Customer Reviews

Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology was written by Edmund Husserl (the founder of phenomenology). This means the book is not muddled by the need to reconcile conflicting views on what phenomenology is according to various philosophers, like in commentaries. Also, many commentaries follow Sartre's, Heidegger's (as found in Being and Time) and Merleau-Ponty's human conciseness centered phenomenology leaving Husserl's phenomenology as a footnote. Being that Husserl's phenomenology is underrepresented in secondary sources, it is necessary to read Husserl's own writings. Cartesian Meditations offers a full understanding of Husserl's philosophy. The only other source for this is Husserl's Ideas Pertaining to Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, which is spilt in to three volumes and is around 900 pages. Ideas... is not only long, but it gives the reader a distinct feeling that many of the sections are dead ends and could have been edited out. Cartesian Meditations, on the other hand, is concise. Also, the book is easier to understand because the structure is similar to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. However, one should not think Husserl super-imposed his philosophy on Descartes'. In Cartesian Meditations, Husserl only made the similarities that could already be found in Ideas... explicit to help introduce Phenomenology to a larger audience though a familiar median. Even though the book was written as an introduction (as the title indicates), the audience need not be novice of Phenomenology. People who have read Ideas... cover to cover can still appreciate the book because it contains only what is essential to Husserl's Phenomenology, unlike Ideas..., which according to Husserl contains "imperfections". Cartesian Meditations makes one of the most influential twentieth century thinkers accessible.

This little book is an excellent introduction to Husserl's phenomenology. He outlines his idea of the intentionality of consciousness via the "transcendental ego". If Sartre had paid more attention to this, his outlook wouldn't have been so pessimistic.

Caveat: This book is hard reading -- it's not really for the newcomer to philosophy and Husserl's toxic and dense style will probably put off all but the determined.

Don't get me wrong, Husserl's contribution to post-modern philosophy is impossible to ignore. However, his constant beating of the transcendental horse is even more annoying then the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner's! At least with Rahner, you can expect man's transcedence toward God... with Husserl, it is a transcendence toward the self by the epoche - the "bracketting" - of the world and the retreat into the self. While the ideas are immensely important, they are more valuable as a transitional piece from the work of Descartes toward the work of Heidegger, Sartre, and others than they are on their own. An ego-pole? How is a pole, as Sartre would say, not simply a thing of the world? Husserl seems wed to the idea that the mind is constitutive of the world around us, and thankfully post-modern philosophy has not devoted itself entirely to that idea.

Perhaps it is the translation, but the work is hard to read, and you would be better to borrow it from a library then to spend the [price] on a 80 page book.

Still, it gets 3 stars. why? because it is so important. The work of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and even Rahner would not be possible without this work by Husserl. He is a bridge thinker - now that we've crossed the river maybe occasionally we can look back at his thought for its worth but we don't have to spend any more time on that bridge.

My cursory look at the text brought me to the conclusion that it is somewhat barren of secrets.

Text buried deep into the morass of subtitles yielded an idea in a public consciousness, a vaguery that I could not get over; it seemed to suggest that Husserl lacks consistent aphoristic power, at least in English.

Although there are vast differences, I find myself preferring Nietzche for aphoristic reasons.

Husserl is not only dense, but does not convey powerful ideas. Perhaps this is similar to the failures of Derrida.

Nonetheless it is full length volume -- I am amazed --- it brings on paranoia of subterfuge.