. On the one hand, he holds that Heidegger re-mains anti-naturalistic, as does phenomenology after him. On the otherhand, he allows that the program is transformed in anthropological andhistoricist directions – going so far, with Merleau-Ponty, as to embracea kind of naturalism for phenomenology. In the end it becomes ques-tionable whether Moran is entitled to this view of phenomenology’sessential anti-naturalism, given his critique of transcendental philosophy.Without a clearer account of how the naturalistic version of phenomen-ology can retain apriority it will be hard for Moran to argue, againstD’Amico, that phenomenology does not necessarily devolve into the sortof epistemological naturalism characteristic of post-structuralism.


Finally, it does seem that in spite of his caveats Moran wants to presentphenomenology as a kind of research program. Levinas, Derrida et al.,are held up to standards imposed by a normative conception of the phe-nomenological method. Some, but not all, of their concerns are deemedphenomenological; hence phenomenology must have a perhaps evolving“set of common problems” and not just “founding texts”. And there isapparently a distinctive and communicable sense of “how to go on” ratherthan merely “personal visions”. Nevertheless, Moran’s historical mode ofintroducing phenomenology – particularly the crucial Heideggerian trans-formation – systematically obscures the question of what, specifically,remains essential to this research program. Because the question of therelation between transcendental and ontological phenomenology is treatednarratively, we cannot really understand how, if at all, post-Husserlianphenomenology could be a research program – a distinct and normativeframework for philosophical inquiry – though Moran implies that it is. Toget a clearer answer to that question we turn to our second Introduction.

3. ROBERT SOKOLOWSKI’S ARISTOTELIAN PHENOMENOLOGY

For Moran, the phenomenological movement is “a thoroughly modern-ist outlook”: Husserl attempted to overcome “crude” Cartesianism by “aradical rethinking of the Cartesian project itself” (pp. 3, 16). For RobertSokolowski, in contrast, phenomenology is something that “restores thepossibilities of Ancient philosophy, even while accounting for new di-mensions such as modern science” (pp. 62, 202–203). This differencein estimating the character of phenomenology as a mode of thinking ac-counts for the major difference in the way the two Introductions view theHusserl/Heidegger relation. Moran, like D’Amico, identifies Husserl with“internalism” and emphasizes Heidegger’s embrace of a kind of “extern-alism” – namely, the idea that intentionality cannot be understood on thebasis of what is immanent to consciousness but must take the world intoaccount. If overcoming Cartesianism by more Cartesianism fails, then aradical transformation of phenomenology is required to get the job done:the lesson to be learned from Husserl’s reduction is, as Merleau-Ponty(1962, xiv) put it, “the impossibility of a complete reduction”. For Soko-lowski, however, Husserl’s basic insight is that intentionality is alreadybeyond any internalism: “everything is outside”. Phenomenology “recog-nizes the reality and truth of phenomena” – “being perceived” is nothingmental, but a “way in which things can be. The way things appear is partof the being of things. . . . Things do not just exist, they manifest them-selves as what they are” (pp. 12, 14). This conception of “phenomena”

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leads Sokolowski to suggest – paradoxically, given the way this relationis usually understood, but nevertheless correctly, in my view – that whatmost impressed Heidegger was “the fact that in Husserl the Cartesian ormodern epistemological problem had been dissolved and overcome” (p.216). For the same reason, the Heideggerian move to ontology does notappear as a radical transformation of the phenomenological project but asan elaboration of something implicit in Husserl’s breakthrough.11 If forMoran the move from transcendental phenomenology to ontology repres-ents a decisive swerve in phenomenology, Sokolowski sees transcendentalphenomenology as ontology.

Thus Sokolowski incorporates Heideggerian ontology into the horizonof Husserl’s transcendental program. Does he thereby also succeed inavoiding D’Amico’s twin objections: that Heidegger’s ontological motifopens phenomenology both to dogmatic metaphysics and to epistemo-logical naturalism? We shall approach this question by looking first atwhat Sokolowski holds to be essential to the transcendental program. Itshall appear that while Moran was able to deal adequately with the chargeof metaphysical dogmatism but had difficulty with the re-emergence ofepistemological naturalism, Sokolowski’s firm commitment to transcend-entalism decisively blocks the latter but with its Aristotelian inspirationdoes not fare so well with the former.

That Sokolowski holds phenomenology to be a consistent, viable re-search program is clear. The very structure of the book – not a commenton Husserl, but an introduction on the model of Husserl’s own, showinghow “phenomenology can continue to make an important contribution tocurrent philosophy”, its “intellectual capital . . . far from spent” – testifiesto that, as does his view that “phenomenology’s great strength as a move-ment” is that “it presents to us not only obvious major figures but alsoa wide range of minor writers, those who fill out the possibilities in theniches and corners of the phenomenological style of philosophy” (pp. 2,225). But does Sokolowski endorse the elements of this research programthat we have seen to characterize it? It would appear so. For though theterms he uses are Husserlian in origin, the program they delineate is takennormatively and is not understood as tied to those terms themselves or tothe “philosophy of Husserl” or any other single thinker.12 What, then, is it?

First, phenomenology is defined as “the study of human experience andof the way things present themselves to us in and through such exper-ience” (p. 2), acknowledging its focus on intentionality, or what Morancalled objectivity-for-subjectivity. Second, phenomenological analysis is“description” of the “manifold that is proper to a given kind of object”, incontrast to “causal” explanation (p. 31, 115). Third, this description seeks


necessary truths, or “essences”, and proceeds by “eidetic intuition” (p.183). Fourth, intuitive Evidenz or self-givenness is epistemically primary:Evidenz “is the successful presentation of an intelligible object, . . . ofsomething whose truth becomes manifest in the evidencing itself. . . . It isthe moment when something enters into the space of reasons” (p. 161).Fifth, phenomenology employs an epoche of all scientific and metaphys-ical theories, since in the phenomenological attitude we “suspend all theintentionalities that we are examining. We neutralize them” (p. 48). Andfinally, the phenomenological attitude is reflective, since in it “we make theappearances thematic” and study the “relation between a thing and its ap-pearances” (p. 50). Sokolowski identifies this relation with what Heideggercalled the “ontological difference” – thereby signalling how Heidegger’stalk of “Being” will be given phenomenological sense, in contrast to earliermetaphysical senses.

Given this outline of a research program, can Sokolowski convincinglyaddress the objections that we have seen raised against phenomenology byD’Amico and others?

On the question of whether phenomenology is concerned with a setof common problems rather than simply being a matter of “foundingtexts”, the answer is clear. For Sokolowski phenomenology deals withthe classical problems of philosophy. Its great aim is to “reactivate thephilosophical life in our present circumstances”. It is able to reinvigorateAncient insights and offer a distinctive approach to issues in philosophyof science, language, and mind because “it deals so well with the problemof appearances”. Sokolowski extensively examines three “central contri-butions” of phenomenological analysis: part/whole, identity-in-manifolds,and presence-and-absence. With the exception of the last, which Soko-lowski argues is “original in phenomenology,” these have long pedigreesand wide philosophical implications. Finally, Sokolowski holds that phe-nomenology’s greatest contribution is to the most traditional philosophicalproblem of all: the nature and scope of “reason” (pp. 2–5).

On the question of whether there is a clear sense of “how to go on”Sokolowski provides a nuanced answer. If by “method” is understood any-thing like an algorithm for producing results or a test-procedure that couldcompel agreement, then phenomenology is not a method. The very ideaof method is said to be a “modern prejudice”, arising not from the desirefor truth but for the mastery of truth. In contrast, a philosophical researchprogram like phenomenology “must depend on the habituated mind morethan on method” (pp. 164–165). Nevertheless, this habituation is not ar-bitrary, and its development presupposes another sense of “method” – the

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skillful or expert exercise of a distinct way of “going on” – as in Aristotle’saccount of virtue.

This is the basis of Sokolowski’s response to the third question. Isphenomenological practice subject to constraints on what can be asser-ted, or is it essentially a matter of “personal visions” with no reasonableexpectation that others should come to the same results? For Sokolowski,phenomenological analyses are beholden throughout to the constraint ofEvidenz; phenomenology is nothing but the critical and receptive responseto the way things “show up for us”. Though such a constraint appears tobe “unpredictable and unmasterable” – thus being a disappointment torationalists like D’Amico – it is for Sokolowski that without which thesubsequent concept of proof makes no sense. The rationalist claim that“the only source of truth is proof” – that “the presentation is not enoughto establish truth” (p. 164) – contravenes the essence of reason in whichthe truth of propositions (the correctness that is to be preserved in validarguments) derives from the self-manifestation, or “disclosure”, of thingsthemselves.13 Seeing provides constraints on saying, and others can bebrought, though not compelled, to see. Philosophy is a kind of researchthat can employ, but cannot wholly restrict itself to, argument.

This is further supported by Sokolowski’s account of how phenomeno-logical analysis is governed by the constraint of essential insight or eideticintuition. Essences are achieved by imaginatively varying examples untilimpossible variations are seen, thereby revealing necessary connectionsas a priori limits on the example (p. 184). This is not just a matter ofconceptual analysis – that is, of “linguistic rules that govern our vocab-ulary” – but rather derives “from our experience of objects” (p. 173). Issuch imaginative variation subject to criticism and correction, then, ordoes phenomenology reduce to a series of obiter dicta? Here Sokolowskipoints out that we “correct mistakes in eidetic intuition” by “talking withothers about them” (p. 183). As with experiments in empirical science,phenomenological thought experiments must be reproducible. Hence theneed for phenomenological publications. And just because my communic-ation with others about these insights is not limited proffering proofs, butincludes any way in which I can “lead them to see” what I have seen, thisdoes not mean that no constraints are acknowledged. The familiar practiceof offering counter-examples, crucial to conceptual analysis, feeds on themore original capacity for eidetic intuition; thus if we can get straight aboutwhat this practice involves, we should also be able to address the objectionthat there is no compelling connection between phenomenological methodand the a priori truths it claims to grasp.


First, however, we must return to the question of whether Sokolowski’sconception of the phenomenological research program – in which Heideg-ger’s ontology is taken to be a consistent elaboration of Husserl’s impulserather than its radical transformation – can avoid dogmatic metaphysicsand epistemological naturalism. Because Sokolowski does not see the con-trast Moran found between Husserl’s transcendental ego and Heidegger’sfactic and historical Dasein (insisting, rather, that the “transcendentality”of the “human being” is part of its phenomenological constitution), thedoor to epistemological naturalism remains pretty tightly shut. Thoughhis view is controversial, I shall not stop to examine it here because thequestion of whether Sokolowski has kept dogmatic metaphysics at bay israther more instructive.

Let me try to get at the problem in terms of a distinction between re-flective and first-order claims. The metaphysical postulates that the epocheis designed to neutralize are essentially first-order claims about what things“are”; in this sense, they are equivalent to the sort of scientific claim uponwhich epistemological naturalism depends. Phenomenology, in contrast,is a reflective enterprise in which, as Sokolowski states, “we suspend allthe intentionalities we are examining” (p. 48). Its neutrality means, first,that it refuses to use any first-order claims as premises (presuppositions),and, second, that it does not subsequently leave the terrain of reflectionon how things show up (“appearances”, modes of givenness) to makeany first-order claims. Were it to do so it would immediately stand incompetition with first-order sciences. If, therefore, phenomenology is on-tological, the concept of “being” at issue must gain its sense on the levelof reflection itself, be tied to the kind of evidence available there.14 NowSokolowski’s claim that phenomenological reflection suspends “all” first-order intentionalities acknowledges the first part of the neutrality thesis:phenomenology makes no use of naturalistic or metaphysical postulates.But what about the second part of the neutrality thesis: can phenomenologymove beyond reflection to make first-order metaphysical claims?

Without pretending to do justice to the subtlety of Sokolowski’spresentation here, it appears that he does want to move beyond phenomen-ological neutrality. On the one hand, Sokolowski works with what I wouldcall a purely phenomenological (hence neutral) concept of being – as whenhe claims that “the way things appear is part of the being of things” (p.14). Manifestation belongs to being; what it means to be X is constitutedin and through the evidence in which it gives itself. To do ontology inthis sense it is not necessary to abandon the level of reflection, and nofirst-order claims are made. On the other hand, Sokolowski does seem tomake such claims, as though phenomenological neutrality were merely

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the first step in a broader onto-theological agenda. For instance, from thephenomenological truth about us – that we are “datives of manifestation”– Sokolowski feels entitled to say, apparently thanks to a perfectionistassumption, that “we exercise our humanity most fully . . . when we usewords”, and that “this is what our minds are supposed to do” (pp. 89, 93,181). It is hard to know what phenomenological evidence could supportthis perfectionist premise, but even if one could make the case by constru-ing “essences” not just as eidetic necessities but as normative excellences(that is, as Platonic Ideas), Sokolowski makes other claims that seem totranscend phenomenological evidence altogether. For instance, he assertsthat “the transcendental ego, the dative of manifestation, is already there”in the fetus, and that this “early self is already something of a player in thegame of truth” (p. 121). Arguments based on phenomenological evidencecan perhaps be made for these claims, but they appear to me to go beyondthe resources of the phenomenological research program itself.

If Sokolowski’s Aristotelian grasp of the phenomenological projectleads him to advocate a form of first-order metaphysics,15 this neverthelessdoes not seem to be a necessary consequence of the phenomenologicalstance itself. Sokolowski is eloquent about the “imperialism” of modernphilosophy’s attempt to “try to correct everything” – radically throw overthe truths of common sense – from its own methodological resources (p.191). But it may well be that the price one pays for the neutrality thatcorrects this modern prejudice includes renouncing metaphysics in the Ar-istotelian mode – a first-order discourse about the ultimate principles ofthings. With this, however, I have moved beyond an inquiry into whethera phenomenological research program is possible and have begun to argueabout what this possibility, once established, entails. Further movement inthis direction must be resisted. Instead let us conclude by posing a finalquestion to our Introductions, one that returns us to Dummett: given thepossibility of a phenomenological research program, what is it good for?Can its method be seen to generate philosophical insights that can be hadin no other way?

4. PHENOMENOLOGY, MEANING, AND CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS

Both phenomenology and analytic philosophy are distinguished from tra-ditional philosophy by a focus on meaning. Dummett, we recall, locatesthe split between the two approaches at that point where Frege limits theconcept of meaning to linguistic meaning, while Husserl generalizes itto all intentionality, whether linguistic or not. The result is the conceptof the “noema”, the intentional object that is the topic of phenomen-


ological reflection. Subsequent controversy over the phenomenologicalapproach to meaning (and connected issues in philosophy of mind, lan-guage, and knowledge) has often turned on the interpretation of whatHusserl understood the noema to be.

A widespread view – the one adopted by Dummett – was initiallyproposed by Dagfinn Føllesdal (1966). On this account the noema is anabstract entity that mediates reference to the object intended in any givenact in much the way that Frege’s Sinn determines linguistic reference. Thisview has some basis in Husserl’s text, but as Moran does a good job ofshowing, there is basis for several other interpretations (pp. 158–160). Ifthe purposes of his Introduction do not permit Moran to take sides in thisdebate, this is not at all the case for Sokolowski. For him, to treat the noemaas a Fregean Sinn, an entity distinct from the thing itself, is to miss the pointof the phenomenological approach to intentionality altogether.

On Sokolowski’s view, the noema “is any object of intentionality, anyobjective correlate, but considered from the phenomenological attitude”; itis “not a sense that refers us to the object, but the object itself” (pp. 60–61,194). The noema is just the object considered as it gives itself in its specificmodes of givenness; to speak categorically, it is the object considered as astructure of part/whole, identity-in-manifolds, and presence-and-absence.The question, then, is what this view of the noema contributes to thephenomenological account of meaning.

Sokolowski argues that there are two kinds of reflection – “propos-itional reflection”, which grasps meanings, and “noematic reflection”,which grasps noemata – and that the latter reaches deeper than the former:to stop with a “clarification of meaning” is not yet to get to “truth” (p.196). These claims are supported by an eidetic phenomenological analysisof how, pace Dummett, language depends on “thinking”: the “reason wecan use language is that we are capable of the kind of intending that con-stitutes categorical objects” (p. 91), a kind of intending that grasps thearticulations of perception. Language arises when I take a specific sort ofstance to what is thus constituted – being pulled up short, I take a distancefrom the categorially formed object and transform it, via the emergent atti-tude of propositional reflection, into a “state-of-affairs”, something merelydeemed (“judged”) to be X. I have transformed it into a meaning: the“meaning, the sense, arises in response to this new attitude” and it was“not there beforehand doing its epistemological work of relating us to theworld” (p. 100). Analytic philosophy stops at a reflection on this meaningbut cannot get at the level of categoriality that underlies it, a level thatis available only to phenomenology, that is, to noematic reflection madepossible by the phenomenological reduction (p. 92).

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On Sokolowski’s reading of the noema, then, phenomenology em-braces the world directly and can provide what analytic philosophy cannot,namely, an account of language itself within the broader horizon of non-linguistic modes of experience. It should be noted, however, that fromthe standpoint of a theory of meaning, Sokolowski purchases phenomen-ology’s advantage over analytic philosophy at the price of agreeing withDummett’s anti-Husserlian thesis that all meaning is linguistic meaning:“The phenomenological reduction turns objects into noemas. Propositionalreflection, in contrast, turns objects into senses” (p. 192). This may wellbe too high a price to pay. Philologically, it overlooks the fact (one thatMoran appropriately highlights) that for Husserl the concept of meaningserves essentially at both levels: central to the noema is what Husserl callsnoematischer Sinn – noematic meaning – and this sort of meaning is notat all a function of “propositional” reflection. More substantively, to elidethis duality of meaning by contrasting noema and meaning as absolutely asSokolowski does is to lose the phenomenological resource that allows us tounderstand what happens when, as Sokolowski says, in “categorial inten-tions” the “things we perceive become elevated into the space of reasons”(p. 94). It is not merely that the categorically intended object is there for usin its structure of part/whole, identity-in-manifold, and presence-absence,but that these structures constitute the thing as something, as meaningfulthough not yet propositional. While it is correct to say that the noema is notan abstract entity, it is nevertheless the structure of noematic meaning thatconstitutes the reflective topic of the phenomenological research program,not the unadorned “thing-itself” of Aristotelian realism, as Sokolowsi’sbifurcation of the two reflections seems to entail. To show why this sort of“critical” stance neither rules out an ontological idiom in phenomenologynor returns us to some form of psychological or Cartesian/Kantian idealismis itself one of the crucial problems that belong within the scope of thephenomenological research program.

But, finally, can phenomenology’s reversal of Dummett’s thesis aboutthe relation between thought and language – based on the claim that thereis a necessary and asymmetrical relation of dependency between the two –really be said to follow from the phenomenological method, that is, fromeidetic intuition or seeing of essences, rather than (as D’Amico charged)merely being a case of “ordinary, pedestrian conceptual analysis”? At thispoint the phenomenologist is entitled to ask: but what is ordinary, pedes-trian conceptual analysis? D’Amico himself is rather vague here, claimingthat to grasp “conceptual necessities” – say, the incoherence of the claimthat there can be a presentation of color that is not extended – is simply“to grasp the reasoning involved” (p. 250), and not any sort of “intuition of


essences”. But what sort of reasoning is that? It does not seem to be a mat-ter of reasoning about linguistic rules. As Sokolowski puts it, philosophydeals with “coherence” – the “rules” of “what concepts can be blendedwith others” – but coherence is not merely a matter of “linguistic rulesthat govern our vocabulary” but a matter of “our experience of objects” (p.173). Conceptual analysis may indeed consult what we tend to say aboutwhat it means to be a friend or how we use terms like “belief” or “desire”.But it will typically also proceed by appeal to counter-examples in whichsome situation in the world, and not just linguistic usage, is invoked. Whenone encounters “incoherence” in this way, thereby establishing a necessarycondition for some concept, can this be understood without acknowledgingthe role that a kind of direct insight, based not on ratiocination but onimaginative variation, plays here? Though this activity would not be amatter of explicit proof, it would nevertheless seem to be essential forcreative work in philosophy, whether analytic or phenomenological. Andone may call it “conceptual analysis” if one wishes, but then conceptualanalysis contains an ineradicable moment of eidetic “intuition”. It appearsthat only ignorance informs the view that phenomenology’s results arenothing but conceptual analysis. One might more justly say that there isconceptual analysis only because there is phenomenology, even though itspractitioners don’t recognize themselves as phenomenologists.

Of course, Dummett has a far more specific suggestion for what isrequired here. The very obscurity of the notion of “concept” (Fregean“thought”) calls forth the twin axioms of analytic philosophy: If “it ishis theory of meaning which determines what a philosopher counts asan elucidation or analysis of a concept” (Dummett 1960, 435), analyticphilosophy stakes its claim on the view that a theory of meaning is atbottom a theory of linguistic meaning. To this the phenomenologist mightreasonably respond with a question: Is it really so obvious that a the-ory of even linguistic meaning can be developed in abstraction from thewider terrain of phenomenological reflection? J. E. Malpas (1992), forinstance, has shown how Donald Davidson’s theory of meaning requiresaugmentation by phenomenological analyses, and Dummett’s optimisticclaim that “we have now reached a position where the search for such atheory of meaning can take on a genuinely scientific character” (Dummett1975, 454) appears, thirty years later, at best premature. The point is notthat analytic philosophy is a bankrupt research project – after all, “timewill tell” (Dummett 1975, 458) – but the claims that phenomenologicalresults are really disguised language-analysis, or that the “theory of mean-ing” that best supports actual creative work in philosophy is a theory oflinguistic meaning, have by no means been established. Phenomenology

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would seem to be a coherent research program, and whether it continuesto prove productive will depend, above all, on the talent of those who takeit up.

NOTES

1 See especially Dummett (1993, 137–143) for the critical discussion of Evans.2 A partial list would include Kearney (1994), Kearney and Rainwater (1996), West(1996), May (1997), Critchley and Schroeder (1998), McNeill and Feldman (1998),Glendinning (1999), Brogan and Risser (2000), and Critchley (2001).3 See especially Ihde (1986, 1–26) and Embree (ms). Critchley and Schroeder (1998,4) gets the history of the term right: it is not used as a “professional self-description”before “the 1970s”, and it happened “in the USA before Britain”. In the “postwar period,Continental philosophy was broadly synonymous with phenomenology” in American uni-versities. As an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz 1970–74, Irecall that Maurice Natanson would teach Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and others underthe rubric “Recent European Philosophy”. The term “Continental philosophy” was notyet in general use. Embree (ms, 2) claims that “I personally originated the current use of‘Continental’ in 1978 when I became the first editor of the book series that the Center forAdvanced Research in Phenomenology, Inc., sponsors at Ohio University Press” – dubbingit “Series in Continental Thought”.4 See also Critchley (2001), where this view is thoughtfully elaborated in terms of the“two cultures” and the idea that philosophy strives not for knowledge but for “wisdom”.5 See Janicaud’s ground-breaking essay, “The Theological Turn in French Phenomeno-logy”, and other texts collected in Prusak (2000).6 Embree et al. (1997) provides ample evidence for its claim that “given its spreadinto other disciplines as well as across the planet, phenomenology is arguably the majorphilosophical movement of the 20th Century”.7 See below, Section 4.8 However, D’Amico’s almost unbelievably ill-informed interpretation of what theseclaims and analyses are is evidence enough that this part of his thesis is unsupportable.See his discussion of Heidegger’s distinction between Befindlichkeit and Verstehen (pp.70–72), for a particularly glaring example.9 It also corresponds well to what Embree et al. (1997, 1–2) identifies as “accepted bymost phenomenologists, regardless of discipline, tendency, or period” – namely, justific-ation of cognition “with reference to evidence”; the belief that “not only objects in thenatural and cultural world but also ideal objects . . . can be made evident”; focusing inquiryon the correlational structure of intentionality (here called “encountering”) in a “reflectiveapproach”; the priority of “description in universal, a priori, or ‘eidetic’ terms” over “ex-planation by means of causes, purposes, or grounds”; and “debate” over the possibility orusefulness of “the transcendental phenomenological epoche and reduction”.10 Indeed, it might be argued that this is not far at all from Husserl’s own view of thematter. As for Heidegger, he understood that to speak of “pre-suppositions” was strictlyspeaking to speak of theoretical postulates, and he interpreted Husserl’s epoche this way.See Heidegger (1987, 93–95), and the discussion in Crowell (2001, 133–36).


11 Though Sokolowski does not go into details in such matters, he suggests that Heideg-ger’s ontological elaboration may have been enabled by his deep interest in Aristotle andhis ability, superior to Husserl’s own, to see Husserl’s achievement in the broader context ofthe history of philosophy. Husserl’s breakthrough was something radically new and cannotbe seen as “continuing a tradition that had taken shape before him”’ (p. 211), but someof its philosophical implications could better be appreciated by Heidegger, who was a farmore sophisticated reader of the history of philosophy (pp. 217–218).12 Sokolowski “does not comment on these terms as though they were alien to [his] own.[He] uses them” (p. 2). Nevertheless, he judges that “phenomenology’s established ter-minology is a handicap for the phenomenological movement”. Its terms “tend to becomefossilized and provoke artificial problems. They substantialize what should be an aspectof being and of the activity of philosophy. The very name ‘phenomenology’ is misleadingand clumsy” (p. 226).13 Borrowing a theme that is more distinct in Heidegger than in Husserl, Sokolowski arguesthat there are two kinds of truth, “the truth of correctness and the truth of disclosure”. Theformer begins “with a statement being made or a proposition being held”, which we “thengo on to verify”. The latter is “simply the display of a state of affairs”, that is, “the simplepresencing to us of an intelligible object”, something as something. Given the phenomeno-logical relations between signitive intentions and intuitive fulfillments, therefore, “the truthof correctness depends on the truth of disclosure” (pp. 158–159).14 I would argue that this is a purely formal requirement deriving from the claim of neutral-ity itself. How this is related to traditional versions of realism and idealism is an importantquestion that lies beyond the scope of this essay. Some discussion can be found in Crowell(2001), but the issues are far from settled.15 Moran noted this sort of move in Sartre, but one can cite texts from Heidegger,Eugen Fink, Merleau-Ponty, Michel Henry, and others, in which the limits of thephenomenological research program are sprung in the direction of uncritical metaphysics.

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Crowell, S.: 2001, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Tran-scendental Phenomenology, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, IL.

D’Amico, R.: 1999, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Westview Press, Boulder, CO.Dummett, M.: 1975, ‘Can Analytical Philosophy be Systematic, and Ought it to Be?’, in

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Department of PhilosophyRice UniversityMS14P.O. Box 1892Houston TX 77251-1892U.S.A.E-mail: [email protected]

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CROWELL, S. is There a Phenomenological Research Program. Synthese. 2002!