Call for Abstracts for Pragmatism and Phenomenology: A Two Day Workshop

In 1980, Sandra B. Rosenthal and Patrick L. Bourgoeis wrote in Pragmatism and Phenomenology: A Philosophic Encounter that “a real philosophical encounter is an occasion not for the melting down of one framework to another, but rather for two traditions to be fed in such a way as to clarify for themselves their own positions and deepen their own insights.” Their hope was that their book would permit such a recognition of difference while enlivening debate within and across the continental divide. Thirty-five years later, much work still remains to be done to bring pragmatism and phenomenology together.

This two day workshop presents an opportunity for scholars from both phenomenology and pragmatism to engage in a sustained discussion on topics relevant to both groups. Some of these topics include intentionality, the a priori, states of affairs, temporality, perception and judgment, embodiment, naturalism, psychologism, amongst others.

The workshop is meant to be a discussion-type format and is not meant to be a formal presentation of papers. Workshop participants will be asked to lead or co-lead discussions on a topic of their choosing with discussion material circulated in advance. In order to facilitate this process, we ask that you submit a 100 word abstract of your discussion topic and one or two main readings that will serve as advance readings for the other participants. It is not expected that participants are experts in both traditions, but merely that there is an interest in both. There is enough space for 25 registrants. Abstract and supplementary reading deadline is midnight on January 25th. Please email your submission to Aaron Massecar at amassec@uwo.ca Notification of acceptance will be sent out by January 28th.

The workshop will take place at King’s University College at Western University in London, Ontario on February 7th and 8th from 9am to 5pm on both days with a reception held on the first day. The costs of breakfast and lunch will be covered.

This workshop is presented with the support of the Centre for Advanced Research in European Philosophy, the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, the North American Society for Early Phenomenology, and King’s University College at Western University.

Reading Room update – Erhard, Kananov, and Katz

It has been a long time since we have done an official update to the Reading Room, so we hope that you enjoy what we now have on offer.

First, you will find copies of the dissertations of two Munich phenomenologists:

Hermann Erhard, Die Psychologie als angelbliche Grundlage von Geschichte und Sozialökonomik (1908)

Paul Kananov, Ueber das Gefühl der Tätigkeit (1910)

Second, we have:

Alexander Pfänder, Zur Psychologie der Gesinnungen, Zweiter Artikel (1916)

And third, we have the dissertations of two of Husserl’s early students in Göttingen:

Erich Heinrich, Untersuchungen zur Lehre vom Begriff (1910)

David Katz, Experimentelle Beitrage zur Psychologie des Vergleichs im Gebiete des Zeitsinns (1906)

Happy researching, and check back with us often!

CFP – Horizons Beyond Borders. Traditions and Perspectives of the Phenomenological Movement in Central and Eastern Europe.

Discussions of the phenomenological movement tend to focus on Western Europe and North America.  But from its beginnings through to the present day, phenomenology has been force in Central and Eastern Europe as well.

With this in mind, we would like to spread the word about the following conference and call for papers:

The Institute of Philosophy of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences presents

Horizons Beyond Borders. Traditions and Perspectives of the Phenomenological Movement in Central and Eastern Europe

17–19 June, 2015

Budapest, Hungary

Confirmed invited speakers include:

Michael Gubser (James Madison University)

George Heffernan (Merrimack College)

Marci Shore (Yale University)

Nicolas de Warren (KU Leuven)

Please submit an abstract of up to 2000 characters, including references, which is to be prepared for anonymous review, together with a separate affiliation sheet containing your contact address and academic affiliations (including all geographically relevant ones) to both witoldplotka@gmail.com and peter.andras.varga@gmail.com

Proposals in English (main language), German, and French will be accepted.
All proposals will be evaluated in a process of blind peer-review.

Deadline for paper proposals is MARCH 1, 2015

More information can be found on the conference website: http://ceephenomenology2015.husserl.hu/

We’ve also attached a full pdf of the call for papers here.

Mahnke Kriegsberichte and Wolfgang Husserl Kriegsbriefe

Two wonderful resources have appeared on the blog of sdvig press in remembrance of the 100th anniversary of the First World War:

1. Dietrich Mahnke’s war memoirs – Mahnke Kriegsberichte (1914-1918)

  • Dietrich Mahnke’s war memoirs, originally published as Kriegstaten und Schicksale Ref. Inf. Regiments 75 1914-18 (1932), will eventually be accompanied by the online distribution of the extant series of letters that Husserl sent to Mahnke during the Great War, as well as Mahnke’s wartime publications.  These resources are being made available through the combined efforts of Dr. Patrick Flack at sdvig press, the Husserl Archives Leuven, and NASEP.

2. Wolfgang Husserl’s battlefront letters – Wolfgang Husserl Kriegsbriefe

  • This is the first time that Wolfgang Husserl’s battlefront letters have been published. Wolfgang Husserl was killed in action on March 8, 1916, during the battle of Verdun, France.  Wolfgang was also close with David Hilbert’s wife, Käthe Hilbert, which you can read about in an earlier post on our blog.

Call for Abstracts – NASEP 2015 at UNAM, Mexico City

We are pleased to announce the following Call for Abstracts:

The North American Society for Early Phenomenology

The Great Phenomenological Schism:
Reactions to Husserl’s Transcendental Idealism

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City

June 3-6th, 2015

Keynote speakers:
Hanne Jacobs (Loyola University, Chicago)
Burt Hopkins (Seattle University)

Workshops with:
Sebastian Luft (Marquette University)
Antonio Zirión (UNAM)

The second schism in phenomenology, Husserl’s confrontation with Heidegger and the emergence of existential phenomenology, is well known among philosophers.  However, the first schism, what we call here the Great Phenomenological schism, is far less understood.  Between 1905 and 1913, Husserl’s phenomenology underwent an important transformation, as we see in documents such as his Seefeld manuscripts, the five lectures on The Idea of Phenomenology, and Ideas I.  Husserl’s phenomenology began as a form of descriptive psychology, but after the discovery of the phenomenological reduction and a serious re-reading of Kant, it developed into a form of transcendental idealism.  This change baffled many of Husserl’s students, and drew the ire of some of his contemporaries – creating a division between the transcendental and the realist phenomenologists.  This is presumably the distinction Husserl had in mind when he told Dietrich von Hildebrand that he divided his followers into two groups: the white sheep and the black sheep.  Following Husserl’s move to Freiburg, divisions among the early phenomenologists became firmly entrenched.

The theme of this conference will be the reaction to Husserl’s transcendental turn, both by his students and his contemporaries, as well as Husserl’s attempts to respond to the criticisms of his transcendental phenomenology.  Topics would include the realism/idealism debate among the early phenomenologists, criticisms of the idea of phenomenological reflection and the reductions, the argument for existence of the transcendental ego, the problem of the external world, the justification of the intentionality thesis, the relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and idealism, discussions of transcendental philosophy in Husserl’s lecture courses and manuscripts from 1905-23, etc.  We strongly encourage papers documenting the criticisms of Husserl put forward by Adolf Reinach, Max Scheler, Carl Stumpf, Edith Stein, Roman Ingarden, Johannes Daubert, Maximilian Beck, and other members of the Göttingen and Munich Circles.  We are also interested in the reactions of Husserl’s early Freiburg students, many of whom only engaged Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology after the First World War. Finally, papers on early students who followed Husserl’s transcendental turn and defended Ideas I against its detractors, are also welcomed.

Abstracts should be 400-600 words, and include a short bibliography.  All abstracts must be prepared for blind review and sent via email in .doc or .rtf format to Dr. Rodney K.B. Parker (rodney.k.b.parker@gmail.com)

Both senior researchers and graduate students are encouraged to submit.

Deadline for submissions is February 20th, 2015.

Decisions will be sent out no later than March, 16th, 2015

Organizers – Rodney Parker, Ignacio Quepons, and Jethro Bravo

Hosts – Antonio Zirión and Seminario de Estudios Básicos de Fenomenología Trascendental.

A .pdf of this Call for Abstracts can be found here.

Deadline Extension – Studia Phaenomenologica: Early Phenomenology

The deadline for submissions to the upcoming issue of Studia Phaenomenologica on Early Phenomenology (2015) has been extended to August 15th.  So if you missed the first deadline, there is still time!

Remember, papers should be no longer than 75.000 characters, including spaces and footnotes, and should be sent in .doc or .rtf format to submissions@phenomenology.ro for blind review.

http://www.studia-phaenomenologica.com/?page=advertise

The editors are also looking for book reviews of works that are relevant to the theme of the issue.  If you are interested in submitting a review, please contact the editors.

Alexandre Koyré’s thesis defense

What follows is a translation of Alexandre Kojève’s account of Alexandre Koyré’s doctoral defense on March 1st, 1929.   As you’ll see from the text below, Husserl was in attendance for Koyre’s defense.  The event took place between Husserl’s Paris and Strasbourg lectures.  A copy of the original Russian text is attached.

Kozhevnikov, A. “The defence of A. V. Koyré’s Thesis,” Eurasia 16 (1929), p.8

– Translated from the Russian by Anna Yampolskaya, Russian State University for the Humanities

The defence of Koyré’s thesis took place on the 1st of March in Sorbonne. As per the stated university rules, two theses were presented, the primary, entitled The Philosophy of Jakob Böhme (1929. Paris: Vrin) and the supplementary, Philosophy and the National problem in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century (1929. Paris: Champion). Koyré’s opponents for each thesis were, respectively, MM. [???] Oman and [Louis] Eisenmann for the supplementary, and MM. [Étienne] Gilson, [Léon] Brunschvicg and [Émile] Brehier for the primary. A number of Sorbonne professors were also in attendance, as was [Edmund] Husserl, Koyré’s teacher, who was invited to sit among them as an honorary guest.

It must be stated that such was the candidate’s reputation that this was less of a defence but more of a celebration in his honour. The supplementary thesis was held to be of such quality that it could have been submitted as a primary thesis in its own right. This was particularly remarkable considering that neither works were greatly overlapping and as such were a testament to the candidate’s worth. Gilson, who had also considered the primary thesis, went through and described the candidate’s previous works, stating that his monograph on Anselm of Canterbury was the best in the field. Likewise, Gilson noted the huge amount of work that the candidate performed in exploring and understanding the sources and influences of Böhme, work that had not actually been reflected in the thesis itself. He concluded stating that this thesis was one of the greatest books on the history of philosophy and was exactly what everyone had expected from the candidate.

As any critical comments were only of superficial concern with regards to the text, it is not necessary to restate them at this stage. The defence concluded when the jury conferred on Koyré the degree of Doctor.

A. K

evrazia 16 8

Reading Room update – Vasily Sesemann and a handful of reviews

After a wonderful conference in Boston, and a long hiatus in posting new content to our Reading Room, here is a list of some of the newer items that you can find on our site.  We hope you take the time to give some of them a read!

Vasily Sesemann – Beiträge zum Erkenntnisproblem. Über gegenständliches und ungegenständliches Wissen (1927).

Charles Serrus –  “L’oeuvre Philosophique d’Edmund Husserl – Le réel phénoménologique,” Les Études philosophiques, 4:2/3, December 1930, pp. 126-133.

George Dawes Hicks – “Survey of Recent Philosophical the Theological Literature,” The Hibbert Journal XII (1914), pp. 198-205.

  • The survey begins with the claim that the work of Alexius Meinong and Edmund Husserl are the most important recent contributions to philosophy from the German speaking world, and then some comments on the first volume of the Jahrbuch.

Oskar Ewald – “German Philosophy in 1913 (Translated by F.H. Knight),” The Philosophical Review XXIII (1914), pp. 615-633.

  • In this overview, the Czech born Oskar Ewald (Friedländer) situates Husserl’s Ideen I within a larger constellation of German philosophers working in the wake of Kant.

Rudolf Hirsch – [Rezensionen] “W. Jerusalem Der kritische Idealismus und die reine Logik,” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 134 (1909), pp.266-274.

  • Hirsch was a member of the Munich Circle off and on from 1899-1912.  He also served for a time as the personal secretary of Franz Brentano.  In this review, Hirsch defends Hermann Cohen and Husserl against the attacks of Wilhelm Jerusalem.

CFP: “Husserl and the Subject” – Journal: Discipline Filosofiche

Discipline Filosofiche invites submissions on the following topic:
Figures, functions and critique of subjectivity from the Husserlian phenomenology
Volume XXV (2015)
Editor: Emanuele Mariani

Among the many ways of interpreting Husserl’s phenomenology, one in particular seems to display undisputed evidence, identifying it without much hesitation to a philosophy of the subject. There are however many problematic aspects to this identification, corresponding to as many moments of the analysis such as the rejection of the “pure I”, for instance, and its subsequent rehabilitation in the passage that leads from the Logical Investigations to the explication of the transcendental method. Additional questions pertain to the subject brought back to its corporal substrate and inscribed in an intersubjective relationship or placed at the very foundation of the world’s transcendence.
These and other vicissitudes have coincided with a process to “put subjectivity on trial” which has never ceased to animate the phenomenologically-inspired debate, from the neo-Kantian critique to the Heideggerian existential revision, from Sartre to Merleau-Ponty, from Ricoeur and Levinas to Henry and to the most recent proposal of Jean-Luc Marion, without forgetting of course the contributions of analytical philosophy, centred on the “mind-body” problem, on the significance of consciousness or on the relationship between the “first person” and the “third person”.

The purpose of the present issue of Discipline Filosofiche is to shed some light on the problems relating to the theme of “subjectivity”, both with Husserl and in relation to the grammar of thought which has confronted itself with Husserlian phenomenology. Possible topics therefore include – however without limitation – the relationship between the “empirical I” and the “transcendental I”; the problem of “reflection” and the access to consciousness; ipseity; will; the body; temporality; the pragmatic, the anthropological and the performative dimensions of the subject.
Submission guidelines

Contributions can be addressed in English, Italian, German or French and shall not exceed 9,000 words including abstract, references and footnotes. They should be prepared for anonymous refereeing and sent as email attachment in Microsoft Word as well as in a pdf version to emanuelemariani76@yahoo.it. Contributions will be sent to two independent reviewers in a double-blind procedure prior to the publication decision. Authors may be requested to change or improve their articles upon suggestion by reviewers. Please attach both a fully-blinded version of your paper as a “Manuscript” and a separate “Cover page” indicating the full name of the author, academic titles, university affiliation and full contact details. The submission shall contain an abstract in English, not exceeding 150 words. For further details, please see guidelines (all submissions will be acknowledged). Submitted manuscripts can be formatted in any clear and consistent style, although authors finalizing their papers for publication will be required to hand in a final version that respects the journal’s stylistic rules (please download “Style guidelines” for reference). Submission of a contribution is understood to imply that the paper has not been published before and is not being considered for publication by any other journal. The publication of a paper implies waiver by the author of his copyright; the copyright can thereafter be requested from the journal for future publication.
Deadline for submission: March 31, 2015
Notification of acceptance, conditional acceptance or rejection: May 31, 2015.
Final version due by: June 31, 2015