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Issues in Husserl's Ideas II (Contributions To Phenomenology) (v. 2)

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I write this review out of a need to gain some clarity for myself about this book. It seems to stand alone, in Husserl's corpus, in the annals of Phenomenology, in the argument between ontology and de-construction.... And for all this strange obtuseness concerning its "place" in the philosophical oeuvre, I think it has an unsurpassed pedagogical value, that I would place along side of, and in diametric contrast to both Hegel's Phenomenology and Kant's Critiques. But then, I am just an amateur.
This book is only rarely referred to in the secondary studies of Husserl. It is given prominent place, however, by Ricouer (Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology). I am grateful to him for that. From Ricoeur I take as my understanding of this book that it is an itinerary from the will to get to the "things themselves," (Section One, Chapter Two, p. 37) to the profound declaration that "we are led back necessarily to an individual subjectivity, whether a solitary or an intersubjective one, with respect to which alone determinateness is constituted, in the positing of location and of time. No thing has its individuality in itself." (Section Three, Chapter 3; p. 313).
In between we are guided through a course of the constitution of "the thing" on three different planes: animal, soul and spirit. In each of these planes, what is at stake in there being a "thing" changes, and what capabilities are mustered to the cause, in what priority, sequence and order vary. This variation shows how we bring different intentionalities to our living, and thereby instigate different modes of constitution. In each case the "thing" is able to take on a different status, and we take on different stances toward it.
We move from a panoply of impressions indifferently arrayed through space, and through which we move and act, into sensing each thing affecting each of us in ways that bespeak both of an active and determining Ego, and a world that constrains and guides us, to, finally, a delineated world through which shared and individuated beings interact and generate complex circumstances to which we yield, in order to be individual and to discover truth.
At the outset of offering my humble opinion about this book let me say this, as unequivocally as I can: I think it is a crime against learning that this volume is priced over $200, making it inaccessible to student budgets. I downloaded a free PDF version from Scribd.com -- and thank them very much for that.
In my opinion, this is a volume that provides students, inured to positivist practicalities, a diamond-cutting wedge into such experiential flatness, and opens to the vast riches of different conceptual regions and styles of thought.
Indeed, Husserl himself makes an explicit plea for such openness: "But this is precisely the problem, to determine more exactly the sense of this openness, as regards, specifically the "Objectivity" of natural science." (p. 313, again). Husserl's is an openness without mindless relativism; it is an openness that takes what is "given" (at least in the form of "thingness") as a guide to robust modes of sensing, constitution and expression.
Husserl has "metaphysics" in his sights. He wants to free our thinking from ideational constructs by freeing ideational constitution; he wants to get to things themselves, by bringing our awareness to the points of origin of the constituting acts that come to expression. He does so without the re-mythologizing of Heidegger, and I would offer this book as an antedote to such (worthy and important) notions of care and anxiety, and as providing an itinerary of methodological detail as to render Dasein to the status of being an obfuscating shorthand for a much richer complexity by which humans generate worlds and engage them.
I would use this book, along with the others I mentioned (and including Being and Time) in a senior level, two semester course on "Our Philosophical Worlds," and thereby provide the serious student with a deep itinerary for making a contribution to making this human endeavor a more expansive and more encompassing one.
In sum, publishers, get the price of this book down; philosophers, consider this book as a text every bit as worthy as the (shorter and more topical "Crisis"); include this book in its world-shaping signficance; and student: do the work and read this book.