Phenomenology as Critique

Why Method Matters

Andreea Smaranda Aldea, David Carr, Sara Heinämaa, Andreea Smaranda Aldea, David Carr, Sara Heinämaa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000550672
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Critical Theory

Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics.

The contributions show that contemporary phenomenological investigations of various forms of oppression and domination develop new critical-analytical tools that complement those of competing theoretical approaches, such as analytics of power, critical theory, and liberal philosophy of justice. More specifically, the chapters pay close attention to the following methodological themes: the conditions for the possibility of phenomenology as critique; critique as radical reflection and free thinking; eidetic analysis and reflection of transcendental facticity and contingency of the self, of others, of the world; phenomenology and immanent critique; the self-reflective dimensions of phenomenology; and phenomenological analysis and self-transfermation and world transformation. All in all, the book explicates the multiple critical resources phenomenology has to offer, precisely in virtue of its distinctive methods and methodological commitments, and thus shows its power in tackling timely issues of social injustice.

Phenomenology as Critique: Why Method Matters will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in phenomenology, Continental philosophy, and critical theory.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Critique – Matter of Methods
• 2 Phenomenology as Critical Method: Experience and Practice
• 3 On the Functions of Examples in Critical Philosophy – Kant and Husserl
• 4 Phenomenology and Critique: On “Mere” Description and Its Normative Dimensions
• 5 Husserlian Phenomenology as Radical-Immanent Critique – Or How Phenomenology Imagines Itself
• 6 Radical Besinnung as a Method for Phenomenological Critique
• 7 A Phenomenological Critique of Critical Phenomenology
• 8 On the Transcendental and Eidetic Resources of Phenomenology: The Case of Embodiment
• 9 Critical Phenomenology and Micro-Phenomenology: The First-Person Experience of the “Collective”
• 10 Critique as Thinking Freely and as Discernment of the Heart
• 11 Social Critique and Trust Dynamics
• 12 Critique in the Age of Paranoid Revolt
• 13 Critique as Disclosure: Building Blocks for a Phenomenological Appropriation of Marx
• 14 Crisis and Modernity: On the Idea of Historical Critique
• 15 What Is Critique – For Phenomenology? A Foucauldian Perspective
• 16 The Power of the Reduction and the Reduction of Power: Husserl’s and Foucault’s Critical Project
• Shared Volume Bibliography
• Author Short Bios
• Name Index
• Subject Index