6 ideas
| 15570 | Phenomenology is the science of essences - necessary universal structures for art, representation etc. [Husserl, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: For Husserl, phenomenology must seek the essential aspects of phenomena - necessary, universal structures, such as the essence of art or the essence of representation. He sought a science of these essences. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900]) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 2 'Dilthey' |
| 7614 | Bracketing subtracts entailments about external reality from beliefs [Husserl, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: In effect, the device of bracketing subtracts entailments from the ordinary belief locution (the entailments that refer to what is external to the thinker's mind). | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900]) by Hilary Putnam - Reason, Truth and History Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to leave phenomenology as pure introspection, or as a phenomenalist description of sense-data. It is also a refusal to explain anything. That sounds quite appealing, like Keats's 'negative capability'. |
| 6893 | Phenomenology aims to describe experience directly, rather than by its origins or causes [Husserl, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology, in Husserl, is an attempt to describe our experience directly, as it is, separately from its origins and development, independently of the causal explanations that historians, sociologists or psychologists might give. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.421 | |
| A reaction: In this simple definition the concept sounds very like the modern popular use of the word 'deconstruction', though that is applied more commonly to cultural artifacts than to actual sense experience. |
| 21216 | Husserl says we have intellectual intuitions (of categories), as well as of the senses [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: The novelty of Husserl is to describe that we have intellectual intuitions, intuitions of categories as we have intuitions of sense objects. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900], II.VI.24) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 2.4.4 | |
| A reaction: This is 'intuitions' in Kant's sense, of something like direct apprehensions. This idea is an axiom of phenomenology, because all mental life must be bracketed, and not just the sense experience part. |
| 23996 | Akrasia is intelligible in hindsight, when we revisit our previous emotions [Blackburn] |
| Full Idea: To make my emotion intelligible [in a weakness of will case] is to look back and recognise that my emotions and dispositions were not quite as I had taken them to be. It is quite useless in such a case to invoke a blanket diagnosis of 'irrationality'. | |
| From: Simon Blackburn (Ruling Passions [1998], p.191) | |
| A reaction: So Blackburn rejects the idea of akrasia, because there was never really a conflict. He says rational people always aim to maximise their utility (p.135), and if their own act surprises them, it is just a failure to understand their own rationality. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |