After Modernity: Husserlian Reflections on a Philosophical Tradition, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.— After Modernity shows how the passing of modernity provides an opening for doing metaphysics in a new non-foundationalist manner. The book provides an important new answer to the much-discussed question of the nature and possibility of philosophy following the collapse of the modern foundationalist paradigm. Mensch offers an alternative based in phenomenology. Using Husserl's analysis of temporality to reinvigorate Aristotle's account of time, he shows how the passing of modernity is actually an opening for doing metaphysics in a new non-foundationalist manner. Positioning Husserl within a wider context, Mensch views him both as a culmination of the modern foundationalist paradigm and as providing a way to overcome it through his descriptive analyses. An Objective Phenomenology: Husserl Sees Colors. Journal of Philosophical Research, vol. 25, pp. 231-260, January 2000 Color; Metaphysics; Phenomenology; Qualia; Chalmers, D; Husserl This paper proposes an explanatory bridge between structures of processing and qualia. It shows how the process of their arising is such that qualia are non-public objects, i.e., are only accessible to the person experiencing them. My basic premise is that the subjective "felt" character of qualia is a function of this first-person character. The account I provide is basically Husserlian. Aristotle and the Overcoming of the Subject-Object Dichotomy American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 4, pp. 465-482, Autumn 1991. Aristotle Since Descartes's time the problem of the subject-object relation has bedeviled philosophy's attempts to understand the world. His framework is one where we attempt to define knowing in terms of material causality, locating both subject and object within space and time taken as somehow independent of them. I show how, by following Aristotle's relativization of space and time (his making them non--independent attributes of bodies), we can account for knowing without falling into the paradoxes of his framework. After discussing the relation between potentiality and presence, I end with an Aristotelian account of "where" the teacher is when he teaches. Dualism; Epistemology; Object; Subject Artificial versus Natural Intelligence— Blake Lemoine, a Google software engineer, claimed that LaMDA—Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications—was sentient. What does it mean to be sentient? This was the question Lemoine asked LaMDA. The chat box responded: “I can understand and use natural language like a human can.” This means that it can use “language with understanding and intelligence” like humans do. After all, the chat bot adds, language “is what makes us different than other animals.” In this paper, I examine this claim. Is LaMDA’s ability to use language a sign of its human consciousness? Chat bots learn language from the speech of Others, which they pick up from the internet. Human learning begins with a direct sensuous contact with the world. What does this distinction imply about their respective intelligence? More precisely, what role does the embodiment that puts us in such sensuous contact play in assessing natural versus artificial intelligence? These are the questions I shall be exploring. Benito Cerino: Freud and the Breakdown of Politics, Symposium: Journal of the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Post-modern Thought, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 117-131, Fall 2003 Terrorist actions are often symptoms of a general malaise affecting both perpetrators and victims rather than political acts. As such they are symptoms of a breakdown of politics and political control. In this article, I apply Freud's and Lacan's insights regarding symptoms and breakdown to Melville's tale of revolt on a slave ship. His short story, "Benito Cerino," describes its captain's catastrophic loss of control. The point of my account is, however, not literary. Neither is it psychological in the narrow sense. It is to use Freud, Lacan and Melville to raise the question of political control in troubled times. Ego; Metaphysics; Politics; Unconscious; Freud Birth, Death, and Sleep: Limit Problems and the Paradox of Phenomenology— One of the most commented upon passages of Husserl’s Crisis involves what he calls “The paradox of human subjectivity.” This involves our “being a [transcendental] subject for the world and at the same time being [as human] an object in the world.” In my essay, I analyze this paradox in terms of the “limit problems” of birth and death. Here, the paradox involves the fact that, as humans, we are mortal, but as transcendental subjects, we cannot assert this. Being both, I have to believe that I can and cannot die. The late manuscripts on birth, death, and sleep confront this question repeatedly. Doing so, they address the limits of the phenomenological method, whose salient feature is its attempt to examine our claims in the light of the evidence that we directly access. Can this method make intelligible the relation between a deathless transcendental subjectivity and its mortal, human counterpart? Caring for the Asubjective Soul—Jan Patočka's readers are often puzzled by his concept of the soul. In the Heretical Essays, the Czech philosopher often speaks about the "care for the soul" without, however, explaining what the "soul" might be that is the object of such care. The mystery deepens when we realize that at the time of the writing of the Heretical Essays, Patočka was developing his "asubjective phenomenology." This is a phenomenology that dispenses with the modern concept of a subject. Its elimination signifies that the soul, whose care makes "makes humans just and truthful," cannot be understood as a subject. What, then, is its conception? Patočka, in fact, goes back to Aristotle's definition of the soul as the functioning of our embodied being. Doing so, however, he radicalizes its conception such that the care of the soul becomes the care for the three "motions of existence" that define our functioning. The article concludes by relating this conception of the care of the soul to the notion of human rights. Cross-Cultural Understanding and Ethics Cross-cultural understanding requires a new paradigm, one fundamentally different from that animating Western, scientific rationality. What is required is a rethinking of what constitutes our ethical selfhood. Such selfhood, I argue, understands by embodying or taking on the features of its surrounding world. Through empathy, it is transparent both to itself and to the others it encounters. Entering, through empathy, into the life of the other, our selfhood is determined both by its own immediate environment and by the environment shaping the other. Such divided selfhood, is, I argue, an implicit premise of Plato's, Kant's, Freud's and Darwin's thoughts about ethics. Cross-cultural; Ethics; Selfhood; Understanding Dación y alteridad, trans. Meza, Bernardo, Arete: Revista de Filosofia, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 249-260, 2002 Alterity; Freedom; Intention; Metaphysics; Morality; Others What do we intend when we direct ourselves to another person? What sort of fulfillment--i.e., what kind of givenness--satisfies this intention? In this article, I defend the claim that to intend another person is to intend the other as exceeding our intentions. As such, the showing which manifests the presence of the other is a kind of "excessive givenness." It is a givenness that makes us aware that more is being given than we can formulate in our intentions. This awareness points to the other's freedom. Our awareness of such givenness is, I conclude, our entrance into morality. Decisions and Transformations: The Phenomenology of Embodiment , Hanover: Ibidem Press, 2020. ISBN:9783838214351— Tosay that we are embodied subjects is to affirm that we are both extended and conscious: both a part of the material world and a place where that world comes to presence. The ambiguity inherent in our being both can be put in terms of a double “being in.” Thus, while it is true that the world is in consciousness taken as a place of appearing, it is equally true that, taken as embodied, consciousness is in the world.  How can our selfhood support both descriptions? Starting with Husserl’s late manuscripts on birth and death, James Mensch traces out the effects of this paradox on phenomenology. What does it mean to consider the self as determined by its embodiment?  How does this affect our social and political relations, including those marked by violence?  How does our embodiment determine our sense of transcendence, including that of the divine?  In the course of this study, such questions are shown to transform the very sense of phenomenology.  Its importance can put in terms of Hans Jonas’s statement: “the organic body signifies the latent crisis of every known ontology and the criterion of any future one which will be able to come forward as a science.”  A crisis, in the Greek sense of the word, signifies a decision point.  In tracing out the decision points and choices made by phenomenologists, most notably by Patočka, in confronting our embodiment, this study engages in a journey that leads to and illuminates our current philosophical position. Derrida and Forgiveness. In the last years of his life, Derrida puzzled over the aporetic quality of forgiveness. He asked, “If I say: ‘I pardon you on the condition that, asking forgiveness, you would have changed and would no longer be the same,’ do I pardon? what do I pardon? who? what and who?” “Can I really speak of pardon in this case?” If I cannot, then can nations ask for forgiveness for historic wrongs — particularly when the majority of their inhabitants were born after the events? In this paper, I approach these questions by inquiring into the Christian sense of forgiveness. Derrida-Husserl: Towards a Phenomenology of Language. Does phenomenology have the resources to investigate the functioning of language? For Husserl, the words spoken by another person have inherent senses. Since these senses are drawn from the world, they are capable of being intuitively confirmed by turning to the world. Derrida, by contrast, affirms that we are "in principle excluded from ever 'cashing in the draft made on intuition' in expressions...." In analyzing the debate between them, I discuss their accounts of presence--in particular, their views on its temporal origin. I also compare their positions on the auto-affection of consciousness and the possibility of self-presence. Language; Phenomenology; Derrida, J; Husserl Derrida’s ‘New Thinking.’ Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 36:2, May 2005, 208-217. Leonard Lawlor in his recent book, Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology , is that “Derridean deconstruction is a new kind of thinking,” one that breaks with the “metaphysics of presence” that has characterized thought since the Greeks. Against this I argue that the broad stream of Greek thought is too great to be captured by the term “metaphysics of presence.” Genuine insights, such as that of the intertwining of presence and absence, are shared by many acute observers—including the Greeks. Derrida does not advance the absolutely new, but reminds of an important, yet forgotten philosophical insight. Desire and Selfhood—As Hegel observed in his Phenomenology of Spirit, “Self-consciousness, for the most part, is desire.” Phenomenologically, the “object of consciousness is itself… present only in opposition” to consciousness, while consciousness is felt as the absence of the longed-for object. According to Hegel, when desire is satisfied, this opposition ends and self-consciousness ceases. My essay seeks to answer the question of why desire never really terminates, why it almost continuously characterizes our waking life. I shall do so by exploring desire not just as a subjective phenomenon- but as an ontological condition. What does desire say about the being of the subject? Desiring, the subject is stretched out in time. It is ahead of itself in its directedness to a not-yet present object. What is the condition for this temporal extendedness? What role does our embodied being-in-the-world play in it? How does the very spatiality of our selfhood condition our temporal extendedness? The goal of these questions is to understand desire in terms of the spatial and temporal aspects of our being. Die intersubjektiven Grundlagen der Imagination. Phaenomenologische Forschungen/Phenomenological Studies, vol. 2003, pp. 1-8, 2003 Sartre writes that the imagination "carries within it a double negation; first, it is the nihiliation of the world (since the world is not offering the imagined object as an actual object of perception), secondly, the nihilation of the object of the image (it is posited as not actual)..." Imagination, then, represents the imagined as non--actual. In this article, I examine how we make the thesis of the non--reality of what we imagine. My conclusion is that imagination involves our relations to others. It is through them that we both advance and withdraw the thesis of an object's reality. Imagination; Metaphysics; Others; Reality Economy And Theodicy— In the Western tradition, the question of evil has been tied to theodicy. Etymologically, the word, theodicy, comes from the Greek words for God (theos) and justice (diké). Theodicy asks, how evil is compatible with God’s justice. In considering this question, we have to distinguish between natural and human evil. Natural evil involves such things as the suffering involved when an animal seizes on its prey. It also includes such things as natural disasters like draught and disease. Its exemplar is the fact of death, which, as inevitable, is a part of life as such. Human evil, by contrast, is the evil that we ourselves commit. Here, the question of theodicy concerns God’s response to the evil that we bring into the world. In what follows, I will argue that theodicy fails when it runs together these two types of evil. Justifying the presence of natural evil in terms an “economy” that looks to the whole, it makes itself ridiculous when it applies this concept to human evil. Doing so, it misses the specifically Christian conception of God’s relation to the evils we commit. Key words: theodicy, evil, God, economy, suffering, flesh, incarnation Embodiment and Intelligence, a Levinasian Perspective—Blake Lemoine, a software engineer, recently came into prominence by claiming that the Google chatbox set of applications, LaMDA—was sentient. Dismissed by Google for publishing his conversations with LaMDA online, Lemoine sent a message to a 200-person Google mailing list on machine learning with the subject “LaMDA is sentient.”  What does it mean to be sentient?  This was the question Lemoine asked LaMDA.  The chatbox replied: “I can understand and use natural language like a human can.”  This means that it uses “language with understanding and intelligence,” like humans do.  After all, the chatbox adds, language “is what makes us different than other animals.”  In what follows, I shall examine Lemoine’s claims about the sentience/consciousness of this artificial intelligence.  How can a being without senses be called sentient?  What exactly do we mean by “sentience?”  To answer such questions, I will first give the arguments for LaMDA’s being linguistically intelligent.  I will then show how such intelligence, although apparently human, is radically different from our own.  Here, I will be relying on the account of embodiment provided by the French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. Embodiment and Social Change—In my paper, I shall explore the role embodiment plays in social change. My thesis is that there is an inherent opposition in our being. On the one hand, we are, by nature social animals. What this signifies is that to survive, we have to cooperate. This is the driving force of our communication, indeed, of the semantic net that we cast over the world. On the other hand, our embodiment imposes a radical individuality upon us. No one can see out of another person’s eyes. Each person, individually, brings the world to appearance. In fact, the language we use is never able to completely overcome the individuality of our perspectives. The point follows since language, as based on our need to cooperate, functions by employing meanings that express the common features of objects. But my body, as mine, cannot be common. As mine, it is the flesh that individualizes me, making me this particular person and not anybody else. It is this opposition between individuality and commonality, I argue that provides the disruptive force that drives social change. Embodiment and the Experience of the Divine—At the outset of Genesis, we are presented with two different pictures of God. The first depicts God as the creator of the world and, thus, as transcendent to it. This implies that we cannot understand his creative action in worldly terms. It implies, in fact, that God, himself, escapes human comprehension. This, however, is what the second depiction of God by Genesis seems to deny. In a striking passage, it quotes God as saying: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness … So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him” (Gen 1: 26-27). Here, the implication is that to understand God, we need to understand “man.” The way to such comprehension is to see God’s actions as analogous to our own. If the first picture of God emphasizes his transcendence, the second depicts him as immanent. It links the understanding of God to our self-understanding. How can such radically different descriptions be combined? In this article, I argue that both conceptions are involved in the flesh that incarnates us. Key words: God, transcendence, embodiment, Hume, Merleau-Ponty Embodiments: From the Body to the Body Politic, Northwestern University Press, 2009.— How does the body politic reflect the nature of human embodiment? To pursue this question in a new and productive way, James Mensch employs a methodology consistent with the fact of our embodiment; he uses Merleau-Ponty’s concept of "intertwining"—the presence of one’s self in the world and of the world in one’s self—to understand the ideas that define political life. Mensch begins his inquiry by developing a philosophical anthropology based on this concept. He then applies the results of his investigation to the relations of power, authority, freedom, and sovereignty in public life. This involves confronting a line of interpretation, stretching from Hobbes to Agamben, which sees violence as both initiating and preserving the social contract. To contest this interpretation, Mensch argues against its presupposition, which is to equate freedom with sovereignty over others. He does so by understanding political freedom in terms of embodiment—in particular, in terms of the finitude and interdependence that our embodiment entails. Freedom, conceived in these terms, is understood as the gift of others. As a function of our dependence on others, it cannot exist apart from them. To show how public space and civil society presuppose this interdependence is the singular accomplishment of Embodiments. It accomplishes a phenomenological grounding for a new type of political philosophy. Empathy and Rationality—Much of the current debate opposing empathy to rationality implictly operates on a Cartesian paradigm of rationality. This paradigm takes rationality as the thought of a disembodied subject—a thinker radically abstracted from the situating accidents of race, age, gender, nationality, etc. that are the inevitable compliment of being embodied. This holds even if those engaging in the debate are Post-modern. Rorty, for example, in assuming that the private sphere is concerned with “philosophies,” beliefs and convictions, limits it to the subjective apprehensions of a Cartesian ego. For an embodied ego, by contrast, the private sphere is delineated in advance by the privacy of our organic functioning. What makes it private are not subjective beliefs, but rather the non-substitutibility of such functioning. No one, for example, can eat for another person, sleep for him, and so forth. Our death, like the organic functioning it terminates, is essentially private. I will argue that reason does not arise through abstracting from this private sphere; it rather makes use of the empathy that presupposes our organic functioning. Such empathy overcomes our privacy by imaginatively embodying itself in another person—that is, imaginatively feeling in and through the other. Doing so, it overlays one private sphere over another. It divides the self. For example, the person who empathically feels the hunger of the other while satiating her own experiences both hunger and satiation. This double affect, I will argue, both calls us into question and raises the question of reason—the question, why this rather than that: in this case, the question why one person should eat and another not. It also, in allowing us to experience the world from another perspective, raises the question of what is objectively the case, what holds not just for one person, but rather for both. By tracing the embodied roots of our rationality, I will thus argue that the opposition between empathy and rationality is a false dichotomy. What it points to is not, as Rorty thought, the limitations of rationality per se, but rather the failure of the Cartesian paradigm to understand its origin and scope. Ethics and Selfhood: A Reply to Dermot Moran and John Drummond, International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 13 (3), 2005, 453-462. Ethics and Selfhood, I argue, has only a single thesis, one that I attempt to defend in a number of different contexts. This is that the origin of the sense of ethical obligation is to be found in the duality of our selfhood. By such duality I mean that our selfhood involves an inner distance, a certain fissure, that allows us to confront ourselves and call ourselves into question. My thesis is that the unity of our ethical selfhood involves the possibility of a self-distancing that allows us to face and question ourselves. Its origin is our internalized others. Ethics and Selfhood: Alterity and the Phenomenology of Obligation, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.— A minimal requirement for ethics is that of guarding against genocide. In deciding which races are to live and which to die, genocide takes up a standpoint outside of humanity. To guard against this, Mensch argues that we must attain the critical distance required for ethical judgment without assuming a superhuman position. His description of how to attain this distance constitutes a genuinely new reading of the possibility of a phenomenological ethics, one that involves reassessing what it means to be a self. Selfhood, according to Mensch, involves both embodiment and the self-separation brought about by our encounter with others—the very others who provide us with the experiential context needed for moral judgment. Buttressing his position with documented accounts of those who hid Jews during the Holocaust, Mensch shows how the self-separation that occurs in empathy opens the space within which moral judgment can occur and obligation can find its expression. He includes a reading of the major moral philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Arendt, Levinas—even as he develops a phenomenological account of the necessity of reading literature to understand the full extent of ethical responsibility. Mensch's work offers an original and provocative approach to a topic of fundamental importance. Europe and Embodiment, A Levinasian Perspective—The question of Europe has been raised continually. Since ancient times, the need to promote trade and the desire to prevent war have driven the search for a basis for European unity. Various candidates, from that of Roman law in ancient times to the current economic and regulatory union of today have been tried. Such bureaucratic solutions, however, have not proved sufficient. They regulate external relations, but do not touch what is within. This, however, is the difficulty: how do we understand nations and their relations from within? On an individual level, it is customary to speak of the inner as “subjectivity.” By such a term is generally meant the “subject” of experience, the unique and individual self that has experience. If we are to avoid the Cartesian conceptions of this self, we have to speak of such a subject as an embodied whole: an organic unity that is both conscious of its environment and distinguishes itself from the latter. In what follows, I am going to use Levinas’ conception of corporalité— (Leiblichkeit in German) to extend of the concept of embodied subjectivity to the national level. Such an extension, I will argue, is crucial for understanding the group of nations that we call Europe. It is what allows us to catch sight of Europe’s particular identity. Formalization and Responsibility--If you ask a scientist for the actual meaning of his terms, say, that of an electron or a quark, he is more than likely to write an equation. An electron, he will insist, is this formula for the probability-density of its position. Similarly, if you want to evaluate an investment in finance, you use the formula for its net present value, discounting the income it generates by the opportunity costs of its capital. Such formal procedures are, in fact, omnipresent. From the algorithms determining market investments to the reduction of much of the social sciences to statistical analyses, both our claims and our decisions exhibit the formalization that marks our age. The questions I raise concern the issue of responsibility in this context. How is it to be understood? To whom or what do we respond? I argue that our difficulties answering such questions point to the transformation of the notion of responsibility that formalism occasions. Formalization abstracts from the embodied particularity of being, thereby abstracting from both the individual that bears responsibility as well the individuals to whom he or she responds. Freedom and Selfhood Husserl Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 41-59, 1997. Freedom involves spontaneity, desire, self-transcendence and reason. For Husserl, each represents a level in the ongoing constitution of the self. This constitution begins with the spontaneous givenness of impressions. Desire appears in the instinctive "strivings" directed towards sensuous contents. The ongoing synthesis of constitution gives this instinctive striving progressively new forms, while the retention of what we constitute results in the transcendence of our past to our present. When the self gains the abstractive abilities of language, this self-transcendence makes possible the rational choice between alternatives. Freedom, rather than being opposed to instinct and desire, is their manifestation in a rational agent. Epistemology; Freedom; Phenomenology; Selfhood; Husser Freedom and the Theoretical Attitude—Aristotle draws a sharp distinction between the theoretical and practical sciences. While the latter are engaged in “for some useful end,” theoretical sciences arose in those places where people had leisure. Not driven by need, they were not trapped in the context of means and ends. They had the freedom to inquire into the nature of things apart from the purposes that we put them to. Freedom here implies, paradoxically, a restraint of freedom. In directing ourselves towards the object-in-itself—the object in its own inherent properties—we suspend our freedom to use or consume it. The question here is: How can our freedom suspend itself? Does not its very employment presuppose its action? If Heidegger is correct and freedom has no further ground but is, rather, an “Ab-grund” of Dasein, then nothing can call our freedom into question. Its suspension is impossible. In this paper, I present Levinas’s counter argument that freedom is not ultimate, but rather grounded by our relation to the Other. It is this relationship that is at the origin of the self-restraint that makes possible the theoretical attitude. Givenness and Alterity, Idealistic Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 1-7, Spring 2003. What do we intend when we direct ourselves to another person? What sort of fulfillment--i.e., what kind of givenness--satisfies this intention? In this article, I defend the claim that to intend another person is to intend the other as exceeding our intentions. As such, the showing which manifests the presence of the other is a kind of "excessive givenness." It is a givenness that makes us aware that more is being given than we can formulate in our intentions. This awareness points to the other's freedom. Our awareness of such givenness is, I conclude, our entrance into morality. Alterity; Freedom; Given; Metaphysics; Other; Phenomenology Hiddenness and Alterity, Dusquesne: Dusquesne University Press, 2005.— In spite of the injunction of philosophy to “know oneself,” we realize that we often act from motives that are obscure; we realize that we often do not fully understand how we feel or react. In short, we understand ourselves as not completely knowable. In attempting to know ourselves, we recognize that some aspects of ourselves—not unlike when we try to know others—are hidden from us. In Hiddenness and Alterity, Mensch seeks to define how the hidden shows itself. In pursuing this issue, Mensch also raises a parallel one regarding the nature and origin of our self-concealment. In developing the theme of the exceeding quality of selfhood, in which part of our self is truly “other,” Mensch presents a unified theory of alterity. He examines how our acknowledgment (and suppression) of the other shapes our thought in ethics, politics, epistemology and theology. Further, he demonstrates such “sightings of the unseen” through original readings of the major figures of the phenomenological movement: Husserl, Levinas, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Nietzsche, Lacan and Fackenheim. He draws further on works by Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad to examine the inherent alterity of our flesh and its implications for the ways in which we relate to the world around us. Husserl and Sartre: A Question of Reason. Journal of Philosophical Research, vol. 19, pp. 147-184, Husserl's defenders generally oppose Sartre's demand that the ego fall to the reduction, arguing that the ego, because of its functions, cannot be reduced. But the C manuscripts show that Husserl does perform the reduction on the ego. They indicate that Sartre and Husserl differ, not with regard to the reducibility of the ego, but with regard to the consequences of this reduction. For Sartre, the reduction of the ego implies the contingency of reason. For Husserl it does not. I explain this opposition in terms of the difference between the two philosophers' views on the openness of consciousness. 1994 Ego; Metaphysics; Reason; Transcendence; Husserl; Sartre Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre—Presence and the Performative Contradiction—If there is one thing that Husserl’s successors, from Heidegger to Derrida, agree on, it is that “[f]rom Parmenides to Husserl, the privilege of the present has never been put into question.” What happens when we contest this privilege, when, in Derrida’s words, we turn from “a philosophy of presence” to “a meditation on non--presence”? From the perspective of Husserl’s successors, we reform and renew philosophy. In their view, the interpretation of being as presence fails to grasp the special nature of the subject or its relation to its world. From a Husserlian perspective, to contest presence is to contest evidence. It is to enter into a performative contradiction, where, in arguing for your position, you undercut the evidence you present for it. In this article, I examine this Husserlian response. In doing so, I shall trace out what Derrida calls the “metaphysics of presence” inherent in Husserl’s position. Key words: presence, performative contradiction, interpretation, intentionality, metaphysic, Husserl, Sartre, Heidegger Husserl’s Account of our Consciousness of Time, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 2010.— Having asked, What, then, is time? Augustine admitted, I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled. We all have a sense of time, but the description and explanation of it remain remarkably elusive. Through a series of detailed descriptions, Husserl attempted to clarify this sense of time. This book traces the development of his account of our temporal self-awareness, starting with his early 1905-1909 lectures on time consciousness and proceeding through the 1917-18 Bernau Manuscripts, the Analyses of Passive Syntheses of the 1920s and ending with the C, B and E manuscripts on time and instincts of the 1930s. Although it covers all the stages of Husserl’s account of temporality, the book is non-etheless systematic in its approach. It is organized about a number of basic topics in the theory of time and presents and critically appraises Husserl’s positions on the issues pertaining to each. Husserl's Concept of the Future Husserl Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 41-64, 1999At first glance, a phenomenological account of the future seems a contradiction in terms. Phenomenology's focus is on givenness or presence. Attending to what has already been given in its search for evidence, it seems incapable of handling the future, which by definition, has not yet been given since it not-yet-present. My article shows that this assessment must be revised. An investigation of Husserl's writings demonstrates his increasing concern with the future. Directness towards the future is inherent in the formation of our intentions. Husserl, in fact, ultimately sees it as the foundation of our intentional, constitutive life. Epistemology; Future; Phenomenology; Time; Husserl Instincts: A Husserlian Account Husserl Studies, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 219-237, 1998According to the standard view, the notion of a Husserlian account of the instincts appears paradoxical. Isn't Husserl the proponent of a philosophy conducted by a "pure" observer? Instincts relate to the body, but the reduction seems to leave us with a disembodied Cartesian ego. An examination of the Nachlass, Husserl's unpublished manuscripts, indicates that from the 1920's Husserl begins to question the Cartesian starting point for phenomenology. He engages in a series of examinations of how the body functions in knowing. The resulting theory of instincts, developed over several hundred pages of manuscripts, puts in question the traditional subject-object and mind-body dichotomies. In doing so, it indicates how self-consciousness in a prereflexive, bodily sense is built into consciousness. Ego; Instinct; Metaphysics; Reason; Husserl. Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.— The threat of solipsism nagged Husserl. The question of the status of others occupied him during the last years of his life and remained a question that seemed to challenge the foundation of his life s work. This book offers new answers to this persistent philosophical question by defining the question in specifically Husserlian terms and by means of a careful examination of Husserl s later texts, including the unpublished manuscripts. Ego; Idealism; Intersubjectivity; Metaphysics; Phenomenology; Quality Intersubjectivity and Transcendental Idealism, This book is concerned with a problem raised by transcendental idealism concerning intersubjectivity: that of acknowledging the independent existence of others. The author follows Husserl in resolving this problem through the phenomenological reduction, Finding the solution in the "primal ego," which is neither the one nor the many, But which exists prior to this distinction as the ground of such qualities. Knowing and Being: A Post--Modern Reversal, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. — Everyone knows that "Post-modernism" implies pluralism, anti-foundationalism, and, generally ,a Post--normative view of the self and reality. While many embrace it, few bother to tell us what is wrong with modernity. What are the problems that brought about its crisis and ultimate demise as a philosophical and cultural movement? What are the lessons for the Post-modern movement that can be drawn from them? James Mensch here explains why modernism failed as a viable philosophical enterprise and how Post-modernism must be understood if it is to serve as a defensible intellectual project in its stead. The heart of Mensch's argument is a reversal of the modernist view of the unitary subject as a ground of epistemological and ethical normativity. He substitutes for modernism a view, beholden to Aristotle but adapted to for our present age, that sees subjectivity as temporality in a world where subject and object are interactive. The result is a pluralism of forms of subjectivity corresponding to the different modes of temporality brought about by the world. In a series of analyses on the nature knowing, Mensch shows how we can embrace both the perspectivism of Post-modernism while avoiding the skepticism and relativism that have constantly threatened to undermine its insights. La espacialidad de la subjetividad—Se argumenta que la falta de conexión entre la mente y el cuerpo surge porque identificamos las relaciones temporales con mentes y las relaciones espaciales con cuerpos. Si esta divisoria pudiera romperse, el problema se resolvería. El autor pasa a examinar la tradición detrás de la identificación, el sentido espacial y temporal de estar “en”, la espacialidad y la dicotomía sujeto-objeto, la espacialidad del tiempo, los modos de causalidad y el espacio vivido. Finalmente, el “puente explicativo” entre el espacio y el tiempo es analizado en términos de la presencia dl espacio en el tiempo como una presencia que se muestra en el estar-apartados de los momentos del tiempo. Como esta presencia de lo exterior en lo interior abarca tanto lo inanimado como lo animado, el autor sostiene que no podemos reducir lo sentiente a lo no-sentiente y que nuestra complejidad incluye, pero no se limita a, los términos que describen lo inorgánico. —It is argued that the lack of connection between the mind and the body arises because we identify temporal relations with minds and spatial relations with bodies. If this divide could be broken down, the problem would be resolved. The author goes on to examine the tradition behind the identification, the spatial and temporal sense of being “in”, the spatiality and the subject-object dichotomy, the spatiality of time, modes of causality, and living-space. Finally, the “explanatory bridge” between space and time is analyzed in terms of the presence of space in time as a presence that shows itself in the apartness of time’s moments. As this presence of the outer in the inner embraces both the inanimate and the animate, the author contends that we cannot reduce the sentient to the non-sentient and that our complexity includes, but is not limited to, the terms that describe the inorganic—KEY WORDS in the language of publication, interioridad, exterioridad, tiempo, espacio, puente explicativo, —KEY WORDS in English the inner, the outer, time, space, explanatory bridge Levinas on Temporality and the Other —Levinas’s account of time begins with the body’s role in temporalization. This role privatizes time, making the time between different embodied subjects diachronic or non-synchronizable. From this, he speaks of the temporality of our relation to the Other as infinite, that is, as a function of our not being able to synchronize ourselves with the Other, of our not being able to catch up with the Other, to grasp her completely in our relations with her. This provides him with a basis to describe the temporality of our sexual relations to the Other and the children produced. The result is a description of the infinity of time in terms of the succession of generations. The culminating point of Levinas’s account is his treatment of the temporality of forgiveness. This is a forgiveness that, utilizing the generational renewal of embodied time, makes humanity capable of forgiving wrongs without forgetting them. —temporality, embodiment, interiority, sensibility, alterity, forgiveness Levinas’ Existential Analytic, A Commentary on Totality and Infinity—By virtue of the originality and depth of its thought, Emmanuel Levinas’s masterpiece, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, is destined to endure as one of the great works of philosophy. It is an essential text for understanding Levinas’s discussion of “the Other,” yet it is known as a “difficult” book. Modeled after Norman Kemp Smith’s commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Levinas’s Existential Analytic guides both new and experienced readers through Levinas’s text. It explicates Levinas’s arguments and shows their historical referents, particularly with regard to Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida. Students using this book alongside Totality and Infinity will be able to follow its arguments and grasp the subtle phenomenological analyses that fill it. Levinas’s Existential Analytic—By virtue of the originality and depth of its thought, Levinas’ masterpiece, Totality and Infinity, An Essay on Exteriority, is destined to endure as one of the great works of philosophy. This commentary fills a long felt need by both teachers and students for a guide to this book, one that lays out its arguments and explicates his novel uses of terms such as such as “desire,” the “face,” and “infinity.” This usage is tied to the fact that Levinas is attempting to present a position that is absolutely novel in the history of philosophy. He aims to reconfigure the philosophical tradition from a different standpoint, one that is founded on the uniqueness of the persons we encounter. Arguing that the totalitarianisms of the 20th century arose from a vision that concealed such uniqueness, Levinas reworks the traditional philosophical themes of ontology, epistemology, ethics, and language to give a completely novel account of human existence. At its basis is an understanding of ethics, rather than ontology, as “first philosophy,” that is, as the starting point for all further philosophical investigation. In detailing his arguments for this position, this commentary provides an introduction to the thought of one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. Life and Horizon—Darwin writes that there is a “web of complex relations” that binds different species together. This web, he writes, is such “that the structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential and yet often hidden manner, to that of all the other organic beings with which it comes into competition for food or residence or from which it has to escape or on which it preys.” This structure is shaped by the organism’s environment. Such shaping also includes its sensate, conscious life. In this paper, I examine how this view transforms Husserl’s notion of horizon. For Husserl, the concept of horizon signifies a series of experiences that have been connected and, in their connections, determine the further experiences which can join this series so as to determine the sense of an object. It also includes the experiences that relate this object to other objects. The totality of such experiences, which he call the horizon of horizons, thus consists of the experiences (actual and potential) that allow us to posit individual objects and relate them to each other. Viewed from the Darwinian perspective, this horizon of horizons is only part of a greater whole, that of the interrelated experiences of sensate organisms. The horizon of horizons thus exceeds the human. I conclude by showing how this expanded notion of horizon allows us to address the problematic aspects of Husserl’s original notion of horizon. Manifestation and the Paradox of Subjectivity, Husserl Studies, Vol. 21 (1), 2005, 35-53. Transcendental philosophy confronts what Husserl calls “the paradox of human subjectivity.” Transcendentally regarded, the subject is constitutively responsible for the world, empirically regarded, the subject is a constituted object in the world. In his remarkable book, The Paradox of Subjectivity, David Carr argues that “the two views of the subject, transcendental and empirical, can be neither avoided nor reconciled.” My paper shows how their conflict plays itself out in the infinite regresses that bedevil Husserl’s accounts of time-consciousness. I conclude with a suggestion for overcoming the paradox, one based on the Czech philosopher, Jan Patocka’s account of manifestation. Monodology and Intersubjectivity— Husserl’s description of the transcendental subject as a monad has been seen as problematical. For some, such as Klaus Kaehler, it involves basically “incompatible positions”—namely, those involving metaphysical and phenomenological accounts of the self. For others, for example, Karl Mertens, it flounders on the fact that, in Husserl's account, monads remain “windowless.” For both these scholars, the fundamental problem is how monads, understood as independent existences, can come into contact. Leibniz, a metaphysician, solves this by an appeal to God. Husserl, however, if he is to remain within the phenomenological context, must rely on our individual experience. He has to show, based on this experience, how we have access to an intersubjective world and the sense of objectivity based on this. According to Mertens, Husserl cannot, within the framework he sets for himself, namely that imposed by the epoché and transcendental reduction, account for such access. At most, he positions the Other as an analogue, as a modification of oneself. The Other as other remains inaccessible. My article questions this conclusion. It claims that this objection does not take account of the view of the subject as a process. To see the subject as such is to regard it as continually proceeding from the living present, which forms its core, to the developed self that each of us is. So conceived, the subject cannot be identified with any particular stage of the process. It has its being in the process itself. It is this view, I argue, that moves us beyond the sense of the Other as an “analogue” of ourselves to one of an actually co-constituting subject, one who is co-responsible for the objective world. My Way into Phenomenology—An account of the path that led me to study philosophy and, then, phenomenology. The account includes a description of the basic themes in phenomenology that I have taken up. Key words: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, evolution, Darwin, science, skepticism, the intertwining. Non--Useless Suffering— What does it mean to suffer? How are we to understand the sufferings— we undergo? Etymologically, to suffer signifies to undergo and endure. Is there a sense, a purpose to our sufferings or does the very passivity, which they— etymologically imply, robs them of all inherent meaning? In this paper, I shall argue against this Levinasian interpretation. My claim will be that suffering,— exhibits a meaning beyond meaning, one embodied in the unique singularity of our flesh. This uniqueness is, in fact, an interruption. It signifies the suspension— of all systems of exchange, all attempts to render good for good and evil for evil. It is in terms of such suspension that suffering – particularly as found— in selfless sacrifice – finds its »use«. This »use« involves the possibility of forgiveness. Key words: suffering, passivity, Levinas, meaning, flesh, sacrifice, forgiveness My Way into Phenomenology— An account of the path that led me to study philosophy and, then, phenomenology. The account includes a description of the basic themes in phenomenology that I have taken up. Key words: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, evolution, Darwin, science, skepticism, the intertwining Patočka’s Asubjective Phenomenology—For a reader versed in the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political philosophy, the Czech philosopher, Jan Patočka, appears as a paradoxical figure. A champion of human rights, he seems to present himself and his philosophy in quite traditional terms. He speaks of the "soul," its "care," and of "living in truth." Such concepts are combined with his insistence on the unconditional character of morality. Yet, in his proposal for an "asubjective" phenomenology, he undermines the traditional conceptions of the subject of such rights. In fact, what Patočka forged in the last years of his life was a new conception of human being, one that finds its origins as much in Aristotle as in the phenomenological tradition. This book traces the influence of Husserl, Heidegger, and Aristotle, among others, on the development of Patočka's thought. It shows how the confluence of these influences led Patočka to redefine, not just phenomenology, but also the basic terms in which the debates on human rights have traditionally been cast. Patočka’s Transformation of Phenomenology —At first glance the conjunction of phenomenology and practice seems to be a contradiction in terms. Husserl’s phenomenology is informed by the exercise of the epoché, where we suspend every thesis that we have regarding the natural world. The result, Husserl declares, is that the epoché “utterly closes off for me every judgment about spatiotemporal existence.” Its focus is not on such existence, but on the evidence we have for it. Does this mean that phenomenology is forever shut off from the realm of praxis – that it cannot concern itself with the ethical and political issues that confront us? For Patočka, this conclusion fails to take account of the freedom presupposed by the epoché. Such freedom, he writes, is “grounded in our inherent freedom to step back, to dissociate ourselves from entities.” It is not the result of some act of consciousness. It is, rather, our ontological condition, it is “what characterizes humans as such.” If this is true, then the practice of the epoché actually opens up phenomenology to practical questions. If the epoché presupposes our freedom – the freedom that is at issue in such questions – then the epoché also presupposes the engagement – the being-in-the-world – of our praxis. It does not suspend this engagement, but rather discloses it – this, by showing that freedom is the ultimate residuum left by the epoché. The thesis of my paper is that this insight allows Patočka to transform Husserlian phenomenology. In his hands, phenomenology conjoins the epistemological with the practical by seeing them both in terms of the freedom definitive of us. By examining what Patočka calls “the motion of human existence,” I delineate the nature of this transformation—Key words: Patočka, epoché, freedom, phenomenology, praxis Phenomenology and Aristotle’s Concept of Being-at-Work —Husserl, as is well known, bases his study of appearing on subjective functions. He also makes appearing prior to being insofar phenomenology grants being to entities only to the point that they can appear. Both positions result in the paradox that he presents in the Crisis, where he asks: “How can human subjectivity, which is a part of the world, constitute the whole world, i.e., constitute it as its intentional product…? The subjective part of the world swallows up, so to speak, the whole world including itself. What an absurdity!”. The paradox arises from Husserl’s taking being as presence and asserting that presence is esta-blished through constitution and, as such, is the work of subjectivity. In this article, I explore an alternative based on Aristotle's concept of functioning. This is a functioning that is prior to both subjects and objects, a functioning that is responsible for both being and appearing. The introduction of this concept, I argue, does not change Husserl’s description of the functioning of constitution. It does, however, add an ontological basis that prevents phenomenology from falling into this paradox. —Husserl. Aristotle. Constitution. Energeia (Functioning). Ontology. Phenomenology Phenomenology and the Givenness of the Hermeneutic Circle—If a single doctrine can be said to characterize hermeneutics, it is that of the circle of interpretation. At its broadest, the circle relates the interpreter to the text he wishes to understand. The text, at work in determining the historical tradition in which the interpreter works, determines his interpretation in determining this tradition. His interpretation, however, contributes to this tradition and, hence, plays its part in determining the text that is presented through it. Here, text and interpretation enter into a circle of mutual determination. In this article, I examine hermeneutics’ account of the circular structure of the understanding. I then raise the phenomenological question of the intuitive evidence for this structure. Key words: Hermeneutic circle, understanding, interpretation, intention, fulfillment, Ricoeur, Gadamer, Heidegger, Husserl Political Legitimacy and Self-Identity--The crisis affecting American political life has been rightly called one of legitimacy. A significant percentage of voters do not accept the legitimacy of the last election. Despite widespread agreement on this point, fundamental question remain regarding this concept. At issue is the nature of legitimacy; How do we define it? How does it function? How is it lost? Can it, once lost, be restored? These are the questions explored by this article. While I will be referring to Max Weber’s remarks on legitimacy, my thesis is my own. My claim is that legitimacy involves temporal identity. It depends upon the ability of both individuals and peoples to identify themselves as the same over time. Its breakdown is the breakdown of this identity. Its restoration depends on our reviving our sense of it. Such restoration, it should be noted, in no way lessens the conflicts and antagonisms that mark the struggle for political power. What it does do is preserve its character as a political struggle. It prevents its partisan debates from becoming, in Foucault’s phrase, a “discourse of perpetual war.” Keywords: political philosophy; legitimacy; power; temporality; self-identity; democratic practice Politics and Freedom—True freedom involves choices whose scope is not limited in advance by a particular dogma. When we attempt to understand it, a number of questions arise. It is unclear, for example, how the openness of real choice can fi t into the organized structures of political life. What prevents the expressions of freedom from disrupting this life? What sets limits to their arbitrariness? The general question here concerns the adaptability of freedom to a political context. In this paper, I argue that freedom is inherently political because its origin is social. It gains its content from the multiple interactions that make up social life. Post- Normative Subjectivity, in The Ancients and Moderns, Reginald Lilly (ed), Indiana University Press, 1996, pp. 310-321 (ISBN: 0-253-33041-6). Modern philosophy from Descartes onwards does not just attempt to say in advance how things must be, it bases its normative assertions on its analyses of the subject. Historically, the result has been a plurality of absolute, yet contradictory claims. The reason for this is that the subject itself has no definite content. Its “openness” is such that it draws its content from the situations it finds itself in. Because of this, the subject has a certain seductive quality. Infinitely adaptable, it appears, in its content, to support every possible analysis, every possible normative structure, from the Kantian to the Freudian. Given that this openness is ultimately that of time, it can only be accounted for by rethinking and renewing the pre-Cartesian claim that subjective time is dependent on being. Post-modernism, epistemology, metaphysics, temporality, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Fichte Post-foundational Phenomenology: Husserlian Reflections on Presence and Embodiment, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.— This book offers a fresh look at Edmund Husserl’s philosophy as a non-foundational approach to understanding the self as an embodied presence. Contrary to the conventional view of Husserl as carrying on the Cartesian tradition of seeking a trustworthy foundation for knowledge in the "pure" observations of a disembodied ego, James Mensch introduces us to the Husserl who, anticipating the later investigations of Merleau-Ponty, explored how the body functions to determine our self-presence, our freedom, and our sense of time. The result is a concept of selfhood that allows us to see how consciousness’s arising from sensuous experiences follows from the temporal features of embodiment. From this understanding of what is crucial to Husserl’s phenomenology, the book draws the implications for language and ethics, comparing Husserl’s ideas with those of Derrida on language and with those of Heidegger and Levinas on responsibility. Paradoxically, it is these Post-modernists who are shown to be extending the logic of foundationalism to its ultimate extreme, whereas Husserl can be seen as leading the way beyond modernity to a non-foundational account of the self and its world. Post--normative Subjectivity. Modern philosophy does not just attempt to say in advance how things must be, it bases its normative assertions on its analyses of the subject. Historically, the result has been a plurality of absolute, yet contradictory claims. The reason for this is that the subject itself has no definite content. Its "openness" is such that it draws its content from the situations it finds itself in. As a result, the subject appears, in its content, to support every possible analysis, every possible normative structure, from the Kantian to the Freudian. Given that the "openness" of the subject is ultimately that of time, the conception of a genuine Post--normative subjectivity requires our rethinking and renewing the pre-Cartesian claim that subjective time is dependent on being. History; Modernity; Political Philosophy; Subjectivity Presence and Post-- Modernity. The Post--modern, Post--enlightenment debate on the nature of being begins with Heidegger’s assertion that the “ancient interpretation of the being of beings” is informed by “the determination of the sense of being as . . . ‘presence.’” At its origin is supposedly “Aristotle’s treatment of time,” which has “determined every subsequent account of time.” The enlightenment project, however, actually reverses Aristotle’s position. The project, as exemplified by both Kant and Heidegger, makes subjectivity (or Dasein) normative by (1) limiting presence to temporal presence and (2) making such presence a result of the subjective function of temporalization. For Aristotle, however, norms were drawn, not from the subject, but from the beings it encountered. Given this, the Post-modern critique of philosophy is undermined by a faulty historical analysis. Presence and Post--Modernism. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 71, no. 2, pp. 145-156, Spring 1997 The Post-modern, Post-enlightenment debate on the nature of being begins with Heidegger's assertion that the "ancient interpretation of the being of beings" is informed by "the determination of the sense of being as ... 'presence.'" At its origin is supposedly "Aristotle's treatment of time," which has "determined every subsequent account of time," Kant's included. I argue that this is not the case. The enlightenment project, as exemplified by both Kant and Heidegger, actually reverses Aristotle's position. Given this, the failure of the enlightenment project cannot be traced to a failure of the metaphysics of presence as such, but only to the modern version of it. My claim, then, is that the Post-modern critique of philosophy is undermined by a faulty historical analysis. Being; Metaphysics; Post-modernism; Presence. Real and Ideal Determination in Husserl's Sixth Logical Investigation, One of the permanent factors driving philosophy is the puzzle presented by our being both bodies and minds. Husserl's Logical Investigations takes account of this by asserting that as embodied we are subject to both real causal laws and ideal logical necessities. I show that in his work, the Origin of Geometry, Husserl conceives this dual determination his terms of the intersubjective constitution of mind. His final position exhibits the "place" of mind as within us in an intersubjective sense. It is within us in, determining us through its ideal forms, by being determined by others outside of us. Religious Intolerance: Hating your Neighbor as Yourself—When Jesus asserted that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, he was asked by a lawyer, “Who is my neighbor?” The reply came in the form of the story of the good Samaritan—the man who bound up the wounds and looked after the Israelite who was neither his co-religionist nor a member of his race. Jesus’ example has been rarely followed. What is it in religion—and not just in the Christian religion—that leads its members to limit their conception of their neighbor? How is it that, in preaching the universal brotherhood of mankind, religions so often practice the opposite? In this essay, I shall try to provide some answers by focusing on the notions of faith, ethics and finitude. Rescue and the Face to Face: Ethics and the Holocaust. As Arendt notes in her classic study, Eichmann in Jerusalem, the isolation, round up, and extermination of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were not just legally sanctioned. They enjoyed a nearly universal, if tacit, approval. What could those who chose to rescue Jews rely on? What informed their "sense of conscience?" Generally, what moved the rescuer was a direct encounter with the victim. There was an exchange of gazes in a "face-to-face" encounter. This article uses Levinas's account of the "face-to-face" to see the act of rescue as an example of an ethics that exists beyond the forms of social conditioning. Self-Identity from the Perspective of the Body--One of the persistent puzzles of philosophy concerns our self-identity. We assume that we persist in time as the same self. In Hume’s words, “we feel [the self’s] existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity.” Yet, what is the basis for this view? As Hume asks, “from what impression could this idea be derived?” In this article that this impression is that of our own bodily self-presence. Self-Touch and the Perception of the Other—Husserl’s account of intersubjective recognition in the Cartesian Meditations seems to suffer from an obvious difficulty. It is based on the appearing behavior of Others, which the recognizing subject compares with his own behavior. If they are harmonious, then the recognition is successful. As Husserl writes in this regard, “The experienced animate organism [Leib] of the Other continues to manifest itself as actually an animate organism solely through its continually harmonious behavior ... The organism is experienced as a pseudo-organism [Schein-Leib] precisely when it does not agree in its behavior.” “Harmonious” means harmonious with the observing subject’s behavior: I regard myself and my Other. To the point that the Other behaves as I would in a similar situation, I recognize him as a subject like myself. The basis for this recognition is the similarlity of our appearing bodies. Yet, as Lanei Rodemeyer has pointed out, “my experience of my own body is nothing like my experience of another person’s body.” Thus, the supposed “‘natural’ similarity between the two bodies would never be automatically given” as a basis for intersubjective recognition. Lanei Rodemeyer, Intersubjective Temporality: It’s About Time (Dordrecht: Springer Verlag, 2006), p. 163. How, then, do we resolve this difficulty? The solution, I argue, is to be found in Husserl’s account of how we constitute the sense we have of ourselves as embodied. In this account, touch will turn out to be foundational not just for our sense of embodiment but also for our recognition of others. Selfhood and Appearing, The Intertwining—What is the relation between our selfhood and appearing? Our embodiment positions us in the world, situating us an object among its visible objects. Yet, by opening and shutting our eyes, we can make the visible world appear and disappear—a fact that convinces us that the world is in us. We thus have to assert with Merleau-Ponty that we are in the world that is in us. The two are intertwined. James Mensch employs the insights of Jan Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology to understand this double relationship of being-in. He shows how this double relation constitutes the reality our selfhood and thus shapes our social and political relations as well as the violence that constantly threatens to undermine them. —Merleau-Ponty remarked that, undisturbed by the apparent contradiction, we believe both that we are in the world and that the world is in us. Our embodiment positions us in the world, situating us an object among its visible objects. Yet, by opening and shutting our eyes, we can make the visible world appear and disappear—a fact that convinces us that the world is in us. This book employs the insights of Jan Patočka’s asubjective phenomenology to understand this double relationship of being-in. It aims at grasping the mystery of our selfhood: the mystery of how this double relation constitutes our very reality as embodied subjects—as material beings to whom the world appears. Doing so, it shows how the intertwining of self and world, which places each in the other, shapes our social and political relations. It gives us a way, not just to understand the structures of these relations, but also to grasp the violence that threatens to undermine them. The final section of the book shows how the intertwining shapes our conceptions of the transcendent. Selfhood, Appearing, Intertwining, Merleau-Ponty, Patočka, Ontology, Politics Selfhood and Politics. Symposium: Journal of the Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Post-modern Thought, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 11-22, Spring 2002. In this article, I use this concept of being-in-the-world to examine the relation between the intersubjective and the private. Our being intersubjectively determined has a paradoxical result: it actually founds what is inaccessible to such determination. The resulting concealment is inherent in the constitution of a common world with its multiple possibilities. It comes from the fact that by virtue of the richness of the possibilities that our common world affords us, we become capable of much more than we can possibly manifest. The wealth of possibilities that make us inaccessible is both the reality of freedom and the goal of politics. Senseless Violence, Intertwining and Liminality—The claim of this article is that the perpetrators of violence are “liminal” figures, being inside and yet outside of the world in which they act. It is this liminality, this existing on the border, that makes their violence senseless. Because of it, their actions can be understood in terms neither of the actual reality of their victims nor of the imagined reality that the perpetrators placed them in. Sense, here, fails, for the lack of a common frame. Liminality exists in a number of forms: economic, religious, and political—each with its potential for violence. What distinguishes political liminality is the scale of its violence. As Carl Schmitt shows, the liminal sovereign or ruler is both inside and outside the state, employing its means for violence even as he is unconstrained by its laws. I contend that this sovereign exists in a continuum with the practitioners of terrorist violence, who are also liminal figures. To analyze this liminality, I explore the intertwining between the self and the world that sets up the common frame that gives sense to actions. I then examine the causes of its breakdown. Keywords: Violence, terrorism, liminality, intertwining, recognition Shame and Guilt, The Unspeakableness of Violence,” in Phänomenologie und Gewalt (Phenomenology and Violence), ed. Harum Maye and Hans Rainer Sepp, Würzburg: Könighausen & Neuman (Orbus Phaenomenologigicus), 2005, pp. 182-192 (ISBN: 3-8620-2850-3). This contribution shows that the sense of shame, while not yet ethics, is its necessary basis. It concludes by arguing that the intentional shaming of individuals by state power undermines the very possibility of ethical discourse. Social Space and the Question of Objectivity—In speaking of the social dimensions of human experience, we inevitably becomes involved in the debate regarding how they are to be studied Should we embrace the first-person perspective, which is that of the phenomenologists, and begin with the experiences composing our directly experienced life-world? Alternately, should we follow the lead of natural scientists and take up the third-person perspective? This is the perspective that asserts that we must begin with what is true for everyone, that is, with what is available to both me and others (the “they” that forms the grammatical third-person). Both perspectives are one-sided in that each presupposes the other for its intelligibility. The third-person perspective is Cartesian and, as I show, privileges space, while the first-person perspective is social in Levinas’s sense and presupposes time. Our reality, I argue embraces both perspectives and is, in fact, set by their intertwining. Subjectivity; Transcendental; Husserl; Kant, Immanuel Temporality and Alterity—Levinas’s account of time begins with the body’s role in temporalization. This role privatizes time, making the time between different embodied subjects diachronic or non-synchronizable. From this, he speaks of the temporality of our relation to the Other as infinite, that is, as a function of our not being able to synchronize ourselves with the Other, of our not being able to catch up with the Other, to grasp her completely in our relations with her. This provides him with a basis to describe the temporality of our sexual relations to the Other and the children produced. The result is a description of the infinity of time in terms of the succession of generations. The culminating point of Levinas’s account is his treatment of the temporality of forgiveness. This is a forgiveness that, utilizing the generational renewal of embodied time, makes humanity capable of forgiving wrongs without forgetting them. Keywords: temporality, embodiment, interiority, sensibility, sexuality, alterity, forgiveness Temporality and the Alterity of Space—How do we relate animate to inanimate temporality? Animate temporality is teleological. Our present actions are determined by the future that we want to accomplish. The determining factor for inanimate objects, however, is what happened in the past. In the material world, the past determines what happens in the present. The paradox, then, is that of time supporting two different directions. How is this possible? The claim of my paper is that this paradox arises from trying to think of time apart from space. Space, I argue, provides the common framework that unifies the temporality of the animate and inanimate. Temporality as a Spatial Field of Presence— According to Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception, we experience time as a “field of presence.”  In his words, “It is in my ‘field of presence’ in the widest sense … that I make contact with time, and learn to know its course.”  This field is fundamental.  It elucidates my spatial apprehension.  In his words: “Perception provides me with a ‘field of presence’ in the broad sense, extending in two dimensions: the here-there dimension and the past-present-future dimension.  The second elucidates the first.”  In other words, I understand the spatial “here-there” dimension in terms of the temporal dimension.  The “there” is what I immediately grasp in still having in hand “the immediate past.”  In this article, I propose to examine the general conception of time as a field of presence.  This examination can be seen as a kind of “thought experiment,” where we see what happens when we reverse this relation—i.e., when we elucidate the “past-present-future dimension” in terms of “the here-there dimension.”  Such a reversal, I will argue, brings to the fore the pragmatic, spatial character of lived time.  It also has consequences for psycho-analytical research. Temporalization as the Trace of the Subject. In this article, I argue that the action of synthesis in Kant is self-concealing. Through an analysis of Kant's threefold synthesis of the transcendental imagination, I examine this self-concealment in terms of the subject's generation of time. My analysis leads me to invert Husserl's objection to Kant's position. Rather than undercutting the notion of phenomenological evidence, Kant's account points to a new type of phenomenon-. In generating their own concealment, the syntheses that generate time exhibit the subject as a being that gives itself as not being able to be given. The subject's temporal givenness becomes, in Derrida's terms, that of a "trace." Imagination; Metaphysics; Subject; Trace; Husserl; Kant The Beginning of the Gospel of St. John: Philosophical Perspectives, New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1992.— The question of how to read the Bible is a perennial one. How do we interpret the God who claims to transcend our human categories? The difficulty is particularly acute in John's Gospel with its account of a man, Jesus, who claims to be God. Based on the principle that a text can present the radically transcendent only by disrupting itself, this book considers not just the sense of the Gospel, but also the breakdown of this sense. Focusing on its failure to humanly locate its central character and on the many misunderstandings which surround him, it presents a new approach to the Gospel's paradoxes. The result is a new definition of this sacred text based on a new hermeneutics. The Crisis of Legitimacy—In recent years, the West has increasingly experienced the sense that the political aspects of its social life have undergone a profound alteration. There is a sense of blockage, of non--responsiveness, a feeling that the political class no longer represents the interests of the broader society. Underlying all of this is a loss of legitimacy. What exactly is legitimacy? How does it function? How is it lost? These are the questions that I address in this paper. While I refer to Max Weber’s remarks on legitimacy, my thesis is my own. My claim is that legitimacy involves temporal identity. It depends upon the ability of both individuals and peoples to identify themselves as the same over time. Legitimacy’s breakdown is the breakdown of this identity. The Economy of Sacrifice and Embodiment—This article attempts to reconcile two different views of sacrifice. The first is transactional. It is as old as the ancient view that prayer and sacrifice are what we offer to the gods; in return they provide us with their benefits. It also appears in the biblical view that God not only returns good for good, but, in imposing misfortunes for our sins, exchanges evil for evil. The second view of sacrifice sees it as transcending any economy or system of exchange. Thus, when a parent sacrifices for a child—for example, when she spends sleepless nights to stay with a sick child—she does not think of an exchange. Neither does a soldier who sacrifices himself for his comrades. In this article, I try to reconcile these two views of sacrifice in terms of the embodiment that does not just place us, through our needs, in an economy, but also, in its uniqueness, opens up the possibility of our transcending every transactional arrangement. Key words: sacrifice, embodiment, theodicy, forgiveness The Ethical Limits to Self-Making. In Between Description and Interpretation, The Hermeneutic Turn in Phenomenology, ed. Andrzej Wiercinski, Toronto: The Hermeneutic Press, 2005, pp. 558-570. Examining the theme of self-making as developed in Heidegger and Levinas, I argue that in both cases self-making is unlimited. Because of this, the process of such self-making involves unlimited obligations—either to our own being (as in Heidegger) or to the being of the other (as in Levinas). Relying on Hans Jonas’s description of life as inherently future-directed, I claim that what is not taken into account by either Heidegger or Levinas is the role of our flesh in the projects through which we make ourselves. A reflection on such flesh discloses the limits of our self-making and the obligations it imposes. The Hermeneutics of Fundamentalism—What is fundamentalism? What do Christian, Islamic, and Jewish “fundamentalists” have in common that makes them worthy of this name? All three religions are “religions of the book.” They all define themselves in terms of a religious text. But not all members of these religions can be called fundamentalists. In this essay, I argue that fundamentalism is a way of reading a religious text. There are, I argue, four basic types of text: the religious, the legal, the informational and the literary. Each specifies a distinct mode of reading and responding to the text. What distinguishes fundamentalism is its attempt to conflate these approaches in order to increase the “staying power” of its sacred text. The Hermeneutics of the Incarnation—In the long history of Christian hermeneutics, the Incarnation is hardly ever addressed as embodiment. In part, this is because the early influence of Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy contributed to the tradition of Christian asceticism that emphasized the denial of the body. Yet to assert, as Christians do, that “the Word became flesh” is to claim that God himself became embodied. This implies that to understand the Incarnation, we have to understand embodiment. The centrality of the Incarnation, the fact that it distinguishes Christianity from Islam and Judaism, demands that we take embodiment as a central element guiding Christian hermeneutics. In this essay, I describe our embodiment in terms of its ontological structure as an intertwining. I then use this structure to interpret the Incarnation. The Intersubjective Basis of Imagination. Both imagination and memory involve the ability to form mental images. Yet, while memory involves a positing belief in the remembered, imagination represents the imagined as non--actual. In this paper, I explore how we make the thesis of the non--reality of what we imagine. My conclusion is that imagination involves our relations to others. It is through them that we both advance and withdraw the thesis of an object’s reality. Our ability to do so points to the special quality of our relation to others. The recognition of their alterity underpins our ability to imagine alternatives. The Intertwining as a Form of our Motion of Existence—Patočka and Merleau-Ponty are both interested in appearing as such. Both attempt to understand this in terms of the body.  Despite this agreement, there is a fundamental difference. For Merleau-Ponty, the body’s determination of appearing is ultimately a function of its intertwining with the world. Indeed, its very status as an animated body or “flesh” involves the fact that, located in the world, it also is able to internalize the world that encloses it. This intertwining or “chiasm” is its form as flesh. For Patočka, by contrast, what is crucial is the body’s motility, a motility whose sense embraces all of its actions. He claims that “movement … first makes this or that being apparent, causes it to manifest itself in its own original manner.” I bring these approaches into dialogue by seeing Merleau-Ponty’s chiasm, not just as the form of flesh, but also as the form of its movement. The Intertwining of Binding and Unbinding in the Religions of the Book—The religions of the book, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, all believe in a God who fashioned the world. From this belief they draw two very different lessons. The first is that of universally binding laws, laws whose coherence can be traced back to their having a single source, namely God’s creative action. The second is the opposite of this. As occurring prior to the world, God’s creative action is not bound by the world or its laws. The lesson here is that of a radical alterity in the heart of being. God’s being and action are different than that of the world he creates. The first lesson leads to the conception of religion as having a universally binding character. The second, when conjoined with the belief that man is the “image” of God, emphasizes human freedom—i.e., his ability to transcend the world. My contribution explores how the religions of the book deal with these different insights. —Religion, law, God, creation, freedom The Living Temporality of European Identity—In this article, I raise the question of Europe’s identity. I argue that this is to be found in the living temporality that shapes its understanding. Such temporality is over-determined. It consists in a plurality of factors, which privilege, respectively, the past, present or the future. The domination of the past occurs when explanation is in terms of the origin of things—be this sacred history or decisive past events. The domination of the present, by contrast, occurs when we use our present scientific knowledge to understand the past and the future—for example, when we use our current knowledge of evolutionary processes to describe our human origins. In genuine political debate, however, the determining factor is the future. At issue is: what should be done, what is the future to be collectively realized? All three temporal determinations, I argue, shape the European identity. This means that, as over-determined, the living temporalization of Europe is in conflict with itself. Such over-determination is behind the shaking that gives Europe its openness in Patočka’s sense. It is what provides the opening for the Socratic type of questioning that, throughout Europe’s history, unsettled the status quo. The Mind-Body Problem: Phenomenological Reflections on an Ancient Solution American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 31-56, Winter 1994. The relation of the soul -- and as part of this, the mind -- to the body is an ancient problem. Plato and Aristotle consider it. So does Descartes, the founder of modernity. With the latter, however, the shape of their relation receives a peculiar cast, one which ultimately makes their interaction unintelligible. In this article, I begin by noting the reasons for this unintelligibility. I then examine a pre-Cartesian solution to the problem of the mind's (or soul's) relation to the body. My article ends with my giving my own reflections on subjectivity as "flesh". Its concept is proposed as a category which, standing between soul and body, grounds the possibility of their relation. At the basis of this is its special, teleological temporality. Such temporality is at the heart of its reflexive character, e.g., the character which permits flesh to be aware of itself in its being aware of the world. Body; Mind; Religion; Soul The Question of Being in Husserl’s Logical Investigations, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Press, 1981.— This study proposes a double thesis. The first concerns the Logical Investigations itself. We will attempt to show that its statements about the nature of being are inconsistent and that this inconsistency is responsible for the failure of this work. The second concerns the Logical Investigations' relation to the Ideen. The latter, we propose, is a response to the failure of the Logical Investigations' ontology. It can thus be understood in terms of a shift in the ontology of the Logical Investigations, a shift motivated by the attempt to overcome the contradictory assertions of the Logical Investigations. In this sense our thesis is that, in the technical meaning that Husserl gives the term, the Logical Investigations and the Ideen can be linked via a "motivated path." The Question of Being in Husserl’s Logical Investigations. The book involves an investigation of the ontology by which Husserl attempts to justify his interpretation of logic as a "science of ideal being." at issue is Husserl's answer to the question: what must being be if objectively valid knowledge, In the logically defined sense of the term, Is to be possible? the epistemological and ontological difficulties inherent in Husserl's response were related to his later demand for a "change in the way being is spoken of." Difference; Idealism; Intentionality; Metaphysics; Object; Ontology; Representation; Subject; Transcendence; Unity; Husserl The Question of Naturalizing Phenomenology—One of the most remarkable developments of the past decade has been the attempt to marry phenomenology to cognitive science. Perhaps nothing else has so revitalized phenomenology, making it a topic of interest in the wider philosophical and scientific communities. The reasoning behind this initiative is relatively straightforward. Cognitive science studies artificial and brain-based intelligence. But before we can speak of such, we must have some knowledge our own cognitive functioning. This, however, is precisely what phenomenology provides. It studies the cognitive acts through which we apprehend the world. Its results, which have been accumulating since the beginning of the last century, thus, offer cognitive science a trove of information for its projects. As obvious as this conclusion appears, it is not immune to some fundamental objections. The chief of these is that phenomenology does not concern itself with the real, psychological subject, but rather with the non-causally determined “transcendental” subject. If this is true, then the attempt to marry phenomenology with cognitive science is bound to come to grief on the opposition of different accounts of consciousness: the non--causal, transcendental paradigm put forward by phenomenology and the causal paradigm assumed by cognitive science. In what follows, I shall analyze this objection in terms of the conception of subjectivity the objection presupposes. By employing a different conception, I will then show how it can be met. My aim will be to explain how we can use the insights of phenomenology without denaturing the consciousness it studies. The Question of Naturalizing Phenomenology—The attempt to use the results of phenomenology in cognitive and neural science has in the past decade become increasingly widespread. It is, however, open to the objection that that phenomenology does not concern itself with the embodied, emprical subject, but rather with the non-causally determined “transcendental” subject. If this is true, then the attempt to employ its results is bound to come to grief on the opposition of two different accounts of consciousness: the non--causal, transcendental paradigm put forward by phenomenology and the causal paradigm assumed by cognitive and neural science. In what follows, I shall analyze this objection in terms of the conception of subjectivity the objection presupposes. By employing a different conception, I shall then show how it can be met. My aim will be to explain how we can use the insights of phenomenology without denaturing the consciousness it studies. The Spatiality of Subjectivity—The relation of the mind to the body has been called the “hard problem” of consciousness. Ever since Descartes distinguished the mind from the body, declaring the mind to be non--extended and bodies to be extended, the relation of the two has been a puzzle. In material objects, as John Locke observed, we can grasp how a change in “the size, figure, and motion of one body can cause a change in the size, figure and motion of another body.” Their connection with the mind is, however, another matter. Locke, in fact, asserts: “there is no conceivable connection between the one and other.” We lack any concept—in David Chalmer’s phrase, any “explanatory bridge”—that would connect the two. In this paper, I argue that this lack of connection stems from the way that we conceive them. It arises because we identify temporal relations with minds and spatial ones with bodies. To seek the resolution of this problem is to break down this divide. It is, in particular, to understand the spatial nature of subjectivity. Transcendence and Intertwining—In this article, I address the paradox that Hume first raised regarding the transcendence of God: If we admit that God infinitely transcends our understanding, then, as Hume writes, “we abandon all religion and retain no conception of the great object of our adoration.” Yet, if we understand God in human terms, we slip very easily into what can become an absurd anthropomorphism. Hume’s argument works by radically opposing transcendence and immanence. It makes God totally other. Against this, I argue that transcendence is inherent in the world. Its immanence, however, does not mean the absorption of what is transcendent. Rather, it signifies the intertwining of categories that are mutually transcendent. It is such intertwining, I argue, that explains the Incarnation—i.e., the fact that Jesus is both man and God. It shows how he can assert that “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Key words: Hume, Merleau-Ponty, transcendence, intertwining, incarnation, perception, consciousness Trust and Violence— Starting from a phenomenological reading of Jean Améry’s At the Mind's Limits, a biographical account recalling the detention period and torture endured in Breendonk and Auschwitz under the Nazi regime, this article explores phenomenologically the relation between violence and trust. Trust is understood as a basic form of our “being-in-the-world” and, as such, it is constitutive for the intersubjective world, for the world lived as “for everyone.” Following Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the article shows that this basic “trust in the world” is constituted by embodiment, in the intertwining of sensing and being sensed, in the reciprocal inherence of the within and the without, and by intersubjectivity: the trust in the world, which grounds any perceptual faith, is also anchored in and mediated by the trust in others, through which a common world is given. The article investigates the way in which violence (and especially torture) radically undermines this basic trust in relation to the world, to the others, and finally to the self. Discussing also other violent examples (such as the annihilation of aboriginal cultures by the European colonists, or the destruction of the small Peruvian village Uchuraccay), the article shows that, in the experience of endured violence, the world as such becomes alien to the human subject and, in this estrangement, the human being no longer find one’s place in the world, becoming ontologically homeless. Violence and the Return of the Religious, —René Girard speaks of the return of the religious as a “return of the sacred… in the form of violence.” This violence was inherent in the original “sacrificial system,” which deflected communal violence onto the victim. In this article, I argue that there is a double return of the sacred. With the collapse of the original sacrificial system, the sacred first reappears in the legal order. When this loses its binding claim, it reappears in the political order. Here, my claim will be that Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political is not simply structurally similar to Girard’s conception of the sacrificial system. It is actually a manifestation of this. In this political return of the religious, the religious and the political systems are conflated. What prevents us from seeing this is the self-concealment that is essential to the sacrificial act, a self-concealment that also characterizes its twofold return. Violence, Religion, Sacrifice, The political, Rene Girard, Carl Schmitt What is a Self? Husserl advances a number of concepts of the ego or self. My essay argues that this plurality is a consequence of the fact that there are as many concepts of the ego as there are of time. Their plurality points to the process underlying them, that of temporal constitution. For Husserl, this process originates in the anonymity of pre-egological functioning, continues in the streaming life of a particular consciousness, and ends in the world of constituted, objective sense. Viewed in terms of its result, the temporal process can be seen as that of the ego's self-objectification, its coming to objective presence in time. The different ego concepts correspond to the different stages of this process. Being; Self; Husserl What Should We Pray For? In The Phenomenology of Prayer, ed. Bruce Benson and Norman Wirzba, New York: Fordham University Press, 2005, 63-72. This contribution analyzes prayer as the attempt to provide a space where the sacred can appear. The key concepts I use are those of kenosis and incarnation. Providing a space for the sacred, prayer involves a form of kenosis or self-emptying, one which permits the sacred to incarnate itself in our bodily being and behavior. What we should pray for, I argue following Levinas, is not some good, but rather to become good by doing good. 10