Part 1 | Part 2

Part 2 - The Phenomenology of Life in Husserl, Heidegger, and Scheler
By Prof. Hans-Rainer Sepp

The first thesis that this lecture intends to clarify says that phenomenological philosophy from its beginnings is aimed at a transformation of human life; in order to reach its purpose phenomenology developed a theory of human life. To verify this thesis our course has to show (a) how different positions of early phenomenological research (Husserl, Heidegger, and Scheler) analyzed the actual, “ordinary” mode of life, and (b) how these pioneers of phenomenological thinking tried to work out strategies of transforming this mode into a deeper one. The result of our investigation should not be a simple comparison of confronting correspondences between these positions with differences. The second thesis is that there is rather a possibility to outline a structure that runs through common and different topics: the profile of the phenomenological attempt to characterize what we are, and what we could be.  

Basic texts:

A     Husserl: Embodied subjectivity and phenomenological epoché

1. Husserl, Edmund. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology (Collected Works, vol. 2), trans. F. Kersten. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982, §§ 27-32.

2. ———. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution (Collected Works, vol. 3), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer, Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989, §§ 18 and 35-42.

        3. ———. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970, §§ 35-41.

B     Heidegger: Human existence – from decay to upswing

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, translated by J. Stambaugh, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996:

1. Ch. 4 (§§ 25-27).

.      2. §§ 50-53.

        3. §§ 62-64.

C     Scheler: Living between delusion and resistance, and the possibility of philosophy

1. Scheler, Max. On the Eternal in Man. Tr. Bernard Noble. London: SCM Press, 1960. Reprinted: Hamden: Archon Books, 1972. 

2. ———."The Idols of Self-Knowledge." In: Selected Philosophical Essays. Tr. and Introduction by David Lachterman. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

3. ———. "Reality and Resistance: On Being and Time, Section 43." Tr. Thomas Sheehan. In: Listening 12, 3, Fall 1977.  Reprinted in: Heidegger, the Man and the Thinker, 1981, pp. 134-44.

D     Conclusion

Hans Rainer Sepp

* All the required readings can be borrowed at Reserve Books and Special Collections Counter on the G/F of the University Library. For locating the book you want to borrow, please check the call number of the book. Or you may enter "Master Class in Phenomenology" in this page to receive a full list of the call number of the books.

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